About Holly Gwinn Graham

Like you, I’m growing and changing, hopefully for the better. Things that I studied in my early days at school and later university and then in life itself have helped me evolve into a person who knows which side of history she's on and where she stands. It’s put me in some very good company.

I used to listen to music and say, “I know this person by listening to their words.” The same is true for me now. If you want to know anything about me, just pick the song that fits. Some non-fiction songs take researching and planning. Some songs about my life or the lives of those around me take scrutiny and honest reflection. Some are just plain fun and silly. I love laughter as a teaching tool, but some of my songs are just plain sad. I’m open to it all. It’s part of what makes my life worth living, and of course, practicing kindness while dealing with life’s lessons.

I love making art of all kinds and sharing the making of it with others. My mom was an artist, and artists fill my life as friends and inspirations. I make clay creations, mosaics, tiles, acrylic paintings, oil and chalk pastels, weavings, needle feltings, batiks, books, plaster masks and poems – and I love practicing these arts with kids in summer art camps, too.

I love writing plays and musicals for movements, to illuminate causes, to teach, using rod puppets and actors and kids from the audience doing improvisations as in Instant Plays. It’s good for me. I’m happy when someone uses one of my songs in a film, or when a university classroom or writing group examines one of my songs or poems. I love feeling useful. I need that feeling in order to thrive. I like singing with the feisty Raging Grannies, too.

I love creating materials for environmental education because it’s fun to write about things like the water cycle, water conservation, safe energy, sustainability, composting, worm bins, doing away with plastic waste, powering our cities on methane gas (before it got a bad rap after being poisoned by fracking) and the vast miracle of this incredible and marvelous Earth in general.
I love creating characters like Nona, the Non-Biodegradable Woman, all cloaked in plastic but affirming that she’s not trash, and Granny Groundwater, aka Granny Freshwater in Florida, who sings about water, its majesty and its sparkling wonder while doing experiments to show how to honor and use it wisely. I’m going to create a new character soon, one who is hip to The Green New Deal and Climate concerns. I look forward to meeting her! Like all the other colorful characters in my world so far, she's going to sing.

I’m in my seventh decade here on earth, a grateful grandmother, a seeker, a finder, a survivor, a dreamer. I want to work with others who are willing to be Imaginal Cells, visioning harmoniously and then acting wisely as did the founders of the Findhorn Garden in Northern Scotland to create magic on earth by listening and cooperating with the nature spirits and the devas of Earth’s growing things. I believe, I really do, that we can shift things by applying unified thought as well as action. It is indeed The Great Turning we are experiencing, as Joanna Macy has said. I want it to be bigger and better and more fun as we make the interval.

I need more fun. How about you? Let me know.

Holly Gwinn Graham