Features Overview
Meet Lucas - the Author
Lucas keeps returning to words. Over time he has written and produced plays, written, and often performed poetry in collaboration with musicians, and generated scores of poems designed for public events anchored in the pursuit of conscience. He’s tried to bake humor into much of it lest he become somber and steeped in delusional self importance.
He’s been inspired by some powerhouse mentors who shook him out of complacency including his Black Women Writer’s professor, Dr. Nellie McKay, who edited The Norton Anthology of African American Writers, and an irreverent, outspoken, and outrageous Jewish woman who refused to succumb to domesticity and joined a wave of women who stormed onto the professional career path, nearly overrunning the male dominated fields of communication in the 1950’s, That woman, who spoke just enough Yiddish to be dangerous, was Shirley Phillips Krejci, Lucas’ mother. She saved him.
He started caring for people who were targeted early because he experienced it at home as a child as his father practiced a kind of “parenting by interrogation”. His mother tried to mitigate all that but the imprints from our younger times stay with us despite our protectors.
He won’t draw a correlation between his early childhood experience and the experiences of people who navigate an oppressive landscape regularly, but he will say he became more aware and receptive to the people around him who slammed up against racism, sexism, and other “ isms” as part of daily existence. His mother’s profound and relentless glass ceiling experiences exposed him to the insidious ways male centered power isolates and limits many females’ ability to advance.
Lucas believes words, at their best, can become spells and evocations that change the molecules of air space and reset the time stream toward a better arc of action. By day, he is an equity worker that leads the grunt and trench work of workshops, municipal law and policy work and other such mundane and necessary matters. In any free moment, however, he is a writer trying to cobble magic that will move readers into skin tingling recognitions that lead toward an infinitely more humane world. Art doesn’t do that though, courage does, fueled by insight and moment by moment action.
“365 Revolutions” is, in a sense, an extended compilation of the people he has known and loved and the stories they’ve shared— but it’s also an act of imagination. The poems begin by prompting him into the pose, and continue when he develops a persona, a narrative emerge and at that point he tries to carry the message forward into a full thought, demand, entreaty or prayer.
That inclination has marked his work as a playwright as well as driven other works such as poetry inspired dramas he has developed and written for stage and CD including “Voice of The Americas” and “Eleven Days in the Life of Dr. King”.
Lucas is in a state of bemusement and perpetual delight due to daily living with his wife Claudette Evans, the one and only yoga master in the house who lives the integrity of the practice. Some of that mission must have rubbed off in the writing of “365 Revolutions” along with the legacies of Dr. McKay and that one unforgettable Jewish woman with a quick wit and deep compassion.
Much like most artists, Lucas is a work in progress, a “late bloomer”, as he calls himself, and an author in search of his next generative high and that next line is always the one that will change everything.
Meet Kait - our project director
At a young age, Kaitlyn’s home-life situation asked of her, to grow up rather quickly. Despite the odds, she moved across the state of Michigan to attain an education. Her dynamic interests lead her to study a range of diverse subjects, propelling her heart into humanitarianism.
While evolving, she discovered her love for photography and the study of communications, which she went on to pursue her degree in. Coupled with a curiosity of her ancestral roots, Kait moved to Italy to continue studying arts and language with the hopes of bringing lost culture back into her family. While she immersed herself in a foreign environment, she experienced hostility because of her nationality. This period deepened her understanding of what it feels like to be treated as a stranger and the “other”. This learned compassion drives much of her creative and personal development.
Her return to the States was marked by culture shock. With new eyes, Kait realized how profoundly divided we treat each other which proved the need to unveil the important depth within human connection; Regardless of whatever differences exist among us. She didn’t feel her words were enough to prove her point, so she turned to image making as her primary form of communication. Through this platform, she was better able to confront “isms” and power imbalances still very present in today’s society. These images are intended to disrupt complacency, and invite introspection while bringing light into the shadows. These seminal works have been featured in exhibitions, galleries, and are still featured at her University today in her home state of Michigan.
Her experience in Italy was not the first time of feeling profoundly othered. Like many young women growing up and living in a larger body, Kait experienced the relentless judgement and critical gaze placed on young women and she often turned that hostility in on herself. During that time, she was also navigating chronic health challenges.
When she finally discovered yoga, it saved her. Yoga practice put her back in her body and offered a pathway from immobility to vitality. She found her breath and with that breath she found home. She regained strength and became more at peace in her own sinew, muscle and skin. She now shares that vigor and practice with others as a yoga instructor and invites students to discover and activate their inner warrior, embrace their essence, and reject oppressive messages and images that can make us strangers to ourselves. She believes in the daily miracles of radical kindness, is more emboldened to explore her darker corners in pursuit of the gifts from those discoveries, and places herself in deep allied-ship with those who are willing to cultivate curiosity and yield to the impulses that lead us on a path toward evolution.
Kait owns a traveling business combining her passions of photography, yoga, and travel called Wandering Soul Collective. A collaboration of light perceiving light; To inspire and nurture minds, bodies, and spirits, through reflectional imagery, harmony of breath and body, and tangible tools for healing. She also travels the globe with a women’s yoga trip company called Work Your Wild, capturing the essence evoked by sisterhood within nature and illuminates the authentic divinity that resides within them.
“It is when you let a person in and they you, that you become more accepting and gracious of others. When you share a piece of your story, and listen to that of another’s you grow. You learn more about the life we are living, hence deepening our collective understanding more and more about the beautiful contrasts amid each of us.” -Kait
There are many more substantial and noteworthy correlations that align her to the purpose of this book and her soul-work, however, if you want to know more, she would love to hear from and about you!
