Art of the Spirit

With all the excitement of the holidays, I haven’t had much time to make art. I haven’t been sleeping well- a sure sign that I’ve abandoned my body for my head. I’ve been working hard on putting together my “Earth” page, which will hopefully be up by the weekend. It’s taking me so long because it is endlessly fascinating. One theme that seems to run though most of the writers, that people are disconnected from their bodies and one path to true connection with God is through connection to the Earth, creation.

It really is hard to maintain that connection between body and spirit in our culture. I grew up in LA, a soulless city if there ever was one! But LA had the ocean which I visited at least 3 or 4 times a week. I didn’t swim or play volleyball or get tanned; I just sat and stared at the ocean. The beauty of those moments would fill me and allow me to be still. Being still allowed my mind to quiet and my spirit to enter back into my body. Contemporary life is so busy. There is no time for stillness unless that time is made either by being sick or by choice. My illness has many complex spiritual reasons, but I’m sure keeping me still is no small part of it.

It took me a long time to learn to listen to the Divine. But now I understand that if I don’t do it now, the Divine will force me to do it later and it will be harder. So there is really no point in fighting. Yesterday & today I’ve made time to be still so I can reconnect my body and spirit. Oh the resistance! But when I finally was still, I felt myself come back. I felt more present and more centered. I was connected again and I felt the Divine enter into me because I made space. In that moment everything shifted for me. You cannot connect with the Divine without experiencing change. Hildegard of Bingen calls it “greening”. She says that “the word is all verdant greening, all creativity.”

This place of stillness which allows change is the same place I connect with when I create art. I discovered this amazing youtube video about this exact thing. In it, Matthew Fox explains Meister Eckhart’s views on artists:

He said a few things that really struck me:

1) I copied this while he was speaking:

Eckhart compares the work of the artist with the Annunciation scene. The spirit that comes over Mary and begets the Christ in Mary. He says this is the same spirit that comes over the artist and begets the Christ. So this is the Cosmic Christ being born in you. And of course it’s Eckhart who says, “What good is it if Mary gave birth to the son of God 1400 years ago and I don’t give birth to the son of God in my own person in my own work,” that’s art. What you give birth to is the Christ, or the Shekinah the wisdom, or the Buddha nature. You are giving birth to it just like Mary.

He is basically saying by creating we are bringing the Divine more fully into the world. Fox is talking about the Macrocosm/microcosm, as above so below, when he talks about the artist giving birth to Jesus in their soul. The artist’s work is but a pale shadow of the Creator’s work, pale but significant. Just as Jesus shows us the perfection of matter, so the artist seeks to perfect matter, to infuse it with Spirit during the act of creation.

2) Eckhart believed that sins of omission are greater that sins of pride. If you hide your joy, Eckhart says you are not spiritual…. Wow is that amazing. By hiding our joy, we dam up the fecund river of Divinity. We stop the Divine from entering the world. Artists are experts at hiding their work! Fox talks about art though out this video, but he does mean just painting. He means whatever is your joy, your job, caring for your family, hiking, etc.

3) Fox feels that the creative nature of the Divine has been ignored in much of Christian theology, that there is too much emphasis on sin and redemption. Because we have forgotten God’s creative nature, we have lost our connection to creation itself. This is, in Fox’s opinion the cause of the destruction of our planet. (Interestingly, Fox doesn’t believe in original sin. He believes in original creativity. I’ll have a post about this interesting concept coming up.)

4) Fox asks, “How can you know god the creator except by loving creation?” A poignant question.

5) Jesus was an artist, a story teller.

I love most of what Fox says, but his use of the term “co-creator” makes me a little uncomfortable. As an artist, I don’t feel I am a co-creator with God exactly. Certainly I am there. I show up but I feel my job is to be present but empty so that the Divine can flow through me. The term co-creator gives the impression of control. Certainly it is true that that my work reflects me and each artist’s work bears their own distinct mark. The artist is like a filter through which the Divine stream flows. The more I am present in the act of creation, the more space there is for the Divine to fill. The less I control the creative process, the less I filter out of Divine presence.

I recently came across the artist statement of Canadian Heidi Thompson. She describes it like this:

While painting, I become immersed in the experience of the image changing, dissolving, reappearing, solidifying, then separating again. The emerging images often have characteristics which I had never imagined. I apply transparent layers of colour trying to create illusions of atmosphere - gas, liquid, smoke, dust, steam or changing surfaces of water, corrosion, ice and chemicals. Right before my eyes, the heavy solid nature of paint and paper seem to dissolve into impressions of finer substances. These finer substances then become subtler as they stimulate my sensations and provoke my imagination. The painting inspires thoughts, impressions, memories, and feelings - all finer qualities of the mind. What was once solid matter has now transformed into mind-energy. If painting is indeed such a vehicle, which can transform matter into fine substances and, then, into even subtler mind-substances, then it may be possible for the mind-experiences to transcend into something even finer - a sense of spirituality.

If I have succeeded even a small step toward my artistic goal, my paintings would show these levels of our nature - matter, energy, mind, and help the viewer feel something of his or her own spirit-soul. I know that painting aids the experience of these levels of my being. It allows me to experience how matter, energy, mind and spirit play together, guided by some invisible intelligence. And somehow, all these manifestations of existence seem to emanate from a greater intelligence - perhaps God or the Absolute. Sometimes when one of my paintings resonates a beautiful harmony and energy, I feel that a tiny part of the mystery of who I am is being unveiled and I am filled with great pleasure and love.

Yesterday I spoke at length about the importance of a spiritual artist merging the physical and spiritual worlds in the act of creation. All art springs from the fecund stream of Divine creativity. I also spoke of the sacred principle “as above, so below.” This principle basically means that everything is an echo of the Divine.
In the figure of Jesus, God as revealed many things, not the least that Divinity and physicality can be merged. Whether you believe in Jesus or not, the symbol is a potent one. I am not suggesting that an artist can bring full Divinity into their work, but I am suggesting that Jesus is the macrocosm and art is the paler, yet important, microcosm, the echo for integrating the physical & spiritual.

This is why the Earth becomes so important. As long as we fool ourselves into thinking that anything we do is separate from the Earth, was cannot bring God here. If artists see the ideas in their work as more important than their physical execution, God is lost. This is why, in my opinion conceptual art fails so radically.

In our society we have forgotten that everything we use is a fruit of the Earth. Perhaps it is easy to grasp that eggs come from chickens, but what of paint in tubes, plastic boots, or children’s toys? Let’s stay with the artist. How many artists know the source of their own paint? Does anyone realize that watercolor paint sticks to the page because of tree sap or that true ultramarine blue come from crushed stones? (More on this here.)

An artist must fully accept and embrace physicality. This is almost an impossibly hard task because by doing so we become confronted with the brokenness of our planet. To bring God into physicality through the act of creation is an act of healing. It is no more or less significant than any act of healing. It is only our egos which put a value judgment on it: “It’s only a painting, what can it possibly matter?” Each piece of art is but a grain of healed sand, but sand can pile up as anyone who lives near the beach can tell you. An artist must be content to labor at thier Divinely given task. To be an agent of healing requires nothing less than complete abandonment of self will and trust in the Divine steam of creativity which flows through us. As artists, we are called to heal the Earth.

My next post will be about how some mystics view of the earth and healing. In the meantime checkout these amazing posts on Earth & Spirituality:
Gartenfische (of course!)
Sound and Silence(This starts out about Halloween, but keep reading, it’s worth it)

Today was a great day in etching class mainly because I got so much help from my teacher Vijay Kumar. Making the plate is the easy part; printing is a whole other story. I understand it completely on an intellectual level but, as usual, my mind fools me into thinking I know what I’m doing when I really don’t. The physical is a whole different process from the mental. And I definitely haven’t even begun to master it. Vijay is an excellent teacher and a wonderful artist. See his print below.

It is such a blessing to have the eyes of other artists to push you further and more deeply into the creative process. I’ve worked in isolation for a long time and my interactions with the other students in the class and with Vijay are like honey. They are moments of sweet connection which allow me deeper access to the Divine well of creativity from which all art springs.

I have been inspired by so many who have shared their own mystical experiences, Hildegard of Bingen, Alex Grey, Meinrad Craighead, & Gartenfische to name a few, to share my own. I share this experience because it has everything to do with why and how I make my art and live my life.

In college, I had the good fortune to study in Florence. I was inundated, saturated with the energy of the Divine which is captured in those works of art & churches. I had never experienced such intensity before. I became particularly enamored of a Madonna & Child painting in a small shrine made in a former grain market, called Orsanmichele. The building was constructed around an open-air grain market where several healings had taken place which were attributed to the Virgin Mary. I visited this painting of Mary almost everyday for months and when I returned home I continued to pray to her.

One day when I was visiting my family, I had pulled the binds down in my old room and lain down on the bed to pray. I was holding a Mary medal which I used to wear around my neck and facing my old bookcase. I prayed for a long time running my fingers across the medal’s ridged surface when suddenly felt I was being watched. I opened my eyes and there was Mary’s head suspended over my stomach (my womb). I knew I was her without doubt. She was dark skinned and mysterious, the earth mother. I gasped and heard a loud pop. Mary disappeared and at the same moment I was filled utterly with a flash of blue light.

When the flash passed, my eyes were swimming like they do when exposed to something too bright. I noticed floating in my field of vision, a short dark column. It was the same experience as staring into a light bulb and upon looking away seeing dark dots float before you. I thought it was strange, such a distinct shape. So I got up and went to where the light had seemed to come from & where the shape also seemed to be coming from in my old bookcase which I hadn’t really looked through in years. There, wedged between two larger books and pushed slightly back so it was out of sight was a small (about 4”x 2.5”) black leather New Testament with gilt edges. Its spine was the exact shape and size of the dark mark floating around in front of my eyes. I knew with complete certainty this was where Light had come from. I had had no religious training at all. The only time I had every opened this Bible was when my Dad gave it to me at least 10 years earlier. At that time, I had opened it randomly and read just St. Luke’s description of the Annunciation.

It took me a long time to put together the fact that I had experience an annunciation of sorts although I only painted annunciation scenes for years after that. In my paintings, I always showed Mary as experiencing incredible fear. (See my early wood cut above. Sorry for the poor quality picture!) On the day I received the Light, the blue Light of creativity, I was given the job of being a vessel for this Light to enter into the world. This is a fearful task and I wasn’t up to it. I believe that is why I have been gifted with my illness, scleroderma- to prepare me for this sacred task. Having scleroderma has cleansed me of anger, bitterness & depression. Having scleroderma has taught me to be empty and surrender, although there is still much more to learn on that front! I pray to my Source everyday that I might be able to be a true vessel for the Light. Now my depictions of annunciations are no longer filled with fear.

This blue Light within is like a baby, it needs to be nurtured and cared for, protected and fed. This is the job of artists. Perhaps some might think artists are selfish or self-centered. Really they have turned inward to nurture this Light so that it may be infused into the world.

So I started & finished Alex Grey’s The Mission of Art today. I was very impressed. He really understands art as a spiritual path and articulates well the mystical experience inherent is creation. In fact I have been completely converted to Grey’s work as an artist.

Grey’s work is so luminous it’s almost difficult for me to look at sometimes. Strangely, I’ve always considered him as part of the school of realism. His work has that quality even though he depicts the spiritual body and in his book he often references Michelangelo as inspiration. I’m not too fond of realism although I appreciate the skill needed to do it. But I’ve misjudged. Grey’s work is more like the Islamic Illuminated borders I’ve worked on (See image on left- an authentic 18th cent. Arabic illuminated page). It embodies sacred geometry. When the mind engages with sacred geometry it is elevated and expanded in a particular way. It engages us without going through the feeling body. Much of western art is about emotion and the heart. It is a more Eastern approach to spirituality to travel to God through the Divine mind. Grey’s work engages us in a mystical experience even if our emotions miss it our spiritual body does not.

I must say I am wowed by the possibility Grey’s book & work present of healing and transforming humanity through art. This has always been my own desire and unspoken goal. I think it takes great courage to articulate such a lofty goal. I’ll have more posts coming up about this book once I’ve digested it a bit more…

I’ve decided to expand my reading list. I’m never going to abandon the succor of the medieval mystics, but I just ordered a dozen books by and on modern & contemporary spiritual artists. The first to arrive is Alex Grey’s The Mission of Art. Grey is an interesting artist who charts the spiritual energies of the human body in a very technical way (see image on right). His work has value and power, but much of it seems very cerebral and controlled. I don’t believe God can be controlled so I am excited to see what he has to say. I’ll report promptly, but for now, he begins his book with this amazing quote from Beethoven:

There is no loftier mission than to approach the Godhead nearer than other people, and to disseminate the divine rays among humanity.

Beethoven’s work is so clearly suffused with the Divine. However, I’ve always questioned the metaphor of traveling nearer to the Godhead. The early Kabbalists used this idea interestingly. They meditated on the chariot of Ezekiel to make the mystical ascent to God. I guess because I suffer from over thinking this metaphor, beautiful as it is, engages my brain too much. I would rather say removing the veils or polishing the mirror to reflect the Divine more clearly. How’s that for cheek- arguing with a genius!

The Moonlight Sonata

Red Pigment Powder

Airport security has severally cramped my artistic style. I remember the days when I commuted between LA & New York for college. I would wear my entire hat collection (15 or 16 hats mostly of a 1940’s style) at once; one piled on top of the other. I carried my raw powdered pigments in plastic baggies, all piled into a giant black garbage bag. Once when I was doing this, I guess I must have had 20 large bags of colored pigments. On this occasion, the security guard actually bothered to look into the garbage bag after it had gone through the x-ray machine. Of course, he reached in and pulled out a bag of titanium white. It looked exactly like a bag of drugs. But, I explained to him what it was, how it was used to make paints & he believed me. Maybe it was the hats that convinced him I was really an artist. Anyway, that would NEVER happen today!

I love this artist. I was able to see her work this weekend at the Parkway Studio tour.

Check out her website. Her work is moving. It speaks of the way energy flows and courses through the material world.

Princess Haiku mentioned Kandinsky’s book on her blog and it got me thinking. Most of what the book says has no interest for me, except this:

But to a more sensitive soul the effect of colours is deeper and intensely moving. And so we come to the second main result of looking at colours: their psychic effect. They produce a corresponding spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards the spiritual vibration that the elementary physical impression is of importance. (p. 24, 1977 ed.)

I have always believed this. Artwork can create spiritual changes within a viewer and these changes have little to do with a piece’s imagery or visual impact. But I would go further than Kandinsky. It’s not just color that holds a spiritual vibration, it is the entire physical matter of the painting that can resonate. The physical materials of artwork capture the spiritual vibration of the artist.

If an artist struggle with their work, they are really confronting the blocks they have to connecting to the Divine flow, the source of all creativity. When an artist sticks with it and is present to the block for long enough, no matter how difficult or painful that might be, that block will crumble and the artist will undergo a spiritual transformation. The energy from that transformation becomes embedded in their art. This energy then has the potential to resonate with and heal others.

When I was practicing the art of illumination, I discovered creating art that effects on a vibrational level can go even further. Illumination was a sacred art in the medieval period. A major component of this art was the creation of art materials. By making art materials in a peaceful meditative state artists can create works of art that literally resonate with healing energies. For more on this see my essay on Medieval Reconstructivism.

Saturday, October 27th:

Terrry Boddi Open Studio Tour 12 noon to 6pm – 540A Freeman Street, Orange, NJ (in the ValleyArts District)

Aljira
Professional development & networking forum for visual artists, writers and performing artists, 9:30am - 5:30pm

Artist Workshops at Barat Foundation, Art of Creative Recovery, 765 Broad Street
1pm – 2pm Photography (not for beginners), Gary Barat;
2:30pm – 3:30pm Painting, Curtis Grayson
4:30pm – 5:30pm Zawadi School of African dance

Reception, On Every Wall; Stitch, Cut, and Dye
City Without Walls, 6 Crawford Street, 3pm - 6pm

Curator’s Tour: “Seen-it-Wonders”
Seton Hall University School of Law, One Newark Center, Newark, NJ, 3pm

The Modified History of Downtown Newark, curated by Matthew Gosser
New Jersey School of Architecture – NJIT Campus, 113 Summit St., 5pm - 10pm
(Followed by a Halloween After-Party at an undisclosed location, bring a costume!)

Exhibition Opening: In the Country of Last Refuge
A Mashup curated by Emma Wilcox and Evonne M. Davis
Opening Reception: Normative Behaviors
New Video by Michael Paul Britto
Gallery Aferro, 73 Market Street, 6pm - 9:30pm

Sunday, October 28th:

If you can check out the Newark Artists Studio Tour, 10am - 6pm
Artists throughout the city open their doors to visitors
Various, complimentary Shuttle Service pick up begins at 581Broad Street9pm

Capoeira Presentation – by Capoeira Legados
(Folkloric Show of Afro - Brazilian Song and Dance)
12pm The Academy Street Firehouse, 77 Academy Street
3pm Barat Foundation, Art of Creative Recovery, 765 Broad Street

Mural Unveiling and Open Works
Newark Boys Chorus School, 1016 Broad Street, 2pm

Performances by Clarina Bezzola: “Lamentation”
Rupert Ravens Contemporary, 85 Market Street, 3pm & 5pm

Opening Reception – Contemporary Alternatives, Photography of William May, 3pm - 6pm
Exhibit hours after opening: Wednesday – Sunday 2pm – 5pm. Key Club, 58 Park Place

Opening Reception 6pm – 8pm (Exhibit remains open through Dec 9)
Red Badge of Courage, curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud(exhibit open through December 9, 2007)
An exhibition set in 13,000 square feet, based on the title of Stephen Crane’s acclaimed novel. Featuring 65+ artists from Newark, New Jersey, New York and abroad.
National Newark Building, 744 Broad, 6th floor

Maurice Chestnut & Jerry Gant present The Above Ground Project $15 suggested donation, 9pm
Featuring performance by Donnie and others; After-Party DJ – Darnell
Sugar Ray’s, 10 Park Place

Today I finished the sculpting of my first cracked woman. This picture doesn’t really capture the piece well- especially the cracks. And, of course, glazing & firing will change everything.

I had an extraordinary experience finishing it. I’ve been working for years on my own, most often in complete isolation. But to do ceramics, you must have a kiln, and I don’t. So I’m taking a class at the New Jersey Center of Visual Arts. They have really nice facilities and it feels like real artist’s studios, not just suburban moms with nothing to do which is what you find a lot of out here in NJ.

So, I was finishing up and I didn’t feel quite right about how the neck was working. I asked my classmate who had great insight into what I was doing and consulted the teacher as well. My piece is significantly better than I would have been because of these conversations. I’d forgotten the magic that happens between artists. It was a very meaningful experience for me and yet another reason for me not to hide my work away. These moments of deep connection are precious in life.

Since this blog is new, this is my first experience of writing about a piece while it is in progress. My entry of a couple days ago helped me clarify my intentions with this piece in a very different way than I’m used to. I believe writing about it was akin to cleaning debris out of a pipe. My creative flow came more quickly and with increased intensity.

The following is an excerpt from artist Alex Grey’s conversation with Ken Wilbur:

K:…Conventional art is an expression of the self or world as it is now. Transcendental Art expresses something that you are not yet but that you can become…Alex, that insight belongs to both of us.

A: That’s why you feel better after producing it. Transformative art must express something beyond where you are, it demands that you grow beyond your current self. This is where an artist’s angst and the pain of transformation coincide. You reach toward the true, the good and the beautiful and become a better person through the struggle.

This is an apt description by K. Wilbur and I understand where A. Grey is headed. However, I would take his point one step further. It has been my experience that at a certain point in the artistic journey, the “artist’s angst” in creation can fade away. In the beginning, when we engage the source of creativity, we try and control it. This is the source of angst & struggle. Once we surrender to the creative flow, pain & angst are no longer necessary to the creative process. There is still work to be done, but the work becomes less about our personal struggles and more about accepting the nature of what is. If we can accept that, without judgment or control, art will be produced with a joy and ease unimaginable to most. In the same way an enlightened person can face traumas and disappointments without pain and struggle, so an artist can open the door for the Divine transformation through their work without angst. That doesn’t mean making art becomes easy, being present is probably the hardest single act a human being can undertake.

If you’re in San Fransisco on October 26, check out the De Young Museum’s opening of The Diane and Sandy Besser Collection from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. One of my favorite artists, Lauren Ari, has work in the collection.

Lauren works on the pages of a ninety year old Funk and Wagnell’s dictionary. It’s delightful how the words peek through at critical points in the painting. She then sculpts what she has painted. To me this is an utterly fascinating concept. Her work reminds me of the process of energy forming into matter. Language (symbolized by the dictionary page) creates a channel, a form, for energy to enter into this word. Lauren’s work charts how, from this humble beginning, creative energy rushes forth into the world as a dynamic living force. First, she captures the energy, snaps it almost like a photo might be taken, in her expressive paintings. Then it comes to rest fully formed, solid and real, in her jewel-like sculptures.