Art of the Spirit

I finally got this one fired:

Next post from the tropics!

I got a lot done in ceramics today. I glazed the second in my series of woman cracked open like eggs and finished the sculpting on the third. It felt great. The teacher in the class asked me what my plan was. I answered her with complete honesty that I had no plan. I am letting the work flow through me. I’m working on letting go of control. I think she thought I was a bit cracked… maybe like my sculptures! (See here for the first finished piece.)

As I was leaving for the ceramics studio, everything was covered in ice. It was tremendous. Here are some pictures of my front garden:

Drooping tree

Ice-Coated Tree Berries

Red Twig Dogwood

Sunflower

Joyful for no reason,
I want to see beyond this existence.

You open your lips, laughing.
I think of a design for that opening.
-Rumi (trans Coleman Barks & John Moyne)

I love that poem.

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Picture of my newest sculpture in progress…

My sculpture came out of the kiln today:

Today
my life is mirrored in
a morning Glory.
-Arakida Moritake (1473-1549, member of the Shinto priesthood)

Making art is such an adventure. Yesterday at the etching studio I thought my plates were complete but when I printed I was surprised that the images needed so much more work (see draft print below). It’s hard to know until you print, like a mystery unfolding.

Today at the ceramics studio one of my pieces was out of the kiln and ready for glazing. Once you fire your glazed piece there is very little you can do to change it. It’s scary & I’ve heard many people say they always ruin their pieces in the glazing. Glazing requires a blind leap of faith. So much can happen over which artist has no control: Dripping, interesting or unpleasant interactions of color or texture.

This illustrates one of the ways in which art is a spiritual path. In glazing, the artist must face fear. If this is done with consciousness and the intention to grow, the act of glazing is an act of spiritual transformation. By facing fear, it is released and then there is more space within the artist to hold and transmit the Light.

I remember in college rolling out of bed at 1 or 2 in the afternoon and feeling like I slept in. Now I have a child and things have definitely changed. Today I slept in to a whopping 10:00am! Perhaps I’ve slept the day away, but I feel GREAT!
I’m going to get right to work on my new sculpture, but I need Guidance. I am going to make a head split open at the crown, a sort of comment on the energy and power of the 7th chakra. It’s not clear if it needs to be a bust or a full figure. I think a full figure might be more dramatic. Oh yes, a full figure. It just popped into my head. I love Guidance. You can tell its Guidance when the image comes fully formed and there is nothing left to think about, you just have to act…

Interesting Holy Spirit Tattoo from ReligousTattoos.net
Go figure! I like the idea of the Holy Spirit joined with flesh…

Today as I was finishing up my sculpture, I started thinking about how we choose to serve humankind and the Divine. It seemed very clear to me that it is a choice. The choice that I have lived with most of my life is to serve through suffering. But this is not the choice I make now. I’ll explain using the example of medieval women mystics.

The wonderful scholar, Caroline Walker Bynum, has written extensively on medieval women mystics. Her books Holy Feast, Holy Fast and Jesus as Mother changed my life because they helped me identify the path that I had been unconsciously taking. Bynum talks of medieval religious women who cultivated suffering. They rolled in glass and starved themselves to name just a couple of the physical punishments indulged in. It was part of the mystical path of Imitatio Christi. In the medieval period life was extremely hard. There wasn’t much you could do to mitigate suffering. So these mystics embraced suffering and gave it meaning. As Christ suffered on the cross to redeem and heal humanity, so the women would inflict pain and suffering upon themselves believing that through their own suffering humanity would be healed.

I think, however, here is a major difference between what Jesus underwent, and what these women mystics underwent. His suffering was God-given. He did not seek it out; he only followed the path that had been laid for him. The medieval mystics, on the other hand put their own will into the matter. They constructed the idea of Imitatio Christi. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I adore these women and their writings. I only wonder how God might have appeared and how they might have served without exercising their will. St. Francis is interesting because he also practiced Imitatio Christi. He cultivated suffering, but he also accepted God-given suffering in his early illness and through receiving the stigmata later in life.

I realized while I was sculpting today is that for along time I carried this idea that I had to suffer to serve God. I am not just talking physically either. I was not comfortable with joy and at ease with the calm passage of time. Some how it felt selfish and wrong to be happy when there was so much work to be done to heal the world. But now, this seems incredible hubris to me. I realized that I have released the need to suffer and I chose to serve God and humanity through light rather than through the darkness of suffering. Sculpting today I felt the light and was grateful.

You can have an illness and not suffer. For me this is one of the main lessons of St. Francis’ life. His stigmata smelled of roses.

A couple of people have asked me to post about Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century German mystic and visionary. Today I’ll post about some of my artwork she has inspired; tomorrow I’ll write about Hildegard’s life & why it’s is so important to me.

About 20 years ago (Now that in itself is crazy!!) I made sculpture of Hildegard. I was recently looking for the documentation of it and it’s vanished. So, I’m going to describe it here.

The sculpture was of Hildegard undergoing a mystical ecstasy. She was standing naked, writhing in that sweet agony- somewhat akin to this etching detail.

I rigged a door in her stomach which when opened, played Hildegard’s music. Inside were stashed my Hildegard drawing series. But the door was locked with a padlock. I placed the key inside her womb. You had to reach up into her birth canal into the womb to get it.

So, I arranged a trap. I briefly attended Mount Holyoke College, women’s college. Probably a good school, but I was trained to be such an elitist at my high school (Crossroads) that I couldn’t interact with the other students. They hadn’t read Rimbaud, man was I a snot! Fortunately, I am nothing like that now. Also I wanted art school, but promised my Dad to get a liberal arts education. Anyway my trap:

I invited my Medieval Spirituality professor along with my class to view the sculpture. I asked him to open the sculpture. He accepted and found himself sticking his arm up to his elbow into Hildegard’s birth canal in front of a group giggling girls. He was beat red. It was a beautiful thing! Everyone was thinking about sex all the time, but no one ever said anything. The only men were the professors and it was kind of like turning the tables. When the stomach panel was finally unlocked and opened, the sound of the music was shocking. Music entered a charged space. Very dramatic, but also a lot of fun.

UPDATE: I want to say a little bit more about yesterday’s post. When I had that professor stick his hand up into Hildegard’s birth canal. It wasn’t meant as a sexual moment, although it obviously has those overtones. That professor was afraid & self conscious when he did it. He didn’t know what he would find and he knew he was being watched by his class.

Hildegard’s womb in the moment of a mystical ecstasy is charged with the Divine. It is the microcosm of the Divine womb, the source of all creative energy. Remember the mystical rule, as above so below. So I meant to evoke the terror that we feel when approaching God: the fear of the unknown and the fear of annihilation. Squatting down and reaching up into an unknown darkness, all the while feeling you are being watched and judged. To me that sounds a lot like entering into the mystical path.

I found this charming video of Hildegard’s music. It’s called Shelf of Walks. It captures something of Hildegard’s spirit- especially her ability to see God in the material word. All the other Hildegard entries were so over the top it was painful. I used Hildegard’s music as part of a sculptural piece once. I’ll post about that tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to work on finishing my sculpture.

This is a lousy picture, but this is the sculpture I’m working on today. Hopefully I’ll finish by tomorrow.

There is a 14^th century manuscript included in Francis & Clare: The Complete Works, which describe what St. Francis considers “perfect joy”. I can’t tell you how much this story has helped me. I’ve paraphrased it here:

Brother Leo asks St. Francis, “What is perfect joy?” St. Francis replies listing the things that would logically bring him great happiness: If all the masters in Paris join my order, it would not be perfect joy. Or if all the masters in Europe, and the King of France joined the order, that would not be perfect joy. And if all the non-believers in the world were converted and I had the grace from God to heal all sickness, that would not be true joy.

(Okay, so what would it be? Get ready!)

“I return from Perugia and arrive here in the dead of the night and it is winter time, muddy and so cold that icicles have formed on the edges of my habit and keep striking my legs, and blood flows from the wounds. And all covered with mud and cold, I come to the gate and after I have knocked and called for some time, a brother comes and asks: “Who are you?” I answer: “Brother Francis.” And he says: “Go away; this is not a proper hour for going about; you may not come in.” And when I insist, he answers: “Go away, you are a simple and a stupid person; we are so many and we have no need of you. You are certainly not coming to us at this hour!” And I stand again at the door and say: “For the love of God, take me in tonight!” And he answers: “I will not. Go to the Croisers’ place and ask there.” I tell you this: If I had patience and did not become upset, there would be true joy in this…” (p.165-6)

It is this passage that inspired me to make an altar of St Francis’ feet. How can seeming misery be joy? Illness and wounds, whether physical or metaphorical, can bring enormous suffering. Our experiences of pain are mirrored for us by St. Francis’ stigmata. On my altar I planted the aloe vera plants in his stigmata to show that our wounds can bring healing to our lives. But this, St. Francis counsels us, is only possible through acceptance not struggle. It is struggle that produces suffering, and acceptance which produces joy. There are, in fact, things that happen in each life that can not be changed and which seem completely unacceptable, things like severe illness, disfiguration or scars, & the death of a loved one to name a few. St. Francis shows us that there can be happiness, even joy in the face of these terrible events and from that healing. Pain & joy are not mutually exclusive emotions and healing depends on the coexistence of the two.

I mention this only because it is so easy to be thrown by the events of life and to forgo making art. But art is life blood to an artist and we must learn not to be crippled in the face of great obstacles rather we must create.

Privacy has always been a big concern for me. I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep private. I’m sitting in a café (Café Meow in Maplewood) and I just told a friend of mine that my mother was a comedian when I was growing up. I spent my childhood sitting in smoky nightclubs hearing my mom joke about me and her crotchless underpants. My friend was amazed. She had no idea.

This blog is a challenge for me, because I’m not used to sharing my life or my thoughts in such a direct way. When I posted my last entry, a picture of a sculpture in progress, I had a moment of vertigo. I think, in fact, it takes a lot of energy to hide my life from view. Right now, I’d rather spend that energy living. I also think that when your goal is to surrender into the creative flow of the Divine, you by definition must give up such rigid control of your life.

I’m working on a new series of sculptures: here’s a photo in process:

I’m planning to do a series of women in different poses and then crack them open like eggs. I will fill their insides with cobalt blue, mimicking in coarse material form, the Divine light of creativity. It’s going to be a lot of fun to work on.

The next sculpture is going to be a pregnant woman laying on her back….

If you ever wondered what artists dream about:

I dreamed I gave birth to twins but they were lost. Panicking, I searched and they were found: two sculptures of the Madonna in plaster(styled like I used to make for altars). Worried that they would die from malnutrition, I put the sculptures to my breasts and fed them with rich milk the consistency of thick plaster. Then, they were happy.

What does this dream mean? The work of artists feed the Divine presence on earth. Art is a doorway between heaven an earth. It is imperative for artists of all types (you know who you are…) to create. So, I’m off to work hoping to open that door…