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
