Tracey Schmidt is a local photographer and a poet. Her museum exhibit about native people opened in Atlanta for the Olympics, where it won Regional Designation Award in the Humanities. The Awakening of Turtle Island: Portraits of Native Americans has toured over 16 museums in the southeast, including the Cherokee Museum of the American Indian. It will begin a national tour in 2012.
She attended Georgia State University and the Portfolio Center, where she studied literature and photography. At the age of 19, she moved to Japan to live in a Buddhist monastery. Her spiritual practices there awakened a desire to return to American in search of a tradition that was as authentic and indigenous in America as Buddhism has been for her in Japan. The Awakening of Turtle Island is the result of that search. She is pleased to be here in Asheville.
In 2000 she was invited to teach creativity at Julia Cameron’s, (author of The Artists Way), Taos Creativity Camp. She continues to teach creativity and poetry in the area.
In addition to one-on-one teaching, Ms. Schmidt has taught at the following facilities:
The Womens’ Center for Psychotherapy, Roswell, GA 1995/1996
Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way Creativity Camp, Taos, NM 2000
Quality Assist Educational Facilitation, (Artists-in-Residence for 2000
Head Start teachers), Atlanta, GA 2001
Quality Assist Staff Renewal Workshop, (Creativity techniques for Staff) Atlanta, GA 2002
Warren Wilson College Alumni Retreat Week (Poet-in-Residence) Georgian Bay, Canada, 2007
North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching, (Week long Creative development for teachers, co-facilitated with James Nave), Cullowohee, NC, 2008/2009
The Hope House Center for Addiction, (Poetry classes) Augusta, GA 2009
Meher Center Summer Camp for Teens, (Poetry and the Sacred) , SC 2010
Dream Work/Archetypes for Women, (Poetry classes with therapist Chelsea Wakefield) Roaring Gap, NC 2009/2010
AB Tech Phi Betta Kappa Honor’s Series Featured Speaker, 2010
