“As a child, I envisioned creating a little world. Oh! quite a small one, but still...a world where people would be able to live without having to be preoccupied by the imperious necessities of life.”– Mirra Alfassa, The Mother. 
 
Mirra Alfassa’s instinct to create was alive from a young age. Mirra, also known as ‘The Mother’, was a spiritual icon shaped very much by her creativity. Born to a Parisian Jewish bourgeois, Mirra was influenced by all aspects of art and beauty—particularly music and painting—and studied at some of the most prominent French studios. But, her creativity didn’t stay limited to Parisian galleries; it unleashed fully in Pondicherry, India where she joined Sri Aurobindo to create a spiritual vision that united thousands.
 
Mirra often spoke of the difference between ordinary vision and that of a creator. Ordinary vision is disjointed, unconscious, and forms impressions rather than a vision; The creator sees beyond the form, and notices the parts as much as their harmony or disharmony, and understands what is and what could be. This vision of the creator is what Mirra had when she dreamt of building an ideal world from diverse humanity. Her vision still lives on in her art and spiritual teachings, but most completely in Auroville—the experimental township she founded and dedicated to human unity and evolution, the ideal little world that she dreamt of as a child. 
 
We created this screen-printed T-shirt of Mirra Alfassa, ‘The Mother’, as part of a series featuring some of our favourite creators. A ‘creator’—a person looking to influence the world through their creativity—is one of the archetypes in Jungian psychology that we use for storytelling. The creator archetype is special to us as a business because it’s one of the two primary archetypes shaping Public Works. This T-shirt series featuring some remarkable creators is for everyone exploring their creative spark. 
 
* Each is printed by hand. This is why every print is unique and slightly different from all others, and each carries marks of being made by human hands.