About Abigail & the TEND Creative Arts Vision

I believe that creativity belongs to ALL of us, as a sacred part of our humanity.

There was a long time in my life when creativity felt like something that belonged to other people. It seemed reserved for those who were naturally talented, trained, or confident. Over time, I came to understand that I was mistaking artistry for creativity. Artistry is a path shaped by sustained practice, talent, risk, and devotion to a form, and it deserves to be named as such. Creativity itself is woven into being human.

Movement was my first creative language. Through movement and dance, I discovered creativity as an embodied experience. Movement and dance showed me how awareness lives in the body, how emotion shows up in gesture, and how expression can emerge without words. Movement continues to shape how I create.

For more than twenty years, dance and movement arts have been a steady thread in my life. They have offered grounding, resilience, and a way of staying in relationship with myself and the world through many seasons of change.

My creative path later expanded into visual and media-based work. I earned a degree in New Media with a focus in videography at UNC Asheville, along with a minor in dance. During that time, video became another channel for working with movement, allowing me to capture dance and hold it beyond the live moment through rhythm, timing, and editing. It also deepened my understanding that meaning often lives in the spaces between mediums, rather than inside any single form.

Today, my work moves across forms. I’m drawn to multimedia exploration and to the conversation that happens when different materials and modes interact. Alongside movement and media, I often explore collage, wrapping rocks, painting, creating altered books, and working with fabric arts. While movement is my earliest creative home, these tactile practices have expanded my place of return. They remind me that creativity does not have to be productive, polished, or even shared to be meaningful.

I am currently in graduate school studying Expressive Arts Therapy, a field that weaves together movement, visual art, writing, sound and music, theater, and imagination as pathways for insight, connection, and care. This work has given language and structure to what I have intuitively known for years: that creative expression can be both gentle and powerful, personal and communal.

I don’t believe creativity is something to be earned.
I believe it is something to be remembered.

~ Abigail Griffin