NIGHT CLOUD HEART FLAME DRAWING - Exploring Cloud Shapes for Large Agave Night Cloud Sculptures
Hello There!
It’s been a minute. If you have not been following my life, I moved to Santa Fe, NM Jan 1st 2024. It has been a phase of finding my enthusiasm again. Doing my best to find my creative energy & passion to overcome my grief from losing both of my biological parents these last 5 years. It has rocked my inner world more than anything I have gone through in this life.
These first few paragraphs are a synopsis of my journey and new creative explorations. After the pictures below is a much longer more personal descriptive story [with pictures] of my creative journey, for those that are interested and have the time to read my longer detailed, story scroll on below.
For the last 2.5 years I have lived in a small, quirky adobe apartment with double the same size yard for Tulip, my sweet spicy fur child. This past Dec 2025 I signed a year lease to a BIG warehouse studio. The walls sat empty for almost 6 months. I did not know what to make. I have had so many ideas and none felt exactly right. I revisited my previous works; I crocheted, a lot; I made a new silly agave crown that ended up looking like Max from Where the Wild Things Are. An appropriate crown for my petulant, stubborn child refusing to give up my artist dreams. 👑
Then, one day during a meditation practice, Agave Cloud visions arrived. Then soon after during a meditation practice on my 51st birthday (May 1), I received a powerful image: A CLOUD MADE OF LIGHTNING BOLTS.Through this new series, I continue my exploration of agave as a material of transformation—turning its sharp, protective leaves into monumental symbols of light, resilience, and unseen forces made visible. The first forms of a symbolic language I've been orienting towards, unknowingly, for years!
Like Christo & Jeanne-Claude,who funded many of their monumental projects through the sale of preparatory drawings and prints, I'm offering twenty original Night Cloud oil pastel drawings. They are available for $55 each to collectors who would like to become part of this new chapter. These early works directly support the continued development of SKYSISTER Studio, including materials, fabrication, and the experimentation needed to transform these playful studies into immersive, scalable installations.
Read on below where I share the LONGER STORY of how this new body of work unexpectedly emerged.
xxCM
Oil pastel in process with sewn silk lightning bolts⚡️
LONGER STORY [WITH PICTURES]
Since arriving in Santa Fe for the past 2.5 yrs Tulip & I've lived in a 371 sq ft apartment that is the front half of a quiet quirky adobe right in the middle of town.
In December 2025 it was time to expand out of my cocoon and go BIG. Then came the waiting. To be honest, the last 8 months has stretched my beliefs about my Self and my art greatly. After unpacking my storage units, I began exploring.. what is next creatively? A friend told me not to hang old works on the big empty walls so that new works could be gestated. I followed her suggestion and waited.. I did not know what to make.
The walls sat empty for almost 6 months. I would go to the studio and feel slightly overwhelmed, lonely with SO MUCH PRESSURE on myself to use this new space. I did not know what to make. I have so many ideas and none felt exactly right. I revisited Wearable Weapons 2.0 idea by exploring Reclamation Regalia. It felt appropriate with the times we are living in but I was not moved to keep assembling new sculptures with blades.
In April, I had an AH HAHmoment during an online meditation practice with a friend after a birthday party. The party was in a home that had a large-format giclée print on canvas of a sunset, I said out loud, "Why do I make my art so complicated and conceptual? Why can't I just make clouds?" BOOM. Agave cloud visions arrived. During the meditation I saw my studio with the large-scale Agave Wings on the left side of space, my LARGE empty walls and the Agave Aureole (SUN) on the right side. I then envisioned the SKY background for the Wings & Sun. This vision arrived years AFTER I first named my studio & creative branding (more on this next time) SKYSISTER in 2023.
During a meditation practice on my 51st birthday (May 1), I received a powerful image: A CLOUD MADE OF LIGHTNING BOLTS. ⚡️⚡️⚡️ I am continuing to explore this vision in sketches, pastel drawings sewn over with dyed silk thread and smaller sculptural studies. I began with swirling cloud forms inspired by movement, weather, and the sky’s ever-changing language, and have now been exploring the emergence of Heart Flame Cloud forms. These intimate studies are helping me develop the visual language for future large-scale installations where agave leaves will be transformed into immersive cloud and lightning environments.
Such a solution will not appear in the form of an intellectual conclusion or thought-out plan, but will arise in dream or phantasy (or meditation) in the form of an image or symbol, so unexpected and yet so apt that its appearance will seem like a miracle. Such a symbol has the effect of breaking the deadlock. It has power to bring the opposing demands of the psyche together in a newly created form through which the life energies can flow in a new creative effort. M.E. Harding —Psychic Energy. This quote from I Ching: Hexagram 49 (Revolution) Changing Line 4 describes what happened in my studio: the answer did not arrive as a plan, but as a symbol! (translation from Jamesdekorne.com)
First exploration of a cloud from built with agave leaves.
For the first time in a long, long time I have been incredibly inspired. ENTHUSED. I have been waking up excited to be in my studio again. (I am also driving Lyft part-time, giving art talks, offering Airnbnb Art Experiences and teaching workshops.) I have returned to a thread that inspired me pre-grad school and pre-NYC. This evolution is even a surprise to me! CLOUDS. LIGHTNING. Atmospheric world building. A sky that the wings and the suns can live inside. After 25 years of working with the agave plant leaves, I discovered last year that that their leaves form the exact shape to build lightning bolts! Gold-leafed, of course! Now I am exploring my own style of agave cloud forms and drawings (and soon, large-scale 2D and 3D agave clouds.)
Around 2002 I visited Woodstock for the first time when my sister graduated from Bard. I walked around town and encountered my first IRL Tibetan Buddhist Thangka painting. (For those unfamiliar,thangka paintings are Tibetan Buddhist devotional paintings often depicting deities, sacred scenes and mandalas.)I was moved to tears when I felt the devotion, care and precision that was spent for months to years painting these deities, many with detailed clouds and flames. As many of you know, my first art inspiration obsession was with circles, mandalas and yantras. I even wrote my MFA Thesis in 2009 on this topic.
SKYSISTER Studio and these new atmospheric works are devotional for me. What am I devoted to? Truth. Beauty. Expansion.Transformation. After my momma died in 2021, I often feel her presence as a soaring bird. I feel her as a mix of a heart flame and bird—which is how the SKYSISTER logo emerged. The logo is a mix of bird and flame. When I had my studio in Jerome, AZ for 6 six years (2017-2023) I would often stare out the window at the sky for hours during my grieving years. (See below for my favorite picture out of that studio window.) Now I have studio with no windows or view AND I WANT TO BUILD THE SKY AS AN IMMERSIVE INSTALLATION. WILD EVOLUTIONS. I could't have seen things go this way.. but it is truly beyond my little mind, this unfolding.
In May I traveled back to Sedona to collect more leaves for my new cloud forms. I build my wings, suns, lightning, and now clouds with dried and hardened agave leaves collected in nature, from donations & from landscaping companies. A dear friend in Sedona shared with me this quote below from her Sufi studies that beautifully resonates with my connection to nature, the sky and agaves.
There is one Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture which can enlighten the reader. —The Sufi Message, Vol 1.
These new works expand my symbolic language into immersive, scalable installations inspired by clouds, lightning, and the sky. I am interested in creating environments where sculpture becomes atmosphere, inviting visitors to move through symbolic landscapes of light, resilience, and connection.
I am drawn to the sky because of its magnitude and breathtaking beauty. Vast, ephemeral, and ever-changing through the play of light, moisture, and wind, it belongs to everyone. It is the only landscape we all inhabit together. Its immense presence invites me to imagine sculpture not as an isolated object, but as a symbolic atmosphere that reminds us of our interconnectedness, our shared humanity, and the unseen forces that unite us.
These Night Cloud drawings are the first studies for a larger body of work. Over the coming year, I will develop these forms into sculptural cloud environments, experimenting with agave, metal frameworks, light, and scale. My hope is to evolve this work from drawings to sculptural studies and ultimately to immersive installations for exhibitions, residencies, and public spaces.
Interested in sponsoring a cloud? Help me build the sky. If this vision speaks to you, I’d love to start a conversationabout becoming a collector, patron, or creative partner as these early studies evolve into future large-scale agave cloud installations.
My hope is to maintain my studio so I can create the first installation of the Agave Skyscape, and your support can help make this possible. My intention is to build 8–10 agave cloud works in a range of 2D and 3D scales and install them throughout this warehouse space for professional documentation. With these photographs, I will apply for residencies, exhibitions, and public art opportunities. I love that this sky is scalable and can continue to expand, adapting to spaces of every size.
Why heart flames? The inspiration to add the heart flames to these cloud drawings arrived after a deep meditation, when I was feeling my vulnerability and longed for a divine connection to hold and shield my inner core. When I filter the entire world's pain through my heart flame it easily gets overwhelmed by the times we are living in. For me, this delicate goldness—a layer of light that holds and protects my heart—is what allows me to navigate the world with steadiness. Strengthening my heart flame is an ongoing practice. By sharing these drawings and my process, I offer my experience of finding expansion instead of contraction.
The Night Cloud drawings are the first small manifestations of this larger vision—a way of discovering the forms, symbols, and language before they grow into monumental environments.
Thank you for witnessing this beginning with me.
With Wonder,
Carrie Mae Rose
RECENT ART WORLD INSPIRATIONS
It was pointed out to me recently by a fellow creative that these other favorite artists of mine below are speaking the same visuallanguage as I do, they are making soft things out of hard things or hard things out of soft things!!
Warm Gun examines the United States’ issues of gun violence and masculinity through a collection of colorfully quilted, droopy, caricatures of assault weapons, bringing ‘macho’ objects into a traditionally feminine sphere and questioning their potency.
The view from my Jerome, AZ studio in 2022 with surprise soaring bird in top right - SKYSCAPE EXTRAORDINAIRE!
A note from the studio: These Night Cloud drawings are the first offerings from an expanding body of work that will include large-scale agave installations, wearable sculpture, and participatory projects from SKYSISTER: Studio | School | Shop.
