Name of Person: Shahna Lax

<p>Artist studio of copperwork illuminations in the spirit of Moorish Spain.</p>

Shahna Lax has lived in Crestone for the last 22 years. She has seen and implemented many changes over the years including initiating the creation of Crestone Charter School and the Crestone Artisan's Gallery.

For the last nine years Shahna has developed a type of copperwork that feels ancient but, to her knowledge, has not and is not being done but anyone but herself. The works have a sacred quality, which reflects her own Judaic mystical path as well as her devotion to medicinal gardening in a harsh environment of short season, wind, sand, deer, bear and little creature intrusions.

Crestone is something of an urban refuge for black sheep. Each of us brings our own cultural ingredients and inclinations into this community and as influenced it accordingly. Shahna, as a Hebrew scholar and mystic, has doused her community with a Jewish voice that holds her Muslim cousins in open regard, not as a political statement but as a natural, familial embrace. At the ICON Sacred Art Festival in Durango, and a numerous exhibits in Colorado, Taos, New Mexico and Portland, Oregon her work has roused attention, received awards and accolades.

Not all of her work reflects the Judeo-Islamic bond, however. Shahna responds to what she translates as "the voice of the silent moment" and is led to create pieces that speak from inside the evolving human spirit moving toward a recognition of its own divinity. Illuminations have taken the form of Indra and the Jewelled Web of Hindu tradition and of the Greenman droning runes for the restoration of Earth and all members of the living community. She has been asked by Community Partnerships at Adam State College in Alamosa to curate a sacred arts exhibit in July of 2011.