As I am packing the work for the Taos Ceramics Center Exhibition, Encantos, I realize I am packing up an entire intuitive universe. And every invented universe has its own logic — not the kind you can diagram neatly—but a felt logic. A rhythm. A set of silent agreements between the maker and the materials.

Over time, you start to notice what belongs in that universe and what doesn’t. Certain colors feel native – terra cotta and Prussian blue. Certain shapes return like familiar faces – arcs and circles. Certain gestures carry more weight than others – crossed hands.

In the Encantos universe, the rules for the four Santa Niñas encaustic collages are simple and a bit strange:

• Wax protects.
  Paper remembers.
  Gold listens.
  Heat transforms.
  Layers hold time.

I didn’t write these rules down at the beginning. They revealed themselves by repeatedly showing up. Every time I worked, the materials taught me what they wanted to mean. That’s one of the pleasures of personal myth-making—you don’t invent everything at once. You discover it as you go, the way a traveler learns a landscape by walking through it.

This is why cosmologies in art don’t have to be planned. They can be grown, like the Encantos universe, with its Santa Niña collages, its Encanto Altars, and its Mendicant Messengers (which I’ll tell you more about next time).

Characters Who Carry Feelings

So once a universe exists, it asks for inhabitants, at least this one did.

The four Santa Niñas are not portraits of people. They are portraits of states of being. Each one holds a feeling that kept showing up in my studio: tenderness, protection, not-knowing, rootedness, inner light. Giving those feelings faces—and names—made them easier to sit with.

• This is another gift of storytelling in art:
  We can give shape to what has no shape.

Instead of saying “I’m working with vulnerability,” I can say, “This is Santa Niña del Corazón Guardado.” (Guarded Heart)

Instead of “I don’t know what comes next,” I can say, “This is Santa Niña de los Ojos Velados.”(Veiled Eyes)

A character can hold what a sentence cannot.

And once a character exists, you can talk to her. Work with her. Ask what she wants to protect, carry, or reveal. Suddenly, the studio becomes a place of conversation, not just production.

Materials as Myth

In personal cosmologies, materials are never neutral, they become actors in the story.

• Wax isn’t just wax—it is shelter, skin, veil, cocoon.
  Mulberry paper isn’t just paper—it is memory, breath, fragility.
  Gold leaf isn’t just decoration—it is listening, blessing, attention.

Every time I melt wax over paper, I am repeating a ritual of care: cover, warm, seal, open again. That repetition is how meaning settles into matter. You don’t have to declare symbolism. If something keeps showing up, it is already symbolic.

Play Is Not Frivolous

One of the common misconceptions artists absorb is that “seriousness” equals “legitimacy”.

But myth is not built through seriousness alone. It is built through play: naming things, trying on stories, letting images talk back, changing your mind, making something just to see what happens.

Play is how children understand the world. It is also how artists do.To make a cosmology for your work is not to pretend you know more than you do. It is to admit that you don’t—and to answer that not-knowing with imagination instead of fear.

• You are allowed to say:
  “In my world, this means something.”
  Even if no one else agrees.
  Even if you change it later.

Myth-making is not a contract. It is a conversation.

An Invitation

You don’t need saints, or vessels, or wings, or gold.

Your cosmology might be built from kitchens, streets, trees, broken cups, dogs, storms, old photographs, or scraps of handwriting. It might be loud or quiet, humorous or solemn, tidy or chaotic. What matters is not what it looks like—but that it belongs to you.

Ask yourself:

• What images keep returning?
  What materials feel like home?
  What stories are trying to form without words?
  If your work lived in a world, what kind of world would it be?

You don’t have to explain it to anyone.
You don’t even have to understand it fully yourself.

You just have to keep building it—one symbol, one layer, one small act of making at a time. Keep notes. Pay attention. Show us.

That’s how personal myth is born.

If you want to learn more about the world of the Santa Niñas, your can follow this link.