About
Here I am starting to carve Selkie
My name is Diem Dangers, and I am a printmaker and blogger inspired by wild heroines who nurture, steward, and live in deep intimacy with the earth, or who are creaturely themselves. Since deep time, there have always been stories in which the earth found a body, a voice, and a face through which to walk among us. The Creaturely Heroine is the archetypal feminine figure who appears across cultures as fox wife, bird woman, wolf woman, selkie, serpent maiden, bear mother, spider grandmother and so many more who dwell at the threshold between human and the living wild. Across cultures she appears under many names such as La Loba (Wolf Woman from the North American desert Southwest), or Rozsomak (The Wolverine from Hungary). Na'ashjé'ii Asdzáá (Spider Grandmother among the Navajo), Humana del Niebla (The Mist Being from Guatemala), Kinaree (Bird Woman from Thailand). . .and the list goes on.
Carving Wolf Woman / Running With the Wolves in my studio
The Creaturely Heroine grows out of my long admiration for Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés' articulation of the Wild Woman Archetype in her renowned book Women Who Run With the Wolves. Her work gave me a language for the Instinctual Self—the ancient, untamed life within us that has never forgotten its kinship with the wild. My own work wanders through that remembered territory, wondering whether the oldest stories might have also been places where the living earth dreamed herself into human form, finding a body, a voice, and a face through which to be seen and known. Perhaps creaturely heroines are not merely women who wear the forms of wolf, bear, bird, fox, seal, or serpent, but rather, they are the earth's emissaries, the faces the wild puts on when she wishes to be seen and known. Creaturely heroines are not merely figures who move through the landscape but are an expression of the courtship of human imagination and the earth, the way the land births herself into being in the storied world, this marriage-place of worlds.
If the Wild Woman invites us to listen inwardly to the Instinctual Self, the Creaturely Heroine welcomes us into the earth's own imagining, where we begin to experience the world through her way of seeing, loving, and belonging. Here the shore dreams Selkie, the desert dreams Wolf Woman, the tundra dreams Fox Woman, and the forest dreams Bear Mother. Journeying with these heroines through their joys and challenges, their loves and losses, the earth is no longer a backdrop to our lives but a relatable presence with a face and a voice, and we begin to wonder whether we have been imagining the earth all along—or whether she has been imagining us. Through my writing and hand-carved prints, I follow her tracks, trusting that whenever we enter her stories, we begin to see through the eyes of the earth herself. In the company of the Creaturely Heroine, the distance between human and wild softens, until the earth is no longer merely the place where our stories unfold, but a storyteller in her own right.
Printing Weaver of the World with my feline companion, who weaves his own quiet magic and mischief between the threads of the day!
I cherish every stage of creating my handmade prints—from researching each creaturely heroine and sketching her story, to carving the block by hand and pulling each print. My work is where craft and story meet — one shaped by hand, the other carried by voice, both are keepers of folk memory. It is one of my greatest joys that, through FeathersandFolktales, the extraordinary Creaturely Heroine is welcomed into wild-hearted homes, and becomes an everyday companion whose stories still have the power to shape how we relate to the wild today. One of the greatest joys of this creative journey has been discovering a community of folklore lovers, wild women, soul-tenders, and kindred spirits who find the beloved Creaturely Heroine just as heartwarming, inspiring, and fascinating as I do.
My inspiration to begin printmaking came from discovering the Đông Hồ folk art block prints depicting the natural environment and folktales from my mother’s native Vietnam. Given that I am a self-taught visual artist with a background in anthropology and a personal interest in folklore, finding these prints felt like uncovering a bridge between art, culture, and ancestral story. I find it deeply meaningful to be carrying on the age-old technique of hand-carving and hand-printing, an artistic legacy with roots in the East, that follows a cross-cultural cross-continental journey to the West through history that is somewhat parallel to my own life trajectory. I have lived in several countries in the Asia-Pacific region, all of which has nurtured my interest and love for folktales from a diverse variety of cultures and landscapes.
When I am not in my studio you can find me hiking through the many wildlife sanctuaries scattered throughout the state of Massachusetts where I live, from which I draw so much inspiration for my work and am so grateful for. I currently live with my partner and son, and work from my home studio in the Greater Boston Area.