Bio & CV

After college, Eden lived and worked at The Ojai Foundation, a spiritual retreat center in Ojai, California for a two-week work retreat that turned into an eight month stay from 2011-2012.  While tending to the land and living in a tent on the mountain, she attended numerous workshops on the healing arts, including sweat lodge ceremonies and a vision quest, and met a mentor who helped her to integrate these experiences.  Through land work and various techniques to stay present and notice her thoughts, she moved from her head into her body in a profound shift that lifted fifteen years of depression.  She documented these epiphanies through poetry as part of her process.  She wrote The Ojai Poems: Journey of a Spiritual Nomad, a nine-part chapbook series that encompassed her return to Los Angeles and her struggle to integrate this experience with her life in the city.  

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In 2013 she moved to the island of Kauai after following her visions of seeing the island.  She lived for a year and half on an organic farm, first in a tent, then a shipping container, cabin, and then back into a tent.  Kauai, described by the Dalai Lama as "the place where our souls enter the Earth," opened her spiritually, allowed her to find happiness within herself, and it was here that she decided that she wanted to be an artist.  She began making collages at the coffee shop where she worked, with her poetry and art attempting to reflect those experiences and visions.  She started a jewelry business, Dream By Eden, and sold jewerly in three stores on the island.  She continued creating collages and writing poetry about Kauai after she returned to Venice Beach.  It wouldn't be for another six years that she would finally publish Seed Pearls: Kauai Poems (2020).  The book is available for preview and purchase on blurb.com.  

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Eden moved to Ashland, Oregon by first living on an organic farm in a tent again before finding a job as a cashier and moving into a one-room cabin in the woods.  For the next five years, she continued to write to process various traumas, such as estrangement from family, sexuality, pregnancy, abortion, mental health, racism, homelessness, domestic violence, the pandemic, and the Almeda fire of September 2020.  Using flower medicine as a theme and a metaphor for self-love, romantic love, and the divine, she published My Perfect Offering: A Novel in Poems (2021), complete with acrylic paintings, spiritual collages, and painted dresses.  The book is available for preview and purchase on blurb.com.

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The Almeda fire of 2020 particularly influenced her, and she pulled from her years as a literary arts journal editor to create an anthology of writers and artists who had experienced this traumatic event as a tool for collective community healing and to bring more arts to the valley.  Twenty-three writers and artists contributed their work to The Rogue Valley Oregon Wildfires Anthology (2021), a 108-page book.  Eden purchased and gave away the anthology for free to members of the community at a publishing event at Lithia Park, one year after the fire.  Contributors and community members alike gathered to share their work and experiences, grieve and celebrate each other.  The book is available for a full preview and purchase for the cost to print online at blurb.com.

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The Rogue Valley Pollinator Anthology (2022), the second anthology in the series, edited by Eden Orlando and Kristina Lefever (volunteer President of Pollinator Project Rogue Valley), features the work of 65 contributing writers, artists, and activists on the subject of local, native pollinators.  This 316-page book focuses on native butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, hummingbirds, bees, the European honey bee, ecology, activism, and children's activities.  Contributors participated in a two-month gallery show at Catalyst Ashland from May through June 2022 and were interviewed by Ashland News and KTVL/News-10.  Editors were interviewed on the radio with Jefferson Public Radio (JPR).  Editor Eden Orlando was featured in SOPBS's "The Work of Art" by Vanessa Finney in September 2022.  Proceeds from the sale of the anthology benefit Pollinator Project Rogue Valley.  You may purchase the anthology by visiting PPRV's website, going in-store to their Phoenix, OR location, or at Old World Artifacts in Ashland, OR.

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In 2022, Eden had six spoken word videos of her poetry and six fine art images accepted into SOU's "Bodylogues," a private virtual exhibit on the subject of gender and sexuality.   Her illustrated poetry book, My Perfect Offering: A Novel in Poems (2021), was accepted into Southern Oregon University's the Oregon Fringe Festival in 2022.  Ten paintings, including two painted dresses, and ten poems, from her book were displayed in a gallery show at the Marion Addy Building during the festival and online.  She also participated in a reading of her work and Q & A session after. 

In 2022 Eden began collaborating with multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, Casey Gina, under the group name, "Heavenly Flowers."  They first performed four songs at The Gathering of Goodness in Medford, OR in June 2022.  In August 2022, The Speak Easy Presents by Blaine Lindsey featured their sixteen song show, "Mermaid From the Sea," at The Shrine in Ashland, OR.   Their debut album, "Like a Thousand Peals," (2024) was recorded with the help of  tiny choir productions and is available on Bandcamp.   They performed these songs at the 2024 Oregon Fringe Festival.

Eden continues to write poetry, paint on dresses, make up songs, bind books, offer spiritual art classes, and collaborate on community projects.

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To see more art, follow her 

IG: @eden.orlando.art

IG: @heavenlyflowersmusic

IG: @figeaterpress

IG: @pollinator_anthology

Bandcamp: heavenlyflowers.bandcamp.com

or email her at: 

figeaterpress@gmail.com

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