PAINTING into AWARENESS through EMBODIMENT, PARADOX & EXPERIMENTATION, New Mexico Summer 2010

 Notes From Workshop

This particular workshop is designed to encourage us to experience new frontiers in our personal creative arena, as a journey, not making a product. You are released in this moment of the expectation that you will produce something to carry home with you. It is about developing skills and perceptions that are sometimes hard to realize in the world that exists around our process. We enter into this safe and supportive collective as an opportunity to release the dominate voice that runs how we approach process. Like myself I bet you often don’t realize how deep a rut is until you climb out.

In my training at the Marin Institute for Projective Dreamwork, Jeremy Taylor spoke about an archetypal dynamic that we all have the opportunity to face numerous times in our lives. He uses the metaphor of life as finding our way through the forest. There always comes the time when the Captain who has been leading the expedition successfully up until now must step to the back of the line because she is leading us around in circles and everyone knows it. If the Captain archetype has been intuitive then she needs to hand the helm to the rational navigator and visa verso. It is often the least valued part of us who must now lead. This could be the ratty flea bitten stray dog that trails behind, even though the Captain kicks him and harangues the cook for giving him scraps. Like in nighttime dreams all those in the expedition are parts of our self.

Often the new part that must step forward is a part of our self that we don’t recognize. This part will show up in our dreams as the shadow: teenage hoodlums, terrorist or unconscious blond. They also appear in our charged reaction to others we name inconsiderate, irresponsible, arrogant, goody-two-shoes or free spirits. These are all parts that we have disowned in our selves. So there comes a time when the lowly of lows is the only guide that works to find our way out of the woods. Often at the Y in the road, it doesn’t matter which fork we take. But there is a time when one choice takes us to the high path while the other leads us back to the same choice in the midst of a different content.

 
The one-capable-of-leading the expedition ‘out of the woods’ is our fully embodied instinctive intelligence. This part is connected to making changes through the vertical rather than making ‘good-time’ in the horizontal that goes nowhere. She works out of the box and may not step forward unless severely pressed. An example is in the book, Mutant Message Down Under, when Marlo Morgan, on a walk-about with Aborigines, is informed that it is her turn to guide the group to the next water source. She has no experience in this and knows they are set to follow her wherever she leads. Their life is in her hands. Somehow eventually she does find the water. To lead takes awareness of all the senses, physical and beyond. And it takes ability to hold an expansive whole systems mind beyond ambiguity, dichotomy, and paradox. It takes developed confusion endurance. In this workshop to support our guides to find higher ground we will experiment with and cultivate various modes of being in relation to our painting process. 

The studio move is complete! New Studio is Up

In the wildness I forgot to publish this.

New studio first Painting Circle

Anavami Center has moved from Chanticleer Ave. to 2581 Mission St. Extension. Good bye to that sweet dream studio: upstairs, carpeted, windows viewing the rising and setting sun, moon, planets, stars and local fireworks with garden below.

Boxed up to move.

It is time to move from the last traces of rural Santa Cruz to industrial lands of Westside Santa Cruz to create a new dream amongst the constant sound of carpenters to the sides and iron worker across the way with their various choices of music. Yet it is a creative hive of artists whom I admired and have been following for years. It was a blessing brought to me by Lila Klapman. We are sharing the space and if you do not know her work you might want to come by for a look at her her bronze sculptures and new paintings.

With carpeting

Through Felicite, Santa Cruz Free Cycle and Laura's help with truck we have managed to get the studio carpeted so that we can work on the floor and even roll around it we like. Cozy in exactly the right description with 30' ceilings, but it changes the the acoustics and makes it warmer.

In May there will be a show at R.Blitzer Gallery, featuring artist from the Westside of Santa Cruz organized by Lila Klapman and Barbara Downs.

Last Saturday in March there will be a free preview of the Painting Circle Process. Contact anavami@cruzio.com to register.

Part III Looking towards a New Paradigm in Art Participation

Hierophant

The well known quote attributed to Einstein, “you can not solve a problem on the level it is created,” is another way of saying that two seemingly incompatible options, through a transcendent principal, can be elevated to a complementary relationship. For our consciousness to grasp that we were not living on a flat plane but on the surface of a sphere, was to access a huge perspective change, akin to transcendent principal. Concepts in quantum physics today are altering our basic constructs of knowing, in comparable ways. 

There are opportunities in our lives daily which challenge us to expand conventional practices; understandings and visions beyond what our parents, friends and even society is rooted in. Ecological concerns alone have insisted on an understanding of systems that force our egocentric practices into a greater context of responsibility which most people refused to acknowledge. In this transitional time, how many people do you know who have been forced to step out of the standard medical model, to engage in the process of participating in deep personal healing? Encounters with different cultures, extreme challenges in and of nature and experience in other states of consciousness are reflected personally and through popular media, as preparation for the ‘raising of the ceiling’ of old beliefs.

It does not matter how imaginative you are, projecting a new perspective with all its encompassing implications is grounded in our experience of what we know. Science fiction writers exaggerate aspects of what is familiar to create unearthly places and life forms. There are facets of the new paradigm which many of us have been participating in for years, and yet the whole model is not yet conscious. My vision of the new cultural arts paradigm finds scaffolding in three components: first is a major leap in value which honors the cultural arts, offering participation for everyone, second, introducing a universal archetype to serve as guide for the unification of the third aspect, which is a structure of consciousness traditionally perceived in separate parts.

The value of cultural as an expression of society requires authentic connection and reflection of society with dialogue of standards, rather than being controlled by the experts. It would require early participation and education which would probably change the structure of the entertainment industry. Joseph Campbell spoke of the Hero archetype, no longer belonging to a few adventurers, but one we all need to explore individually; the same is true for the Shaman, an archetype which has collective significance in our psyche at this time. We are each invited to experience facets of the shaman-guide, seer, healer, holder of experiences outside of everyday life and artist, as an integrating archetype seeking the next edge of being.

Shaman is a Russian word describing a person among Siberian tribes who is a seer, healer, and medicine person. The word comes from the ancient Sanskrit, sramana, meaning one who goes beyond in order to know. This beyond conveys a universal schema of worlds which not only belongs to indigenous cultures, but in some form to most spiritual models, and to our psychological framework. I have experienced these worlds in several ways; as artist, nighttime dreamer, living in a Buddhist country and leading trance journeys into the subconscious. This archetype and the understanding of the psyche are central to art which serves the collective.


The three realms of consciousness which roughly correspond to spirit, ego and soul, are referred to as the upper, middle and lower worlds. In the new paradigm, personal archetypal guides like the Shaman/Artist lead us personally and collectively between these worlds. I suspect that they will overlap more and more as our awareness expands and the model of duality gives way to a new consciousness of wholeness.  Bill Plotkin, in Nature and the Human Soul, Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, succinctly describes them in relation to human developmental stages:
                                                                                        .

Upperworld denotes transpersonal states of consciousness identified with spirit and characterized by unity, grace, bliss, transcendence, emptiness, light, enlightenment, the celestial realms, and pure awareness. This is where we disidentify from all personal and cultural beliefs, goals, desires, and attachments. The conscious self is transcended.

Middleworld is the realm of ego growth, which includes the healing of emotional wounds, the development of personal bonds, the cultivation of physical grace and emotional expression, and the blossoming of empathy, intimacy, and personality level authenticity. A healthy ego is skilled in imagination, feeling, intuition, and sensing, in addition to thinking.

Underworld deepens individuality through the discovery of our ultimate place in the world…through individual discipline such as trance dancing and drumming, council work, storytelling, symbolic artwork, soul-oriented poetry, and shadow work….It is associated with soul characterized by darkness, demons, the daemon, the subconscious, sacred woundings, dreams, the unknown or not-yet-known, shadow, death, and visions of personal and cultural destiny.

The shared purpose of transcending the conscious self (the upperworld), differentiating the conscious self (middleworld) , and deepening the conscious self (underworld) is personal development or maturation, which fosters cultural vitality and evolution which in turn promotes ecological and planetary vitality and evolution.

Our society has fostered an egocentric model of the middleworld which ignores or does not integrate the other two. The archetype of the traditional guides of these realms throughout history has been the shaman as priest/priestess, healer, seer and artist. But access to the upperworld and underworld is not specialized like it once was, it is the providence of us all. In these times with or without guidance most of us are activating our inner archetype shaman-like-guide in order to find our way to vitality, purpose and maturity in our lives.

The shaman as artist can be seen throughout art history. Many well known artists are given much deeper understanding in the light of the archetypal Shaman. Visual artists include: Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Klee, Munch, O’Keeffe, Kahlo, Chagall, Picasso, writers; Nietzsche, Herman Hesse, Fedrico Garcia Lorca, Rainer Maria Rilke, musicians; Egberto Gismonti, John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, Jimi Hendrix, and performers; Sha Sha Higby and Joseph Beuys. There are many more, dancers, movie directors, entertainers, leaders and popular-culture icons who are shaman/artist guides for the collective.

Traditionally the shaman goes into different levels of being in order to balance, heal and understand a greater perspective of the middleworld. Painting, as creative process, is a vehicle to this end, as well as, a tool for reflection and personal record, to expand individual and collective boundaries of the middle world. It is a way to dream the world into being, equal to creation mythology, which has held cultures together throughout time.  Anne Wilson Schaef in, When Society Becomes an Addict, talks about the peril of the middleworld being so isolated from the other two worlds that instead of using everyday life for maturation of ego, society creates a world of adolescent adults.

The art-making process in our painting circles is in the stream of art history, but is not defined by it. To think of it as separate from monetary value, and not reliant on outside judgment, gives us freedom and a place to be authentic. This does not mean that it is disconnected from the viewer, in fact, relationship to and participation with the viewer is important, because the dialogue that is established with the viewer is crucial to our health and vitality for ourselves and our world.

Part II: Looking towards a New Paradigm in Art Participation

Hermit

Through culture we express our basic need to represent our experiences and perceptions of life, using any means available.  All of the arts, although I am especially interested in the visual and plastic arts, reflect people’s values, edge of growth, collective struggles and vision. Participating in culture with creativity and imagination is our personal and communal contribution to and reflection of our society. A symptom that the art world does not belong to society is when the balance of gender and full spectrum of diversity is not reflected.

The stunning quilts of the Afro-American women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, after generations of working in isolation, were acknowledge as art by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in a show in 2006. Small groups of neighborhood women after the work day ended would sing and sew late into the evening, inviting and encouraging younger members to each find their unique expression in fabric. These large colorful abstract designs told a story of innovation through used clothes. There have been others; graffiti artists, self taught artists and those from various institutions who have been accepted by the art world, stimulating the discussion about the definition of art, which has remained controlled by the curators, collectors and art critics.

There is a critical distinction between the art of the established art world and art of personal and collective involvement with meaning-making, around the activities of generating and participating in art as culture. Those of you who have created from your life experience or appreciate others with creative interaction are aware of the general social attitude, that art is self indulgent unless you are a super star. The same authority which decides quilts can be art, also determines the value in the market place. Children in elementary school experiencing bamboo brush calligraphy query me, “If it is good, does that mean I can sell it ?” We all want to experience more meaningful and creative expression in life, not by getting into the MOMA, but by opening a dialogue about a vision of involvement and relationship to our diverse and shared experience through acts of creativity and imagination.

There has been, however, in post modern art a widening gulf between viewer and viewed which leaves out the person on the street. Although historically art tells cultural stories reflecting our inner and outer worlds, much of the contemporary art in museums and galleries is outside the context of meaning for many people. It is an interesting symptom of our times that modern art has become a form of elite entertainment, owned by an industry that does not attend to the function of culture for the greater populace.  

With all this talk about moving into new economical, educational and governing paradigms, what might a shift in of authentic culture look like? It is truly staggering to attempt to perceive a paradigm outside the ones we are emerged in. One needs to experience getting out of the embedded social standard to even entertain the possibility. There are accounts of people in life threatening situations or with severe disabilities that nurture and express a depth of being that is breath taking to the rest of us. There is the heart opening story of holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl who found methods for finding meaning, in even the most intolerable forms of existence, in order to find reasons to continue living. These are the people who have given life to possibilities that most of us can not imagine and yet we may find ourselves in untenable situations if we do not create a greater vision of participatory culture.

I sometimes use the metaphor of living on another planet with reference to my life in Japan because it was so completely out of my box. The longer I was there, the more deeply I was emerged in language and therefore relationship, the more foreign I perceived it. It forced me to challenge unconscious values and perspectives. There is a occurrence among foreigners in Japan, where; even though we are speaking in our native language together we find ourselves using Japanese words, because there is no way to articulate the concepts we want to express in our mother tongue.

There are many worlds side by side within complex societies, which is why I could choose to avoid modern Japan. Japanese friends did not want to plant rice by hand and laughingly said I was living in the feudal age. My life style in Zen temples and in the country outside of Kyoto connected me to traditional Japan which people in the industrial cities rejected. But even with the Western influence there was incredible coherence, because of a belief system that holds a vision of a greater whole beyond the seeming contradictions. Suzi Gablik’s comment that our soulfulness is blocked by “modern traditions of mechanism, positivism, empiricism, rationalism, materialism, secularism and scientism---” is not foundational in Japan. There is an undercurrent of knowing in that society that daily life is merely a game played out in a greater field of life; this is a paradigm that can hold, so far, the incredible transformations we have witnessed in that society.

With the medieval paradigm shift from the concept of a flat world at the center of the universe to a spherical world rotating around the sun, a ceiling in cosmological belief was lifted that did not change the average person’s life, at first. With time, however, the underlying fear, literally and metaphorically, of falling off the edge of the earth was released. I project that with our paradigm shift we will lift the fear based paradigm of heaven and hell, symbolic of duality like the above mentioned paradigm shift there is an entire change in language which had to occur. Because our Western languages are rooted in duality reinforcing our ego-centric world view, it is extremely difficult to perceive a cosmological shift from duality to wholeness.

As a painter I use contrast of color, value, shapes, lines and textures to develop the pictorial frame. With my painting circle participants I make the distinction between contrast and polarity in an effort to the hold duality in a context of wholeness. We do not have to choose sides, elements that appear initially to be opposing become complementary or perform a service for greater coherence. The trick is to let go of the qualitative scale, which is easier in painting than in daily life. It is, however, a practice which influences everyday life.

The canvas is an apt metaphor for life when the engagement is in process, not product. We can easily become so identified with the outcome that it defines our self worth. I am reminded of an ex-gang member who loved art class but was thrown out for violence when he reacted to being ‘dissed’ by another classmate. He saw no choice. When we identify with one part to the exclusion of others we go into separation, which threatens the whole. Separation keeps dualism in place. Manifesting struggle and suffering in life is mirrored in creative process. I ask myself and my painters to hold the process in a unity beyond good/bad or liked/not liked. It is not easy; we have to develop the muscles for it, but it is a safe place to practice participating in the vision of a new cultural relationship.

NM 5 Day Residency DREAMING into the LAND

An Exploration of the Archetypes of Place in the land around Taos, New Mexico in a five-day Painting Residency

June 21-25 2011

TRANSFORMATIONAL PAINTING is a large format Creative Painting Process in acrylics on un-stretched canvas that incorporates techniques of Projective Dreamwork & Awake Dreaming. In the last 20 years, I have noticed how much place influences the dreams and creative activity of people who visit and live in the Southwest this  residency will focus on how the land, including local cultural, historical and geographical archetypes of place influence our psyches.

As an experiment in our changing cultural paradigms the Residential Workshop will have a base cost of $625 which includes five nights, food and materials. There will be an invitation of an anonymous dana offering to express personal value. It will be paid forward to make the next workshop possible.

Part I: Looking Towards a New Paradigm of Art Participation

In this country we use the words society and cultural, interchangeably with the connotation that part of the spectrum is not available to most of us; as in high society and level of sophistication, as in cultured. I want to make the distinction between the word society as social structure, bound, by similar traditions, and the word culture, as the cultivation and expression of humans need to represent their experience and values in life through acting with imagination and creativity.

Although it may appear peripheral to much of the population, it is significant to each of us that the art world, meaning the gallery, museum and collecting industry, does not serve us as culture. Part of it is because it is big business, which does not want our participation; the other part is because we, as a nation do not provide education for the appreciation or value of art as cultural function.

For this and many other reasons the institutions in our civilization are showing signs of fragility; forward thinkers are grappling with how to create paradigms that are appropriate for a new relationship, to our selves, each other, and the planet, experiencing how the old paradigms of economics, education, religion and politics are not ecologically sustainable in the context of the individual, the collective, nor the planet. Our cultural institutions have to a large extent been co-opted by a branch of the entertainment industry and financed by the market place. Art, literature, performance, music and the visual arts, call for collective participation because, at its core, it is a meaning making process, which defines our relationship to reality. Art in terms of relationship is in dire need of revision. It needs to be demystified, that is, taken out of the hands of the elite and put back into the hands of the people.

The post modern assumption of ‘art for art’s sake’ is grounded in the idea that art in general has no useful role to play in society. Part of the mystification is that art, with a specific message, is not high art. To move from the subjective individualism of the current western populace to a value-based art that relates to context as a whole, is a challenging shift. It requires a re-mything, on a collective level, demanding a transformation of understanding as radical as the concepts in quantum physics that are shaking the world of science. Art critic and social thinker Suzi Gablik determines that we need to step out beyond the “modern traditions of mechanism, positivism, empiricism, rationalism, materialism, secularism and scientism---the whole objectifying consciousness of Enlightenment---in a way that allows for a return of soul.”


In the art world and very likely in many other institutions there are two counter movements in response to the dysfunctional paradigms; one is deconstructive and the other is reconstructive. The seminal art theologian, Jean Baudrillard, maintains that the first revolution in art, in the twentieth century was the deconstruction of the image and the second, the deconstruction of meaning. David Salle is an example of an artist who claims that his images are without reference; his paintings deal with ‘spectacle’, not with meaning. Barbara Kruger is an artist who uses art to reconstruct; she reflects with irony back to the consumer culture with photomontage and slogans on rented billboards, exposing advertising ploys like: BUY ME, IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Reconstructive postmodernism theory in art challenges the materialistic worldview in an effort to awaken the sense of responsibility and participation; it seeks to engage in possible solutions. (See article by Denis Dutton on Leo Tolstoy’s What is Art?) Gablik describes reconstructive art as having a desire for “re-rooting ourselves in the cosmos, realizing the bodily unity of ourselves and the world,” she offers that deconstruction and reconstruction cannot remain polarized but must find a way to work together. For a glimpse into the world of reconstruction art, ending ironically, with a graphic vision of how the current art world functions, see the movie Exit Through The Gift Shop.

The holistic paradigm is revolutionary in that it focuses out to the edges of duality into a context of wholeness. In classic art, through post modern era, there is a gulf between the observer, who does not participate, and the object of focus. Through quantum physics and spiritual practice we are coming to understand that we are the world even as we create it, and it is no longer possible for the viewer to be separate from it. Our social reality reflects what we carry within. Society is just as creative as we are and we can no longer pass it to an elite board of representatives; be it medical doctors, museums curators, art critics, corporate executives or members of congress. Right now we are especially in need of innovation to re-create our social fabric.

The art industry is possibly just another branch of the capitalistic patriarch, functioning in domination, which makes it almost impossible to give rise to a visionary voice from within. The new paradigm of art reflects the need to change from object to relationship. Art with social value includes art related to ecology, politics and social issues. There are movements outside the art world; one is by self taught artists, called Art Brut or Outsider Art. Some of this is folk art, but there is a wide spectrum including the art of inmates, institutionalized patients and other marginalized populations. Gablik maintains, however, that these are only a sideshow because healthy functional art movements are not possible without a re-structuring at the core.


Gablik also asserts that there is now no functional avant-garde of counterculture which challenges mainstream thought in relation to art, but is merely one of the many side attractions. The New York deconstuctive artist and art critic Ronald Jones contends that no real change can occur in the art world while the art industry controls it; it even controls the illusion of change. Gablik speaks with irony in saying, “commodity fetishism is the distinguishing mark of our culture, and the artist’s consciousness has been fatally enriched with this knowledge.”  Object as commodity has relationship to the market, but not to the world, in our society, culture just may have become a commodity, a situation referred to as cultural inauthenticity.

Part 6 CALLING FORTH & Part 7 INTEGRATION OF SPIRIT and the Physical

Skeleton Woman Story as Creative Process
  

The fisherman has snagged Skeleton Woman from the depths and inadvertently brought her back home with him. He has untangled and ordered her bones, wrapped her in furs and fallen asleep. She creeps  closely and drinks from the single tear forming in his eye as he sleeps. reaching into his chest she extracts the drum of his heart to beat bringing flesh once again to her body. They spend the night in love making and were consistently well fed by the creatures she had known in her life under the sea.

  

PART 6   CALLING FORTH the HEART of NEW LIFE, Drum of Transformation.      

In Skeleton Woman, the heart is lent in order to create. We begin our painting in the sacred way of drumming, prayer, meditation or trance. As we paint we sing up the flesh, we summon the physicality of the psyche. 

Giving your heart is the willingness to descend into the realm of feeling. The heart of the archetype of Birth/Death is the greater container of Life. Eckhart Tolle calls it, singing up new life. We stumble on to the quest, then the chase of blind terror begins, eventuating in clearer vision, followed by the discipline of concentration of sorting out the small self and the large self-the ego mind and the Divine. Then comes surrender to trust and developing presence. None of this is creation until the Heart is used for manifestation. Heart symbolizes essence. It is what enables us to love in innocence.

The agreement that Skeleton Woman makes is to create a life bigger than daily life. You must, however, free yourself from separation by making her ally, lover, teacher. She will guide us through our wounds if we give ourselves wholeheartedly. The drumming and singing in the story and painting in our groups is preparing the vehicle for the inspiration and transformation. 

In Painting Circle we participate in the magical activity that converses with the psyche. In that sacred space healing, integration and innovation are birthed. Song and music are of the same timeless catalyst of image making that touch the soul and as in the story transcend the obvious.
In the story of singing up the flesh, the whole woman is brought into being, not just the approved of or glamorized parts. Just as in our paintings, no mental judgment or aesthetic preferences decides what shows up on the canvas. There is an entirety that is called forth in our paintings; warts, woundings, shadow and all              

PART 7   INTEGRATION of SPIRIT and the PHYSICAL, Dance of Body and Soul.    

We arrive at the last phase of our story and also the creative process. It is different from the beliefs of popular media in that deep sacred union takes place when all other stages are complete. It is the satisfying exchange that yearns for a greater completion or perfection. Intercourse is synonymous with communication, communion and consummation which all speak of an urge towards union. It is not forgetting yourself but joining another in a way that changes you, brings about new life. To join together as one is to really understand one another. The desire to know and be known is what Aphrodite archetype generates. This desire leads to physical intimacy, impregnation so that new life may flow. This union of mind, heart and spirit, creates new growth in the psychological, emotional, spiritual or physical spheres.

You may try to go from the finding of accidental treasure to love making, but you really cannot skip the chase, the untangling, the tear and the fleshing out through heart. You cannot go from concept to product without passing through the maturation of your history, vision and values. To enter breath to breath, skin to skin contact with loss, pain, disappointment and failure is the path of life and also the path to meaningful artwork. It is the story of Skeleton Woman.

The story has progressed like many fairy tales from an untenable condition; in this case a masculine energy does not honor and understand the feminine and so throws her back into the primordial matter where her reality is dramatically altered. She becomes related to the sea world of the unconscious and it changes her and in turn will change him.

Note it does not destroy her although it may look like it from the old perspective. This is the initiation that art requires again and again, in an unimaginable variety of ways. You would be right to say that life requires the same thing, but our culture conspires to put us in denial of the dynamic of death/birth in our daily life, as well as, in the greater field of life. That is changing with Eastern and Indigenous spiritual influence and the Consciously Dying Movement. So often, however, people go into their grief of a loved one shocked and stunned, even when it was an obvious and inevitable loss. The death dynamic of the creative process can not be denied as it is in your face, unless your head is in the sand. If you do not acknowledge it your creative work will not be consummated.

In the Skeleton Women story we may well consider the question, who is the artist? Is it the lonely fisherman who, although he was originally terrified, entered into relationship by putting her bones right and covering her gently with sleeping furs. Or is it Skeleton Women herself who uses his heart to re-created herself? Of course, as with ourselves, it is both of them. We are the alienated masculine principle and the crushed feminine principle who together transforms the seemingly dead end into new life. They both risk. They both in their way draw from imagination and inner vision, all apart of the artist/shamanic skill of trusting in transformation through the greater cycle beyond death.