Portraits in Antarctica, Santiago de Chile by Leslie Barbaro (excerpts from the documentary DanceArctica: A Heroine’s Journey to the Ends of the Earth); Kaua’i selfie by Star Zen Wave
STAR ZEN WAVE
Conscious Creator • Dynamic Dance Activist • Curious Observer • Inner & Outer World Explorer • Radical Self-Expressionist • Ecstatic Entrepreneur • Earth Enthusiast • Amateur Astronomer • Documentarian & Filmmaker • Mindful Misfit • Weird & Wild at Heart
Aloha! My name is Star Zen Wave (s/he/r), and I began life as a curious observer and haven’t allowed anything to stop me since! I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to travel across the inner and outer worlds seeking experience, knowledge, truth and joy—only to discover more questions on my Quest! And so I continue to explore, here’s a little of my history…
PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE
Born in 1978 and known previously as the artist Sarah Davenport in Delaware and Philadelphia, Star began a rebrand to her new artist and rebirthname in 2017, establishing Star Zen Wave Creations LLC in 2019, shortly before moving to Kaua’i island. She officially legalized her name in 2021.
Beginning her work in the Healing & Humanitarian Arts as a teenager following her time in foster care, Star was the youngest board member in the history of the Division of Family Services and helped found Delaware’s first Youth Advisory Council. She continued volunteering and sitting on boards of various organizations, often working alongside survivors of child abuse, sexual assault, domestic / intimate partner violence, chronic illness, addiction, military veterans as well as with those facing physical, emotional and mental health challenges.
As a survivor of late-stage neurological Lyme Disease and complex PTSD herself, she began the Fearless Lyme Survivors non-profit fund when diagnosed in 2013, raising awareness and contributions towards medical care for those with Lyme in Delaware. Following sold-out fundraisers, she was forced to close things down due to debilitating illness in order to focus on her healing. This deeply involved and introspective time led her to natural healing modalities following years of failed medical interventions.
After being introduced to mindfulness, meditation, Eastern medicine and philosophy in the 1990s, Star begun her formal training in Transcendental Meditation in 2011. In 2018, she joined the Sangha at the Present Center for Mindfulness & Healing founded by her mentor Dr. Jenna Tedesco, where she began her Mindfulness training per the University of Massachusetts Medical Center curriculum as taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Still struggling with symptoms and requiring a cane to attend, Star was determined to heal completely. Just weeks before her 40th birthday, she was called to work with plant medicine at Soltara Healing Center in the jungles of Costa Rica, where she spent a month sitting with shamans in sacred ceremonies to receive her healing while working with Ayahausca.
After her experience, she was invited to testify with Delaware’s Senate and House to create new laws for Lyme Disease awareness, which were successfully passed in 2019.
Now in remission after three years of intense integration, she aspires to create a non-profit Foundation in Hawai’i to continue her work in the Healing & Humanitarian Arts, specifically in dance, plant and music medicine. In 2020, Star provided her testimony to the State of Hawaii’s Senate and House to help pass psychedelic research and responsible use legislation via decriminalization.
In December 2021, she went on a quest to Antarctica for the total solar eclipse on her birthday to launch her #DanceThePlanet project and begin filming the documentary DanceArctica: A Heroine’s Journey to the Ends of the Earth.
Mahalo for taking the time to read. As all evolves, I am accepting contributions via Venmo @StarZenWaveCreationsLLC to manifest my mission and am so incredibly grateful for your generous support in this vision!
Stay tuned to the latest on the BLOG or follow future adventures via INSTAGRAM!
EXPERIENCE
Art • Design • Dance • Photography • Photojournalism • Broadcast Journalism • Editorial • Publishing • Music • Public Relations • Production Management • Non-Profit • Speaker & Speechwriter • Fashion Stylist • Acting / Modeling • Travel • Documentarian • Filmmaker • Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby League Member • Philly Roller Girl’s Official Photographer •
MEDIA
Star’s work, images, editorial as well as interviews with her have been published in The Huffington Post (now HuffPost), Philadelphia Weekly, CMJ New Music Monthly, Delaware Today, Spark Magazine, Out & About, USA Today’s The News Journal, Center City Weekly Press, University City Review, Tric Magazine, The Bystander, Audio Glyphix and more.
Star started as a radio DJ in 1995 with co-founding WMPH’s The Decline at 91.7 FM and co-hosted Crash & Burn on 91.3 FM WVUD beginning in 1997. While capturing film photography of the Christmas Day 2000 solar eclipse through the telescope at Mt. Cuba Observatory, Star was interviewed by WHYY public radio of Philadelphia. And whilst in Australia for the 2002 solar eclipse on her birthday, she was invited as a guest DJ on Adelaide’s community radio.
As a broadcast journalist and commentator, she contributed The Tink’s VidDream Television (1996-2015) into the mid-2000s, interviewing artists such as X, Wanda Jackson, The Misfits, Lloyd Kaufmann of Troma, the creators of Adult Swim and many more; she also co-hosted GreenViews Television to help highlight environmental issues in the State of Delaware.
In the year 2000, she created and executive edited ETC., the first arts & entertainment edition of Philadelphia’s Center City Weekly Press and University City Review newspapers. The eight-page color-covered weekly featured Three Dollar Bill, the paper’s first LGBTQ+ column and other articles by contributing writers as well as her own column, The Misadventures of Miss Ellaneous, covering the underground and alternative arts & music scene.
Also throughout the early naughts, Star had a monthly two-page spread in The Bystander covering Philadelphia-area entertainment with her photography and editorial. Her later work included representing artists and organizations, gaining them local and national coverage in print, television, radio and online as the editorial world evolved.
In 2014, she began working with director of The Punk Singer Sini Anderson on the documentary So Sick, a film about female artists surviving Lyme Disease as a feminist issue, as featured in this article in The New Yorker.
MEDIA COVERAGE LINKS & ARTICLES
The Huffington Post
Life With Lyme
by David Norbut • 24 November 2014
Delaware Today
Spotlighting Lyme in Delaware
by Pam George • 20 April 2014
Town Square Delaware
Lyme Disease Survivor To Celebrate Healing at Art Loop Show
by JulieAnne Cross • 1 October 2019
Lyme disease can create neurological effects that disable a person for a lifetime. When Ursuline-educated Sarah Davenport was bedridden (and near death) with almost perpetual all-day seizures in 2013, it was hard for her loved ones to imagine what her recovery might look like.
It certainly was not in the mind’s eye of anyone, but maybe Sarah, that she would be taking a giant leap into a new life in Hawaii five years later and giving back to her fellow humans in the form of practicing the healing arts.
Sarah, known also as Star Zen Wave, is throwing a farewell party for herself, and in doing so, working to rehome her artistic legacy in the dwellings of Delawareans for whom her body of work is historically meaningful.
With ALOHA • ALOHA, part of the November Art Loop in Wilmington, taking place at Chelsea Tavern on November 1, she invites art lovers to: “Come say GOODBYE as I say HELLO to my new life on the Garden Isle of Kauai!”
Chelsea has been home to a significant collection of Sarah’s Market Street-themed photography for many years. This grouping includes numerous shots of the pre-renovation interior of the Queen Theater; shots that less than a handful of photographers were permitted to capture. Others document Wilmington’s evolution from ghost town to burgeoning hotspot. Burning Man, the annual desert pilgrimage, is the subject of other work.
Sarah has been an artist and seeker since birth. Her archives are rich and deep. And while selling her art is certainly a move toward eliminating the healthcare-related debt she unsurprisingly incurred while fighting for her life, and creating a nest egg for her new tropical paradise—there’s an even more practical reason for the quick sale:
Hawaii’s climate is particularly challenging for preserving ones dry-climate collectibles.
The fiftieth state’s desirable lushness comes with a heavy dose of perpetual humidity that would harm so many of her favorite treasures that she hopes other people will, as Marie Kondo would say, find joy in.
The art on display at Chelsea is framed in museum-quality glass. She hopes most of it will end up on the walls of people who will love and cherish it, and pass down to future generations.
The 40-year-old considers her recovery from late-stage neurological Lyme disease to be miraculous and transformational. Some of her work, once the seizures were under control and she regained her ability to walk, included shamanic rituals in jungle settings, something that brought to light layers of complex PTSD. So while healing her body, this one-time foster child also began to address latent memories not previously addressed by the healing she’d already done so far in her young life.
Her healing arts work is calling upon her life experiences and background of art, music, writing, dance activism and production management. (She was once managing director of World Café Live at the Queen.) She now lives and works on an organic vegan permaculture homestead in a substance-free community with tenets of love, joy and deep holistic healing. The group emphasizes healthy living, holding space, environmental efforts, ecstatic dance and conscious co-creation to help bring about change.
(And any skeptics of healing arts who knew Sarah before simply need to see her now. A natural beauty who always had a youthful look, she belies her calendar age. Whatever she’s eating and drinking and doing to take care of her physical shell, count us in!)
ALOHA • ALOHA occurred on 4 October 2019 at Chelsea Tavern, 821 N. Market Street in Wilmington, Delaware.
WORLD EXPLORATION
TERRA
Africa • Morocco • Casablanca
Antarctica • Half Moon Island, Danco Island, Orne Harbour
Australia • New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania
Chile • Santiago, Punta Arenas
Costa Rica • San Jose, Nicoya Penisula
Dominican Republic • Punta Cana
Falkland Islands / Isla Malvinas • Saunders Island, New Island,
Finland • Helsinki
Hungary • Budapest, Ozora
Mexico • Quintana Roo, Yucatan
Portugal • Lisbon
Spain • Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga
Saint Martin / Sint Maarten • Ance Marcel / Philipsburg
Saint Lucia • Gros Islet
Turks & Caicos Islands • Grace Bay
United Kingdom • England • London
United States of America • 44 States, Puerto Rico and counting!
SEAS, OCEANS & WATERWAYS
Atlantic Ocean • Pacific Ocean • Southern Ocean • Drake Passage • Weddell Sea • Magellan Straight • Mediterranean Sea • Caribbean Sea • Tasman Sea • Scotia Sea • Gulf of Mexico • Chesapeake Bay • Delaware Bay • The Great Lakes
OUTER SPACE
TBD