Xolo Healers

Project summary

Xolo Healers is an interdisciplinary art project exploring human–animal connection through sound‑based meditation, intuitive observation, and visual language. Grounded in ethical co‑presence with Xoloitzcuintli dogs, the project creates original drawings, paintings, and accordion‑fold codex sequences that translate non‑verbal experience into visual narrative. 

Across many cultures, animals have been understood as healers, guides, and protectors. The Xoloitzcuintli, an ancient companion breed indigenous to Mexico, has historically been associated with spiritual guardianship and transitions between worlds. In contemporary society, however, animals are often reduced to roles of utility or entertainment, erasing their agency and emotional complexity. 

Through sustained observation, meditation, sound-based attunement, and drawing, this project challenges dominant human-centered frameworks and invites viewers to reconsider animals as sentient beings with agency, presence, and relational intelligence. The resulting body of work will consist of original drawings, paintings, and public presentations intended to foster cultural reflection on animal rights and interspecies ethics.

Animal Rights

At its core, Xolo Healers is an animal-rights–oriented cultural project. Rather than focusing on animal care or rescue, this work engages with how humans perceive and relate to non-human animals. By positioning dogs as subjects rather than objects, the project asks audiences to question normalized hierarchies between humans and animals.

I seek to:

• Reframe cultural narratives around companion animals

• show healing as a reciprocal experience, not something done to animals or people
  
  

• Cultural traditions that honor animals as spiritual companions rather than possessions

• Explore non-verbal, interspecies communication as a form of ethical listening
  
  

• Encourage reflection on animal autonomy, sentience, and relational presence
  
  

• Expand public understanding of animals beyond utility, ownership, or symbolism
  
  

The work aims to contribute to broader conversations about animal rights by shifting perception—an essential precursor to ethical responsibility.

This work also reframes how we perceive animal agency and interspecies communication, inviting audiences to engage with animals through shared presence and visual narrative rather than exploitation or performance. 

Project methods and creative approaches

The project is grounded in direct, ongoing engagement with Xoloitzcuintli dogs through observation, quiet presence, sound, and embodied awareness. Drawing sessions occur after periods of attunement, allowing visual marks to emerge from relational experience rather than symbolic abstraction.

My creative method involves entering meditative states supported by sound bowls and meditation, where symbolic imagery emerges and becomes visual material. These intuitive impressions inform drawings and paintings on amate‑style paper, later bound in accordion formats reminiscent of pre‑Columbian codices. 

As a pastel artist, I will primarily still work with pastel but may also add watercolor for it's fluidity.  I plan to work on cardstock for some items first starting out (see below) and then moving more into amate bark pages and then binding pieces together as if it were a codex.  In this manner, I am also honoring the pre-Columbian way of working. 

Artworks will be created using pastel, watercolor, ink, and mixed media on paper, referencing pre-colonial codex traditions while translating them into a contemporary visual language. Sound and vibration (including bowls and environmental listening) are used as part of the creative process, informing rhythm, line, and spatial composition in the drawings.

The final works will be presented as a cohesive series, accompanied by written reflections that contextualize the project within animal-rights discourse and interspecies ethics.

A portion of the project is dedicated to consent-based acclimation and habituation practices that allow the animals to participate safely and voluntarily in documentation and public-facing settings. These sessions prioritize autonomy, stress reduction, and ethical presence, ensuring that no animal is required to engage beyond their comfort level. This preparatory phase is essential to creating responsible creative work that does not instrumentalism non-human participants. 

All animal involvement in this project is voluntary, consent-based, and responsive to each animal’s comfort and wellbeing, with the creative process adapting to the animals rather than the reverse. 

Cultural Impact

• Increase public awareness of non-Western and Indigenous perspectives on animals as spiritual companions.
  
  

• Encourage audiences to reconsider animals’ emotional and cultural significance.
  
  

Animal Advocacy Impact

• Promote consent-based, non-exploitative relationships with animals.
  
  

• Model ethical inclusion of animals in human spaces.
  
  

Budget

• Training & enrichment materials for Xolos: $2,000
  
  

• Photography documentation: $1,050
  
  

• amate paper, framing, visual work displays for work 1,500
  
  

• Editing, printing, and outreach materials: $400

Outcome

This project will culminate in several experiences-

1. completion of a series of documented sound-based sessions;

2.  creation of a minimum of 12 finished artworks, including accordion-style codex sequences;

3.  public presentations or exhibitions in Ohio, Michigan and/or Mexico (I have residency in all three locations)

4.  A collection of written participant reflections.