Welcome to the Frog Pond - Watertown

May 28, 2025 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

ARTIST STATEMENT – CORY CAVILL (Kay-vle)

I am a poet, storyteller and songwriter and have been working my craft for 35 years.
From 1997 to 2008 I both organized and participated in week-long songwriting
workshops with the Black Hills Songwriters with talented teachers from the folk genre. I have taught Language Arts at the middle school and high school levels. Now, I am employed as a Reading Interventionist for the Rapid City School District at the Black Hills Children’s Home. Throughout the last 35 years, I have kept writing through the raising of my children, a divorce, a second marriage, and changing jobs.

Through it all, the craft of writing gave me perspective and helped me navigate the
changing seasons in my own life. All my life I waited for the perfect conditions to
showcase my work, but there was always a distraction, a block, an event that took
precedence. Then, my kids left the nest. In fact, in the last 10 years so many things
began to happen. Pre-menopause. Menopause. Post-menopause. In the span of five
years, I fractured six different bones in four different falls. It was as if my bones were
talking to me.

I decided it was time, a chance, to review all my binders and files of writing. After a
very short review, a theme began to emerge. Much of my work included encounters
with creatures from the natural world. These creatures seemed to want to share
messages. About that time, a book fell off my shelf that I had promised to deep read
for 25 years, WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES by Clarrissa Pinkola Estes. The first chapter discusses the reality most of us face when our bones begin to speak to us, when we are no longer connected to our deepest calling. The first chapter was titled, “HOWL.” So, I did. I worked that book and understood it was my job to go into my inner landscape and confront the beliefs that kept me from doing my art more prominently. I returned to where I began – an enchanted place – a frog pond. I took my bones with me and we dug up stones and turned over logs. We confronted all the messages of my life that told me I had to put other people’s dreams first. Then, I rewrote the script. My performance I call THE FROG POND was born.

It is based on the premise that life is a frog pond and we are all in it. No clapping
allowed between sketches as I ask the audience to participate by becoming an
inhabitant of the Frog Pond. We hoot. We howl. We remember. Together, we go on an epic journey to reclaim our voices.

That is my purpose for my art – to reclaim the pieces of myself that I put on a shelf and abandoned because others took priority. And in so doing, maybe encourage others to do the same. My art is a reclamation project, a reclamation of my voice and also of me.

Cory Cavill is a teacher, songwriter, gardener and lover of the natural world where she finds inspiration for the tales she weaves. She believes our stories matter and shape us from childhood, through young adulthood, middle age, and beyond. They are to be celebrated. She has lived in the Black Hills for over 25 years. Through her many roles, it is storytelling that has helped her navigate and find meaning as time keeps turning. The Frog Pond is a playful space where we can listen, laugh, and find meaning in our shared experiences through the seasons of life.Together, we hoot, howl and chirp and find we have much in common. Life really is a frog pond and every voice matters.