For River Reishi, dreaming is a practice that taps into the shared language between nature and spirit. Her art visually articulates this language, while also weaving in stories, mythologies, and symbols from the collective unconscious. River draws inspiration from Buddhism after following a Buddhist path for most of her adult life. She is especially inspired by syncretism between Indigenous traditions and religions such as Buddhism and Christianity, seeing syncretism as a means of cultural survival and art as a conduit for stories and ways of knowing to be brought back into our collective consciousness. River is also closely connected to and influenced by Mexican art, culture, music, folklore, and magical realism, and she created many of her art pieces while in her fiancé’s hometown in Mexico. Just as rivers shape and are shaped by multiple topographies, River grounds these experiences through her own traditions and roots that follow the coasts of the Baltic, North, and Mediterranean Seas. All of this is most notable in her study of sand art, a Slavic blessing with similar iterations that can be found in both Buddhist and Mexican traditions (such as mandalas and tapetes).