Follow up on Workshop: PAINTING into the SACRED FEMININE

The centerpiece for this workshop was the Zulu story of the feminine that must decipher her true instincts in the face of competition, manipulation and betrayal. She takes a journey into the underworld to be empowered my her compassion and protected from the false masculine who devours the feminine instead of balancing and protecting her.

Through the painting process we experienced, as in the story, the constant need for commitment, adjustment and surrender which arises continually in the creative process. We were introduced to the concept of makeweight from a quote by Carl Jung where he talks about what is at stake now for the modern individual and asks if he or she knows that they are the makeweight that will tip the scale,which will make the difference to avoid catastrophe. 

The makeweight concept was a jewel of the workshop for Ellen and I, the dictionary definition:

It is something put on a scale to bring the weight to a desired value, something of little independent value which is added to made something complete, or it can be something thrown in as a space  filler. All of the meanings infer an impact which pointed us to more awareness in our story of the creative process and our journey in the Sacred Feminine.

 

On Saturday evening of the workshop we invited everyone to take a extra piece of paper home to sleep on it as the makeweight for their painting, in relation to our Zulu story and their current life story. An old fashioned scales was brought in Sunday morning to enact the weighing. There were variations of interpretation of make weight as: what is missing, the shadow that I afraid to include, what will make it work or a single color or word. In some cases inspiration came from dreams and reflection, in others just the physical material imbued with intention was enough to stimulate a new dialogue. The inspiration was contagious, with little dialogue the painting spokes for themselves in a tremendous leap in energy.

This kind of painting arises from seeking personal expansion of awareness and meaning making, from a position of being. The discipline is to stay out of doing; it is not about making a product but more like a journal on a pilgrimage. And as in dream group work each persons contributions becomes a part of the journey andas their images and stories weave into our own. It reminds me of what happens when a painting is so personal and potent that I can not see it in terms of aesthetics. It is interesting to note that a few individuals independent from each other have mentioned that they feel that their appreciation of art  dramatically changed as they engage this painting process, feeling more response from the body in a way that connects and makes sense on a personal level.

All in all, it was a successful beginning to this series with Ellen O'Hanlon on the Sacred Feminine. Watch for the next weekend workshop in February. Below is a note from Ellen to participants and to all of us around the planet, male and female, who are engaged in honoring and celebrating the Sacred Feminine;

a deep breath of gratitude to each of you,

as i recall

eating from the alter of the Goddess,

 a scent of rose water, a shake of the rattle

 witnessing your stories, feeling your heart, trusting your resistance

watching you dance, seeing you paint, 

hearing you laugh, sharing your offering,

feeling your love

all bring me back to Her.

thank you,

PAINTING into the EMERGING COSMIC MYTH:

Majio The Bridge, Da'at

We are living in a time of unprecedented potential to expand our understandings of ourselves through our relationship to the Universe from which we have emerged. Unprecedented, as the frontiers of science push closer and closer to the origin of our Universe, the human race also presses to understand its own ontological experience in relation to the newly revealed universal principles and the obvious responsibility we must claim for our planet.  It is a time of great change, and opportunity, as well as uncertainty, which demands a corresponding reconsideration of our dominant myths. The new mythology must encompass a much more complex array of confirmed facts and information, and yet deliver the fundamental benefit always provided to society through core myths. It must accommodate a 13 billion-year-old Universe, 13 trillion galaxies, the role of quantum physics, a ravaging technological environment, with the meaning of human existence, love, and the human spirit.  This is the challenge before us all, and the goal of Studio Anavami is to begin to bridge the gap separating old stories from the new through the creative process. How do we propose to do that?

All of us, including the participants in the ongoing Transformational Painting Circles, feel this is a critical time for our planet. We have used the studio creative process to understand and project into the new frontier of growth our old and familiar archetypes and now long for a theme that we can really sink our teeth into, both in terms of our daily life and in terms of understanding what is going on in the world.

The old metaphor of being at a crossroads has changed from a choice of paths to fleeing the raging fire we have set at our backs. Like tribesmen rushing toward a broad and churning river, we are forced to consider an unfamiliar and threatening challenge in which we have no experience.  We must be willing to discard our old and ineffective tools, and adopt new perspectives and knowledge, in order to cross the river.  Perspectives can be changed at the individual level by confronting the new element and learning to swim, at the group level by constructing vessels, or at the level of society by constructing a bridge or device to crossover.  It is important to consider our own individual predispositions and expertise in order to make the best possible contribution to this process.  We are nearing the chrysalis stage, where neither the caterpillar nor the butterfly is recognizable.  We can see little in our history to explain or understand the function of this metamorphous. Our traditional geocentric or earth-centered coordinates can no longer guide us as citizens of the cosmos. A greater cosmological order of the Universe is being revealed in the new orientation on the other shore. 

                                          

At Anavami center we had a rich and lasting experience in the yearlong seminar with Susan Heinz on the Qabalah, which was evident in the exhibition at the Dascom Building. We celebrated the culmination of our eleven large paintings by each creating an art piece: book, shrine, installation, screen or sculpture incorporating the images that emerged from our own journeys. It was immensely satisfying in terms of experience and also the resulting art pieces. Many artists who saw the work wanted to know how the participants produced the body of work. Most of them were not academically trained in art, but each reflected an incredible vitality, individual approach and intrinsic meaningfulness.  There is a yearning present across-the-board for a greater vision, one that has synchronistically arrived both at my door step. . .and now yours.

My understanding, experience and even definition of art was radically reshaped through my apprenticeship experience in Japan where artisans embody art as spiritual practice, as a discipline that aligns with James Joyce’s idea that anything that brings you to the center of your being is art. As a visual artist I have found creative process a means of reaching those far shores which demand a fierce imagination, where common sense and intuition, if they are tied to past experience, can only narrow the vision. It requires a transformation of perspective as jarring as the Copernican revolution, displacing the Earth as the center of the Universe.  The thrust of our work is to bring all of the creative arts to bear on this transition, to promote the growth of human potential, to broaden human vision, and to spark insight, passion, and intuition. 

I worked with Pamela Eakins in the Fool’s Journey, prior to my experience with Susan Heinz, and met Brian Swimme in my graduate studies at Naropa campus in Oakland. When I later sat together with the two of them as they talked about working together, I was thrilled to the core to understand how their ideas dovetailed with those of Joseph Campbell to re-myth the world. Brian Swimme has produced DVDs and books on Journey of the Universe and Powers of the Universe and Pamela Eakins’ will soon be publishing The Lightning Papers.   

In the meantime, Rev. Pamela Wylie, Cosmological Mythologist, has created her own work that focuses on the heart of the evolutionary intelligence of the universe, the relationship between the evolving cosmological sciences of our times, and the wisdom of ancient spiritual traditions. Pamela’s work is based on her collaboration and studies with Visionary Cosmologist Pamela Eakins Ph.D.  Pamela Wylie will be offering two yearlong groups in Santa Cruz in 2012. One in Painting Seminar Format is a talk each month by Pamela, and in conjunction with Anavami Center, the ideas will be explored with small groups through paintings -- please come to the first talk on January 3^rd RSVP for directions. The second one, The Emerging Cosmic Myth of Our Time is more of an in-depth study of the Ten Cosmic Spheres of Time and how they connect to the Ancient Mystery School’s text and inform our daily lives.  Invitational speakers will participate once the foundational principles are established. Talk and Art Participation Series will take place at Art Space Tannery in Santa Cruz.  Ellen O’Hanlon and I will support this experience with an experiential theater component beginning in early spring with informal events from January.                                                        

                                                                            Director of Anavami Center      Majio

                                                     

Majio Far Shore

 Rev Pamela Wylie, Cosmological Mythologist, began her journey into the symbolic languages and mysteries of Universe under the direction of sociologist and visionary cosmologist Pamela Eakins Ph. D. at the Pacific Center western mystery school in 1994. Pamela holds the degree of Qabalah Master with a focus on the unfolding cosmology expressed in this ancient tradition. She is completing her degree in Visionary Cosmology and will be the first graduate as well as a contributor to the Pamela Eakins Pacific Center for Visionary Cosmology.

Ellen O’Hanlon, is an artist and has a 16 year private practice as a holistic health practitioner, transpersonal hypnotherapist, with a background in modern dance at both Hunter College and Cooper Union in New York City.

Resources for this work:

Pamela Eakins https://lightningspiral.com/10Powers.html

Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams http://viewfromthecenteroftheuniverse

Brian Swimme http://www.brianswimme.org/

Bernard Haisch http://www.iamplify.com/enlightennext/product_details/EnlightenNext/Bernard-Haisch---Mysteries-of-the-Universe-Dark-Matter-and-Dark-Energy/product_id/6003

DEVELOPING ATTENTION TO THE EROS OF DAILY LIFE

From Plato’s ordered system of ideal forms, Eros corresponds to the subject's yearning for ideal beauty, as well as the harmonious unification not only between bodies, but between knowledge and pleasure.

Hierophant

So how’s your EROTIC LIFE? Notice what comes to mind. I am speaking about EROS here, not about classy porn. We are a Puritan culture, including the shadow that comes with it. I am addressing the passionate, mysterious, connecting, often transcendent, deeply human….yes arousing experiences of daily life, which involve the senses; those experiences which take you out of your head, into your body.  

I want to share my investigation of EROS with some stories that name and define a relationship to Eros which many us habitually ignore. Two things began this inquiry: the first one is the theme of Sacred Body which we are exploring in the Painting Circles and the other is the book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. In the book, Michael Gelb delineates Seven Davincian Principles, which support and nurture what I am calling the EROS of LIFE. They are: demonstrazione---experimentation without fear of failure, curiosita---curiosity, sfumato, Italian for smoke---the enigmatic mysterious quality of life, arte/scienze or whole brain thinking, coporalita---embodiment, connessione---inner knowing, and sensazione. Sensazione, or sensuality in the English dictionary gives the first four definitions as negative: licentious and lustful, while the last one is of the senses.

Hermit

Living in Paris in my twenties, was a training ground for arousing the harmonious union of not only the body senses, but the knowledge through pleasure. It probably helped to be conversing in sensuous language of French, the common language of the foreign art students that I spent my time with. Sitting in outdoor cafés, the smell of bread, a strain of music, taste of espresso or wine brought the body alive. We spent most of the day reflecting and responding to the stimulating foot traffic: an interesting outfit, a captivating walk, bits of a conversation between a child and parent, a look between lovers, a pair of shoes. Everything we witnessed was registered in the body and was fair game for a new investigation. Many of you may have lived something similar in your youth, but you do not need to me in Paris or Athens. Now, how do you cultivate the erotic part of life in a culture that dampens down our arousal unless it can be captured in the commercial market place?

An intensity of focus with an availability of response is required for the experience, as well as an element of peril, even if it is existential. The danger element can be as subtle as the possibility or walking off with a stranger.

This brings to mind an experience that I had sitting in my garden watching a bee which landed on me. Instead of shooing it away, I followed it as it explored my foot, slowing me down time and increasing my tactile sensitivity. The bee began to investigate the space between my toes by backing into the each space one after the other. Some were roomy and others a tighter fit. It was an indescribable experience, almost some kind of interspecies exchange. For the duration of that experience I developed an acute awareness of the senses, through my curiosity, and vulnerability.

Do you remember, an experience in the last few weeks in which you were engaged, connected and transported in a way that took your breath away? When I asked my mother, who is an artist and writer, and also eighty-eighty years old she responded with this story: 

Creating the Red Ladder

Just this last week I saw a very realistic painting of a tiger that brought back an experience which I will never forget. In the original experience I was in a zoo and somehow caught the eye of a Bengal Tiger. Our eyes locked and his gaze went right through me like electricity,  my stomach up into my mouths. It brought back t have had that experience to some extent with other animals. It was like he created the pathway for the other experiencess. It was filled with mystery, otherness but blatant sameness, tenderness and at the same time threatening. This relates to deep inner connection, sensuality and openness of curiosity.

When I shared this story in a painting circle, a young woman responded with a story not so unusual, but I had never thought of it in this context. She and her siblings were present at her dying mother’s bedside. Everyone was tense and exhausted, her mother did not want to go. And when she died the woman experienced an incredible joy. She said that she herself was suddenly filled with light and it was as if all the weight had been lifted from her. No one else in the room felt it, but for her is was somehow confirming and uplifting to the degree that it changed her. It transcended her social conditioning of death as separation, lost and grief. This experience too represents many of the Davincian principles, but in particular  sfumato, enigmatic or mystery of life with the willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty that I would call transcendent.

                                                                 

This last story is an example of the Plato system of union of knowledge and pleasure.  I had recently arrived in Japan, speaking little Japanese language and because little English was spoken in this pottery village of Shigaraki, I had no idea what was going on and what was expected of me as I sat in a small thatched roof building which served as a teahouse. While the sons of the potter were having a tea ceremony lesson, the hum of the cicadas and distant temple bells made it feel like I was in a samurai movie, complete with shafts of light coming through the high woven bamboo window onto the tatami mats. The tea instructor folded the traditional red silk cloth in her hands to wipe the tea implements. Sitting there mesmerized I was transported to a deeply peaceful state of well-being, followed by a state of ecstasy stimulated by sips of powered green tea. The interesting thing was that I made a connection that the many Catholic masses which I sat through as a child were designed as ritual transformation, although it was not my experience.  Later I found out that the tea ceremony had some abstruse connections to Christianity. The principle that comes up here for me is in Italian, Corporalita, which I translate as embodiment, as well as, Connessione, inner connectedness, or system thinking.

So I invite you to consider this well-spring of life that feeds your creativity, empathy, connection and passion with nature, others and even things, Try paying more attention to what I am calling the eros of life, because there is a transport through arousal which returns you to yourself.  I am continuing to hear extraordinary stories of daily experiences which brings new insights and connections to life in a body. You are welcome to share your stories; majio@anavami.com ,

December 2011 Workshop on Sacred Feminine

PAINTING into the

          SACRED BODY

                                   with Ellen O'Hanlon and Majio

2-1/2 day - Intuitive Painting & Process Workshop

Large Format Acrylic Painting, no experience necessary

Painting by Ellen O'Hanlon

December 2nd-4th          

Fri.6-9pm, Sat.10-5, Sun.10–3:30

@ Westside studio—Santa Cruz      

Sliding Scale $225—$325, Included $50 

materials & Digital photos fee   

 In this Workshop you will: 

• Invite in the Sacred embodiment of your inner feminine.

• Open to creativity as you paint from the psyche.

• Immerse yourself in the feminine spiritual experience.

• Be initiated into your body in a ever deeper way.

Using Ritual, Story, Sacred Witness, Sound & Movement we will

paint into discovery, surrender, compassion, and offering, as we

Honor our Feminine Essence.

Information or to Register:

transformationalpainting.blogspot

www.anavamicenter.com    (831) 425-3103

Ellen O’Hanlon has 16 year private practice as a holistic health practitioner, Transpersonal Hypnotherapist, with a back ground in modern dance at both Hunter College and Cooper Union in New York City.

Majio is a mixed media artist with 15 years experience in intuitive painting workshops, a certified Transpersonal Hypnotherapist, with a Masters Degree in Creation Spirituality from Naropa University.

 

There is only one temple in the world

And that is the human body.

Nothing is more sacred than that form.

                                                                  -Novalis

OPEN STUDIO 2011 at Mission St. Industrial Studios,

 

Majio 2581 Mission Str. off Swift, October 1,2,15 & 16, 11-5:00

Contemplating archetypes of place and home in TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING Circles over the last few months, in addition to the new studio space, has changed my relationship to OPEN STUDIO this year. A different approach to the story of the artwork is required. Beside the rapture, enchantment and seduction of art, for all of us, it is the story. On the eve of stupendous changes in the collective, it is good to go out and look to the art, music, poetry and theater to help articulate and clarify our personal stories.

Let’s backtrack a moment, for place has a powerful impact on everything. There was a dramatic shift was from my upstairs garden studio in April with loquat trees, sounds of backyard pre-school and view of the rising and setting sun and moon to being wedged between three carpenters and a blacksmith on Mission Street. It also is been different from offering OPEN STUDIO at my home in the Tannery with spacious hall space.

It was quite an adjustment for those in Painting Circle too, to go from song birds and children’s voices to power tools. We at last settled in when Free Cycle supplied the carpeting to enable us to sit and work on the floor again. I love the crafts person and artist community here and the 30 foot ceiling. Most of us have begun to incorporate the sounds of the industry of construction into our routine. In fact in these tenuous times I am grateful that on some front life it is moving along with normalcy. Things are being remodeled, designed and made to function in the physical world. Surprisingly often, in the short time space in which groups paint in the studio it is blissfully quiet.

Lila Klapman’s sculpture and new paintings fill the front studio, initiating everyone who passes through on their way back into our painting space. Her exquisite bronze figures capture the human body in time, while her new pieces are rougher and more shamanic, demand more participation from the viewer. Upstairs there is an additional loft area with a peak of the ocean for an encaustic work space.

It has been interesting to pick out the common thread of the paintings that want to be shown in this year’s OPEN STUDIO. There are the constant archetypal figures and animals: raven, red nine-striped armadillo (common in all of your dreams, right?) snakes and red fox-coyote-wolf figure. Some of the paintings are spanking new, others are older and some are on the until-now-too-personal-to-show list. In dream work we say that dreams have a long shelf life, meaning they stay pertinent for decades. In this kind of painting, it is also true. I have beat a couple of paintings back into storage several times only to find them smiling at me from the walls. It seems the subtitle of ANAVAMI STUDIO in this year’s OPEN STUDIO is TRANSFORMATION, whether you want it or not. Participating paintings:                              

                             

                                                                        

The Hierophant, represents the inner guide, student/teacher, who accesses information for herself. Her totem, the swan, is an ancient symbol which bridges new realms and new powers. Swan totem carries energy of the child: mystic and dreamer, who uses beauty medicine as power

Raven with Doors: Raven, the trickster, harbinger of messages from other realms represents the experience of a change in consciousness, the mythic personification of synchronicity. She is the instinct within all of us to consolidate an axis between ego and Self. To do this requires some deflating of ego. The trickster is the archetype of where consumption of the ego, union of opposites and transformation of meaninglessness into meaningfulness can occur.

 

King and Queen as Partners: how is it that partnership is so unusual for this couple, could it be that they are a part of a greater domination model. Here they are in cahoots, in a secret alliance governed by electric inspiration of the heavens and perhaps the impetus to start a royal family.

                                                       Majio
                         

Creative Process: ARCHETYPES & SHAMANISM

STORE FRONT SHOW on  533 SEABRIGHT Ave. in SANTA CRUZ

Creative Process & SHAMANISM

Shaman, acrylic on canvas

The SHAMANIC impulse is experienced in our daily life, from praying, investing objects and places with power to many other kinds of creative activity which interact with the unseen world. The visual arts can offer connection to the essential parts of ourselves that want wholeness, integration and meaning beyond cultural norms and beliefs. We use storytelling and image-making to obtain guidance, information, and to update or re-negotiate our belief system. Just as animal figures in children’s stories and fairytales offer dialogue with the instinctual, TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING brings to consciousness the edge of awareness to challenge our growth.

 

These SHAMANISTIC paintings come from a world that is more real than everyday life because it reveals truth and creates meaning and understanding beyond the limits of the rational. Participating with the SHAMANIC archetype in the collective unconscious allows us to re-contextualize problems, trauma, and possibly societal madness. It deepens healing to remember that individual experiences of trauma simultaneously reflect the greater challenge resonating throughout the collective field. This kind of realization allows one to move beyond the moment of crisis by experiencing it in a greater context.

ARCHETYPE

All great myths and stories are about the ARCHETYPES and how they function. We experience ARCHETYPES in movies and novels. We experience them also in our own lives in conflicts, love and religious experiences, in fact, in all the experiences of our lives.

At the base of all existence are energy clusters of ARCHETYPES of innate character, energy and function arranged around Self... the central ARCHETYPE. Surrounding the Self in pairs of opposites are the other primary or basic archetypes of the Feminine, the Masculine, the Adversary, the Heroic, Death-Rebirth and the Journey.

An ARCHETYPE is an innate pattern within the psyche and within all life. We see the ARCHETYPES play themselves out, mostly automatically in our lives. 
In wars and conflicts there is an enemy and a victor. Male and female embody opposites to each other. People go through a developmental journey process all their lives yet also fall into crises, death-rebirths, and new directions. And at times of real clarity and growth we choose to integrate and transform our lives, as is the nature of the Self.

                 Strephon Kaplan Williams Jungian-Senoi Dreamwork Manual

From Warrior to Magician

Magician, acrylic on canvas

In this painting, the MAGICIAN is reaching out for the tools of the trade, as the sword hangs suspended in air. The archetype of the Hero as Warrior is being spontaneous updated here and in the collective. Throughout history, medicine men, wizards, shaman, witch doctors, brujos, scientists, doctors, and inventors, have been connected to the archetypal pattern of the Magician.

Popular Culture is often on the edge of conscious change. The tradition of the mythical Warrior’s heroic journey is being challenged, as well as the paradigm which holds it in place. 

Whereas the Warrior uses physical strength and power-over, the MAGICIAN understands the mysteries of nature accessed by inner truth. You may have noticed how wizards, witches, inventors, scientists and shamans are appearing everywhere, in movies, video games and literature, with the stance of the Hero.

Unlike the Warrior, who struggles to overcome great challenges, the MAGICIAN believes in infinite potential and possibility. Rather than struggling against the current, she flows with it.

Fool of the West

Almost all cultures and traditions have a FOOL as jester, sacred clown, truth-teller, blundering innocent or trickster. The FOOL is seen as key to community’s survival both physically and spiritually. All indigenous tribes utilize the FOOL archetype to bring balance and perspective. The Greeks, Romans, Chinese cultures and royal courts in Europe utilized the FOOL’S participation to insert doubt, misgivings and possible challenge into what was considered off limits.

The FOOL is often an orphan, this one reminds me of the old red-haired cartoon character, Little Orphan Annie and her dog Sandy. Perhaps she expresses a FOOL who is asking for an update. In the comic strip her savior is Daddy Warbucks, the idealized capitalist who made his money in munitions. Annie as FOOL wanders vagabond-like through a corrupt world, fearless, generous, compassionate and optimistic.

The FOOL archetype in this painting is dressed as spirit of the West. If she is heading off a cliff, as the traditional Tarot FOOL is, it is into the Pacific Ocean, edge of the Western world. She reflects the health of the FOOL archetype as an American; innocent, lofty, yet often inflated. A Californian Fool, her hat symbolizes how her thinking takes precedent over the order the celestial bodies. Her cowering dog a figure of loyalty and instinct is imprinted with a squalid tenement building, as much of our resources are tied up in poverty. He is not the robust companion that we need. She carries a dowsing rod rather than the staff which infers connection to the unseen order and so aligns herself with the Magician. 

EMPRESS: Doorway Through Masculine Rule to Balanced Partnership  

  

EMPRESS/Queen is the archetype of the feminine in a position of power. In this painting she is the entrance into the liminal, the space in-between which we enter as we leave old ways of being behind which do not serve the collective, and yet have not found the new. 

There comes a time, when the one who has been in charge, the Emperor/King archetype must step aside to let a new force lead. The problems that have been created cannot be solved only with masculine energy only, but require feminine principles for a balanced perspective. 

The positive of the feminine in power is generative, creative and caring for community with sustainability. The EMPRESS is archetypally Earth Mother, the Anima, the Feminine Principle, Demeter, Kuan Yin and the Goddess of Fertility. She is ruled by Venus, the planet of love, creativity, fertility, art, harmony, beauty and grace. She reminds us that there is always enough, if we address the systems and policies of distribution.

TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING

I had no idea where these paintings might go even though each began with a theme; an approach which artists have used throughout time. The emphasis of TRANSFORMATION PAINTING is on the journey, not the destination, on the process rather than the product, because it is an engagement with the psyche, which brings forth information and personal realizations. TRANSFORMATION PAINTING has the potential for those involved in the creation or viewing to be transform.

This process feeds all creative activity, no experience in the arts is necessary. It is supportive to work in PAINTING CIRCLES, which are small and take place in a safe environment to build confidence and trust in one’s authentic self. Since it is not about the product, there is little technical instruction, allowing for a playful, meditative and experimental approach to create the journey that is needed at the time.

This kind of painting taps into the ARCHETYPAL REALMS and is fundamentally SHAMANISTIC, as is dream work. In neither case is there traditional reference or training involved because SHAMAN is used in the archetypal.

                                                                                       

The Arts as Education of the Archetypal Realms

Lover at the Edge, oil paint & mixed media on canvas  Majio 

In July and August the Painting Circles have been investigating the archetype of place through painting. It has been an interesting endeavor to view our everyday surroundings in an archetypal context.  We have experienced how physical place overlaps with emotional, historical and mythological place, similar to nighttime dreams when a character is father, boyfriend and serial killer, all at the same time.

In the realm of the psyche, unconscious archetypal aspects of place merge to shape the container

of the rich and complex world we create in our lives. In the Painting Circles we use process painting to make conscious dominant archetypal pattern in our personal mythology. All of the arts, however, lead us into a deeper experience of our interior world. This stretching of our personal connection to archetype as soul tending, has called to our attention the works of Thomas Moore.

Thomas Moore in The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, talks about how care of the soul requires education in the archetypal realms. He says that we learn from art what earth-centered cultures have traditional acquired through “ritual, story, sacrament, sacrifice, icon, temple, sculpture, and 

dance.” Probably, like you, I have had to invent ritual with sacrifice in the desire for sacraments, not available in my community. The arts nurture, guide, support and inform us of the mysteries of life, allowing us to enlarge our immediate cultural context; revealing to us our soul life.

Moore compares psychology to allopathic medicines, which numb our pain instead of intensifying the exploration of mythic process. The arts provide a viewpoint fundamentally different from the one that shapes most modern psychology; as through the artistic imagination we are liberated more by entering into our experiences than by being led out of them.  It can be deeply moving or sometimes profoundly disturbing. Unlike modern allopathic therapies, which tend to numb us to the pain of our predicaments, the arts sharpen the emotions and intensify the crisis of meaning; for me the arts have always been an engagement of the psyche, it was new to think of them as an education.

I feel that recently I have witnessed an inordinate amount of calamity in my P: a close friend is recovering from emergency cancer surgery, another’s kitchen floor has been torn up because of structural water damage, a painter was notified that the inheritance she planned for retirement does not exist and my mother in her mid-eighties fell and broke her hip.

UCSC Organic Farm

I contemplated my mother’s fall as an ax stroke through her life, not only for her every day routine, but a cut to the quick of her being. In her term of rehabilitation for her hip replacement she felt humiliated, ignored and diminished. For someone who with abundant humor and trust in her connection to other human beings, she was shaken to the core. I began to frame these catastrophes as a severance of well-being, like a visceral ax swing From the many years splitting huge quantities of wood for a wood burning kiln, I can easily recall that ax swing in my body. I felt it every time I heard a siren, projecting that someone’s life was coming apart. Intellectually I knew there was a more expansive way of viewing this but it felt like a wrenching betrayal, a severing of wholeness and well-being each time. I yearned for an experiential example of the instinctual or soul education of which Moore speaks.

An example did come to me and through a poem that I had read many times before. But this time I heard it in a new way. In Billy Collins’ poem, Splitting Wood, in the last few stanzas he uses the metaphor of the two halves of a split log wobbling in place like two naked lovers exposed to the light. I had that experience recently also; the shock of being pulled from deep intimacy into separation. What also comes to mind is my daughter’s birth, both were a severance, but they sponsored something grander, just as splitting of the wood to fire the kiln transforms the fragile clay into durable ceramics. It was an experience that went directly to my psyche. It did not go through my brain until later when I looked at the current tragedies and could see them as part of a greater cycle of life.

It was graphic how art, in this case poetry, takes the understanding of the mysteries of life through the archetypal realm of the psyche inviting a deeper grasp of birth in death. Through exposure to the archetypes that shape our lives and seize our emotions, the arts contribute powerfully to the enchantment of everyday life. We live in a culture dominated by logical and quantitative analysis, one that has forgotten the many alternative means of dealing with experience---ritual, storytelling, community participation in grieving and celebrating artistry in everyday tasks, and personal poetry of life. The arts speak to our instinctual imagination, in a sense to our primitive natures, and so attend the archetypal dimension of our thoughts and emotions.  Majio                                                      

                                                                                         

Last stanzas of Billy Collin’s Poem,      Splitting Wood I want to say there is nothing like the sudden opening of wood, but it is like so many other things— the stroke of the ax like lightning, the bisection so perfect the halves fall away from each other as in a mirror and hit the soft ground like twins shot through the heart. And rarely, if the wood accepts the blade without conditions, the two pieces keep their balance

in spite of the blow, remain stunned on the block as if they cannot believe their division, their sudden separateness. Still upright, still together, they wobble slightly as two lovers, once as two lovers, once secretly bound, might stand revealed, more naked than ever, the darkness inside the tree they shared now instantly exposed to the blunt light of this clear November day, all the inner twisting of the grain that held them blindly in their augmentation and contortion now rushed into this brightness as if by a shutter that, once opened, can never be closed.

Musings on Relationship to Place

Even though place is fundamental to everything in our daily life, our collective and personal mythologies around place are often unconscious. First step is to get in touch with our values is to notice our decisions. A former UCSC student told me the price to ‘stay on’ in Santa Cruz after graduation was in the arena self-image. For her, it meant buying clothes from the Thrift Store instead of Banana Republic. “Keep Santa Cruz Weird,” as a motto gives a certain kind of permission.

How do you define place? Is it connected to experience in the past or a vision of the future? Is it rated on usefulness at the time? Is it geological, historical or emotionally tied to stories of personal mythology? What is the charge of the place you are living in now? How does it reflect your inner life? Is this place a stop-over or is it the container for a life? Does it challenge your daily values?

Traditional Japanese wisdom says that you don’t choose place, it chooses you. Many people that I have talked to in Taos, New Mexico would agree, as they each have a story of how they were chosen.  What does it mean to be chosen by place? Is there something specific that you need to do in that place? When place is done with d you do you have to move on? Can one be between places or in no place? What is the difference between place, land and landscape for you?

Lucy Lippard, art critic, curator and author, distinguishes between the intimacy of a lived-in landscape, which becomes place, and landscape seen from a single static point of view. She calls the latter a set of surfaces, a backdrop in the viewing. This is interesting in that the genre of landscape painting fits this definition quite literally. So often landscape paintings feels like a scene devoid of content, intimacy, without a component of heart or time. Although landscape, still life and nude models are used as an exercise in learning about space, color and technique of the materials, it has often served underlying themes of ownership and/or objectification.

Not only does this view of place call into question our fundamental relationship to nature, but also our relationship to our selves and each other. Art history demonstrates social trends of attitudes toward women through representation of the female figure, as it at the same time depicts the desire to conquer or romanticize the earth. Indigenous cultures, traditionally integrated with nature, create their mythology from the land. Group cohesion, coherence and sustainability are directly connected to their relationship to the land. Our depiction of the land often demonstrates alienation, expressing materialistic and sentimental values.

Karl Marx in Kapital, talks about labor being the mediator between nature and culture, “countryside” forms a barrier between “civilization” and “wilderness.” Mircea Eliade maintains that the “sacred” is an element in the structure of consciousness, not a stage in the history of consciousness.” The archetypal forms and patterns of the human psyche then are mirrored in the world of nature and how we perceive it. For me that resonance is the sacred organizing principle of life.

The idea of that where humans meet nature is a buffer zone, suggests that landscape is where what we control meets what we want to control, which underscores the ‘not belongingness’ that we have created. The liminal is that space in-between, a place of transition and transformation. It can be confused with the marginal, which is the projections and shadows that we don’t own, but see in others. Examples of the marginalized are criminals, homeless, insane, handicapped, aged or anyone viewed as not-me. The liminal is the edge that is evolving, sometimes over laps with the marginal.

How does this relate to your relationship to place? Most of the places we interact with daily have been designed for the expediency and profit of business. Perhaps that is why the current interest in feng shui,the Chinese brand of geomancy. We are desperate to be actively involved with where we live, if not in the design of place, then the energetics. This may also explain widespread interest to indigenous ritual, healing and world view's which find personal meaning in nature.

Visual artist, musicians and performers are exploring relationship to nature, place, and each other in more innovative and creative ways with interdisciplinary and multimedia which invite participation. Those in the arts have been interested for a long time in the question of relationship to place? People in general are looking for new perspectives on daily life which includes a healthy function of the cultural arts. Touring Europe as an extension of Disneyland is no longer satisfying.  People want a different relationship to things and places which demands new ways of perceiving the world.

How we perceive ourselves in our place of being has tremendous room for creativity. Just as each of us is being called to become aware of the myths that sponsor our lives, we are also being called to create, as artist, our relationship to the world we live in. Begin with your awareness as to what place means to you and how it expresses your values.

Suzie Gablik writes, “a central aspect of new paradigm thinking involves a significant shift from objects to relationships… the emerging new paradigm reflects a will to participate socially… There is the aesthetic perspective orienting us to the making of objects, the ecological perspective connects art to its integrative role in the larger whole and the web of relationships in which art exists. A new emphasis falls on community and the environment rather than on individual achievement and accomplishment…”

Most of the neuroses and the vacuum of meaning from which we suffer result from an isolation of the ego-mind from the archetypal unconscious according to Carl Jung. Art as meaning making is a collective involvement in a cultural activity which nurtures, sustains and renews a society, involving everyone. Our immediate challenge is to reveal the sacredness within our everyday lives, to maintain connection to and care of soul.               Majio