Chapter 1: Evolution of Myth and Philosophy Through Art
In the beginning there was light! And the human experience began!
People from all cultural and religious backgrounds have a creation story. Every creation story from the Old Testament to the Big Bang theory explore the origin of humanity. These stories function to bring people together and bring understanding to the experience we are having as humans in the current time and space. This human experience is characterized by the ritual of art; in other words, the intentional use of beauty to describe an idea is one of the major tasks that distinguish us as human beings. According to evolutionary theory, the transition from primates to modern day humans is marked by a large increase in brain capacity. This increase allowed for more complex thought which resulted in the appearance of language, mathematics, and artistic practice. These thought processes are what set us apart as a distinct species. Every creation story implies the existence of art since the beginning of the human experience. This is apparent whether you talk with an Evolutionist who characterizes the emergence of our species with the appearance of artistic practice and language, or you talk to the Pueblo Native American who believes that pottery tradition has been around since the origin of human existence. Artistic practice and being human go hand in hand.
The earliest examples of artistic tradition, anthropologically speaking, are found when humans first came together in groups. The earliest examples of art in the art historical cannon were tools, like the Venus of Willendorf (Figure 2) and the cave paintings at Lascaux (figure2), that were made for ritual and ceremonial use. These artistic works, in the context of the people who created them, were functional tools for intentional and specific cultural celebrations and devotional practices. They were physical manifestations of prayer designed for continual ritualistic use. This is very common among indigenous groups throughout all of known history. Artistic tradition, in this case, is integrated with the functional needs of the community and within these smaller communities the necessary functions are few and pretty much within bounds of food, shelter, and ritual - pottery, textiles, baskets, architecture, effigy figures etc.
I must clarify the context and use of words such as art, prayer and ritual early on because it is an integral part of my work and this discussion. I have the impression that a great number of humans have a very skewed perception of what art and ritual means. Many people believe that art, like prayer and ritual, are functionless entities created for the desire of pure entertainment. I would like to dispel that idea now. Art is always functional as is prayer and ritual. In the book Transformations Of Myth Trough Time By Joseph Cambell, he re tells a story about Navajo singers who came to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to show sand paintings and how they were made. When the paintings were created, one detail from the painting ritual was left out. This protected the artists copying them from the power the paintings held. Cambell states, “ Well they made one painting in the museum and then they were asked, ‘Couldn't you just complete one painting, complete this one for instance?’ and they laughed and said, ‘If we finish this one, tomorrow morning every woman in Manhattan would be pregnant.’ ” So, these paintings carry power. Power that, in the beliefs of the singers and the Navajo people, can change the physical world. These paintings in sand are one of many examples of artistic practice integrated with prayer and ritual and it is pretty damn functional to the people creating it. This is not an isolated occurrence either; many cultures throughout all of human history produced artistic objects, like the Kwakiutl masks of the Northwest Americas, and the ancient monuments such as Stonehenge and the pyramids at Giza- objects that were created to function in this world and the cosmic world.
As human groups grew and cities emerged, it became harder to include everyone into one social organism. With the evolution of specialization, most people developed more of a single profession rather than sharing in general everyday tasks. With many people doing different jobs and having different lives, more complex mythologies and stories were needed to unify the community. Sophisticated languages were developed to communicate ideas concerning the cosmic order of life. When humans began to develop agriculture, domestication, mathematics and astronomy, planetary and celestial movements began to be mathematically charted and theories about the outward cosmic order were put into place so worldly experiences could be better understood. These ideas needed explanation and the mythologies grew more complex to fill this void. Art functioned as the primary tool of mass communication to reflect these mythologies. Stories, dances, sculptures, and frescos all played a part in reflecting and communicating the myths of the culture. Deities of the heavens and the earth were conceived to bring collective understanding of humans place within it all. These deities related to, and were derived from, the celestial map that provided an organized method of planting, harvesting, food storage, shelter, and hunting patterns. Art was one of the tools that helped validate these mythologies and deities across many people. This way when a deity was depicted in stone on a central community structure, like in egypt, everyone in the community had a similar conception of Horus and Osiris and everyone felt in a place of understanding and belonging together.
If the main function of society is to collectively share human existence, and mythological stories function to unify communities, then the function of art and artists is to update and recontextualize these mythologies in new forms with new ideas, so the stories continue to be relevant in the current time and place. This has been the main function of artists up until the age of radio and TV. Artists were, and still are to some degree, the maintainers and keepers of what is culturally important. So the artists job is to decide what ideas and mythologies are important and to share them with the current community. Throughout history you have examples of this with artists from all media. The tradition of painting and ceramics, which I am a part of, provides many examples of the recontextualization and spreading of culture through the eyes of the artist. Potters in the 20th century like Shoji Hamada, Maria Martinez, and Bernard Leech revived and preserved cultural and artistic pottery practices, and pottery culture in general. These artists validated old pottery traditions like wood firing and pit firing, as well as continued the hand made artistic tradition still intact. These artists functioned as the validators and the educators of these practices in order to preserve the cultural component they felt was important. Painters throughout history have communicated what they felt was culturally important through their images, even during times where free thought was suppressed. Artists like Diego Rivera, Casper david Fredrich, and Mark Rothko all used their images to change peoples perspectives in regards to politics, lifestyles, and art. The images they created revived, dispelled, and recontextualized the cultural mythologies so that they became relevant to the world at that time. These painters didn't invent all of their concepts. Most of them were borrowed from history, but the ideas were created within a new context that validated their existence. So, when Diego Rivera paints the Palacio Nacional (figure 3), he uses previous ideas and events from Mexico’s history, but paints them so they relate to the current time and place. As a storyteller, he revives and recreates Mexico's mythological history in a way that it becomes Mexico's current mythological history. The function of the artist, in this case, is to be the storyteller of the tribe so to speak, and as the storyteller artist we decide what is important to communicate in the evolving human story of where we came from, who we are, and what we have done.
Chapter 2: Renewing Sacred Ideas Trough Narrative
As an artist in this current time and space, I have many stories to choose from that span literally across the globe. I have the ability to learn about many diverse mythologies, philosophies, and spiritual beliefs that originate from places throughout the world. My interest is in ancient and indigenous mythologies because I feel they are more applicable than current dogmatic religions are to the human experience as a whole. These beliefs revolve around the natural world of animals, plants, seasons, and celestial events, and I feel that they are part of every humans experience whether we realize it or not. I also feel that these beliefs are inherently more sustainable and caring in regard to the earth and the environment we inhabit. Many modern people have a misconception in viewing the human race as existing above nature; we are within it, not above it. The earth demonstrates this from time to time with an earthquake, a lightning storm, a hurricane, or a drought. All of which the human race, with all of its technology, cannot control. Humans did not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it. No matter how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the earth is a living entity that our species depends on to sustain and survive; what we do to this earth, we do to ourselves.
Egalitarianism, which is the philosophy or belief that everything is alive and equal, is inherent in the beliefs of many current and ancient indigenous cultures from all over the world and it is another component in my work. This belief entails that the trees, rivers, rocks, stars, earth, animals and humans are all equal, alive, and connected in the wheel of life. Because indigenous groups are more aware of the natural environment, their rituals and beliefs are based on the the natural world and the energy within it. Some groups develop more direct ways of communicating with it and use this natural energy to consciously travel other worlds. Worlds that many modern humans are unaware of and often criticize as being false. Many cultures felt the relationship between our world and the spirit world was very important. Indigenous tribes from all over the world, but most specifically from Siberia, Africa, and Alaska, have developed rituals and ceremonies that put a human in direct contact with the spirit world through the use of chants, dances, music, and natural substances found to enhance this ability. Ritual and ceremonial substances that many western modern minds would be quick to dismiss as hallucinogens. The misconception however, is the use of the word hallucination to describe an event that is not a hallucination at all, but a very real experience. The main function of these rituals is to address this relationship of a human in this world with the energies of the spirit world. This is exactly what “Gaia: The consecration of Earth” is addressing. The human experience in this world connected with cosmic events in the spirit world through a relationship with the earth and the stars as living entities of wisdom and power.
In my opinion this was the purpose of all spiritual faiths throughout the world until they became codified, convoluted, and subverted for means of attaining political power. All religious and spiritual texts from The Gita to The Bible address humans place within the cosmic world and provide wisdom on how to experience a sense of belonging and harmony within the universe. The problem occurs when the text, story, or ritual is taken out of context either because the belief is out dated and fails to relate to the current world, or more commonly is intentionally subverted. This doesn't mean that the text is wrong or false, it just means the people deciding how it is viewed and presented are false.
This brings me to another problem concerning spirituality and art. The modern and otherwise Euro-Western perception of art and spirituality is that it is a tangible physical entity which it is clearly not, no matter how much the capitalist mind set wants it to be. I mean the tangible makes profit, and we are all out to make profit. However, art and spirituality are ever changing and at no point are they tangible because the art is in the way you do it and not the product you receive. The product you receive is a painting or a sculpture or a cup. Just as the spirituality is in the devotion, not in the ritual. The ritual is the product of devotion. So, in the capitalist mindset, we end up with people creating paintings without artful sense and people practicing rituals without true devotion for the purpose of achieving and attaining wealth and power and the problem with that is, no matter how much they say they know, they really don't know what it means at all.
In Buddhist philosophy, the point of Nirvana(one with the universe) happens when the body ceases to acknowledge time, space, and physicalities. When the consciousness achieves a state of non being and feelings of anger, greed, and lust have dissapeared. This is the idea I am depicting with the images I paint. The moment during a ritual artistic act in which the subject has transcended time, space, and human physicality for a momentary realization of universal and cosmic connection. These realizations are powerful and important to being a level and semi- centered human being. I mean, face it, humans cannot be completely centered all the time because thats just not how the physical plane works. If we were always centered we would have nothing to work on or learn from. However, these experiences can improve the well being and understanding of every human being. What I am attempting to provide for the community through my work, is a revival of old wisdom traditions and ritualistic acts put in a current context that relates to the here and now. The ideas of connection and continual devotion to the Earth, Our Mother, and the sacred
breath of life in conjunction with art becoming a ritualistic and devotional practice are not unique or new at all. These are very old ideas that are put in the context of current indigenous cultures, artistic practices, devotional philosophies, and transcendental experiences that relate to the current world crisis. The loss of god, devotion, and compassion. In this way the overall installation I am presenting is a place of devotion, a sacred space, with revived mythical characters and spiritual ideas.
Chapter 3: The Experience of Ritual. Here and Now
Throughout my life I have never been able to completely explain why I feel the need to express myself through art. In a way I don't really have an answer except for the impulse I feel to do it. So I just do it. Often the idea comes without a whole lot of preconceived thought except that I know I want to paint it or make it on the wheel. In most cases the associations come while in the process or afterward, and hopefully through this process I will stumble upon something I really feel is profound. After going through the process for a while realizations come to light and patterns start emerging and I get glimpses of who I am and why I'm doing what I'm doing. These glimpses however, are just what they are and disappear the moment I realize them. Now this is really starting to sound like a mushroom trip!
Don't worry! mushrooms are not completely necessary for the experience, but if you have some, now might be a good time!
I have come to realize, or at least I think I realize, that what I am doing during the artistic process is experiencing love and devotion in the here and now. The artistic process has become nothing less than a sacred ritual I participate in that fills my life with joy and meaning, and moreover connects me to the cosmic consciousness. On the physical plane, this outer world, my artistic practice is a political philosophy. What I mean is it has become a refusal to be categorized within the bounds of contemporary capitalist culture. The reason I paint and throw pottery is because it is hand made, not mass produced or run through a machine. In this age of materialism and mass production, the context of the objects we possess, or believe we possess, has been completely removed. What I mean is the cloths we wear, the shoes we walk in, and the food we eat is prepared in some way by someone before it gets to us, so very few people in this institution have any conception of what a corn plant looks like, or where cotton comes from, or how much labor it took to get that gucci purse knock off all the way to J.C. Penny where it was sold. This causes a general abuse of things. Things that are inevitably connected to Mother Earth. This decontextualized abuse is the primary cause of the hell we have created for ourselves on this plane. Why? Because it starts with you, it starts with me, it starts with all of us. It starts with the realization that everything is equal and deserves love and compassion. So, when I decide to make a cup or a painting I am infusing the material with my spirit and current context just by making it. When I give or sell this object to someone, the person will be more likely to take care of it and give it new context in their life. I know this because I take care of all the artistic gifts I have received over the years, and every time I wash a cup a good friend gave me I have immediate associations in my brain that bring me joy and encourage me to keep the cup around. This is sustainability. We were meant to use this earth, not abuse it.
“Listen to this and I’ll tell you about the heartache. I’ll tell you about the heartache and the loss of god.” - Jim Morrison
What I am creating with “Gaia: The Consecration of Earth” is a sacred space for all who wish to experience it in the here and now. It is a celebration of equality between apparently separate cultures, ideas, and forms of art. In my paintings I am depicting differing ritualistic acts in which the subjects are interacting with the same connected experience of devotion. In other words, the experience of ritual is the same even if the ritual itself is different. The display of pottery at the center of the gallery is communicating many ideas. First of all, it is giving a physical reference point of clay in relation the human experience because clay and stone were the first artistic objects to emerge in the human story. Displaying them in the center communicates their relation to the point of emergence, and metaphorically communicates their relation to the experience of being centered. The circular display also references the idea of the earth, out of which these objects emerged, and the circle or wheel of life which the viewer must traverse in order to look at the pottery. I am presenting three apparently different styles of pottery in the same space which reinforces the equality of the practices and moreover communicates that its all clay that came from the same Mother Earth. Likewise, I am presenting this same idea of art equality with the display of ceramic and painted works together in the same space. The overall exhibit is meant to be a celebration of equality in the here and now tied to the transcendental human experience within the context of the southwestern quasi hippy culture unique to this region with major emphasis on harmonious relationships with the Earth.
Chapter 1: Evolution of Myth and Philosophy Through Art
In the beginning there was light! And the human experience began!
People from all cultural and religious backgrounds have a creation story. Every creation story from the Old Testament to the Big Bang theory explore the origin of humanity. These stories function to bring people together and bring understanding to the experience we are having as humans in the current time and space. This human experience is characterized by the ritual of art; in other words, the intentional use of beauty to describe an idea is one of the major tasks that distinguish us as human beings. According to evolutionary theory, the transition from primates to modern day humans is marked by a large increase in brain capacity. This increase allowed for more complex thought which resulted in the appearance of language, mathematics, and artistic practice. These thought processes are what set us apart as a distinct species. Every creation story implies the existence of art since the beginning of the human experience. This is apparent whether you talk with an Evolutionist who characterizes the emergence of our species with the appearance of artistic practice and language, or you talk to the Pueblo Native American who believes that pottery tradition has been around since the origin of human existence. Artistic practice and being human go hand in hand.
The earliest examples of artistic tradition, anthropologically speaking, are found when humans first came together in groups. The earliest examples of art in the art historical cannon were tools, like the Venus of Willendorf (Figure 2) and the cave paintings at Lascaux (figure2), that were made for ritual and ceremonial use. These artistic works, in the context of the people who created them, were functional tools for intentional and specific cultural celebrations and devotional practices. They were physical manifestations of prayer designed for continual ritualistic use. This is very common among indigenous groups throughout all of known history. Artistic tradition, in this case, is integrated with the functional needs of the community and within these smaller communities the necessary functions are few and pretty much within bounds of food, shelter, and ritual - pottery, textiles, baskets, architecture, effigy figures etc.
I must clarify the context and use of words such as art, prayer and ritual early on because it is an integral part of my work and this discussion. I have the impression that a great number of humans have a very skewed perception of what art and ritual means. Many people believe that art, like prayer and ritual, are functionless entities created for the desire of pure entertainment. I would like to dispel that idea now. Art is always functional as is prayer and ritual. In the book Transformations Of Myth Trough Time By Joseph Cambell, he re tells a story about Navajo singers who came to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to show sand paintings and how they were made. When the paintings were created, one detail from the painting ritual was left out. This protected the artists copying them from the power the paintings held. Cambell states, “ Well they made one painting in the museum and then they were asked, ‘Couldn't you just complete one painting, complete this one for instance?’ and they laughed and said, ‘If we finish this one, tomorrow morning every woman in Manhattan would be pregnant.’ ” So, these paintings carry power. Power that, in the beliefs of the singers and the Navajo people, can change the physical world. These paintings in sand are one of many examples of artistic practice integrated with prayer and ritual and it is pretty damn functional to the people creating it. This is not an isolated occurrence either; many cultures throughout all of human history produced artistic objects, like the Kwakiutl masks of the Northwest Americas, and the ancient monuments such as Stonehenge and the pyramids at Giza- objects that were created to function in this world and the cosmic world.
As human groups grew and cities emerged, it became harder to include everyone into one social organism. With the evolution of specialization, most people developed more of a single profession rather than sharing in general everyday tasks. With many people doing different jobs and having different lives, more complex mythologies and stories were needed to unify the community. Sophisticated languages were developed to communicate ideas concerning the cosmic order of life. When humans began to develop agriculture, domestication, mathematics and astronomy, planetary and celestial movements began to be mathematically charted and theories about the outward cosmic order were put into place so worldly experiences could be better understood. These ideas needed explanation and the mythologies grew more complex to fill this void. Art functioned as the primary tool of mass communication to reflect these mythologies. Stories, dances, sculptures, and frescos all played a part in reflecting and communicating the myths of the culture. Deities of the heavens and the earth were conceived to bring collective understanding of humans place within it all. These deities related to, and were derived from, the celestial map that provided an organized method of planting, harvesting, food storage, shelter, and hunting patterns. Art was one of the tools that helped validate these mythologies and deities across many people. This way when a deity was depicted in stone on a central community structure, like in egypt, everyone in the community had a similar conception of Horus and Osiris and everyone felt in a place of understanding and belonging together.
If the main function of society is to collectively share human existence, and mythological stories function to unify communities, then the function of art and artists is to update and recontextualize these mythologies in new forms with new ideas, so the stories continue to be relevant in the current time and place. This has been the main function of artists up until the age of radio and TV. Artists were, and still are to some degree, the maintainers and keepers of what is culturally important. So the artists job is to decide what ideas and mythologies are important and to share them with the current community. Throughout history you have examples of this with artists from all media. The tradition of painting and ceramics, which I am a part of, provides many examples of the recontextualization and spreading of culture through the eyes of the artist. Potters in the 20th century like Shoji Hamada, Maria Martinez, and Bernard Leech revived and preserved cultural and artistic pottery practices, and pottery culture in general. These artists validated old pottery traditions like wood firing and pit firing, as well as continued the hand made artistic tradition still intact. These artists functioned as the validators and the educators of these practices in order to preserve the cultural component they felt was important. Painters throughout history have communicated what they felt was culturally important through their images, even during times where free thought was suppressed. Artists like Diego Rivera, Casper david Fredrich, and Mark Rothko all used their images to change peoples perspectives in regards to politics, lifestyles, and art. The images they created revived, dispelled, and recontextualized the cultural mythologies so that they became relevant to the world at that time. These painters didn't invent all of their concepts. Most of them were borrowed from history, but the ideas were created within a new context that validated their existence. So, when Diego Rivera paints the Palacio Nacional (figure 3), he uses previous ideas and events from Mexico’s history, but paints them so they relate to the current time and place. As a storyteller, he revives and recreates Mexico's mythological history in a way that it becomes Mexico's current mythological history. The function of the artist, in this case, is to be the storyteller of the tribe so to speak, and as the storyteller artist we decide what is important to communicate in the evolving human story of where we came from, who we are, and what we have done.
Chapter 2: Renewing Sacred Ideas Trough Narrative
As an artist in this current time and space, I have many stories to choose from that span literally across the globe. I have the ability to learn about many diverse mythologies, philosophies, and spiritual beliefs that originate from places throughout the world. My interest is in ancient and indigenous mythologies because I feel they are more applicable than current dogmatic religions are to the human experience as a whole. These beliefs revolve around the natural world of animals, plants, seasons, and celestial events, and I feel that they are part of every humans experience whether we realize it or not. I also feel that these beliefs are inherently more sustainable and caring in regard to the earth and the environment we inhabit. Many modern people have a misconception in viewing the human race as existing above nature; we are within it, not above it. The earth demonstrates this from time to time with an earthquake, a lightning storm, a hurricane, or a drought. All of which the human race, with all of its technology, cannot control. Humans did not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it. No matter how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the earth is a living entity that our species depends on to sustain and survive; what we do to this earth, we do to ourselves.
Egalitarianism, which is the philosophy or belief that everything is alive and equal, is inherent in the beliefs of many current and ancient indigenous cultures from all over the world and it is another component in my work. This belief entails that the trees, rivers, rocks, stars, earth, animals and humans are all equal, alive, and connected in the wheel of life. Because indigenous groups are more aware of the natural environment, their rituals and beliefs are based on the the natural world and the energy within it. Some groups develop more direct ways of communicating with it and use this natural energy to consciously travel other worlds. Worlds that many modern humans are unaware of and often criticize as being false. Many cultures felt the relationship between our world and the spirit world was very important. Indigenous tribes from all over the world, but most specifically from Siberia, Africa, and Alaska, have developed rituals and ceremonies that put a human in direct contact with the spirit world through the use of chants, dances, music, and natural substances found to enhance this ability. Ritual and ceremonial substances that many western modern minds would be quick to dismiss as hallucinogens. The misconception however, is the use of the word hallucination to describe an event that is not a hallucination at all, but a very real experience. The main function of these rituals is to address this relationship of a human in this world with the energies of the spirit world. This is exactly what “Gaia: The consecration of Earth” is addressing. The human experience in this world connected with cosmic events in the spirit world through a relationship with the earth and the stars as living entities of wisdom and power.
In my opinion this was the purpose of all spiritual faiths throughout the world until they became codified, convoluted, and subverted for means of attaining political power. All religious and spiritual texts from The Gita to The Bible address humans place within the cosmic world and provide wisdom on how to experience a sense of belonging and harmony within the universe. The problem occurs when the text, story, or ritual is taken out of context either because the belief is out dated and fails to relate to the current world, or more commonly is intentionally subverted. This doesn't mean that the text is wrong or false, it just means the people deciding how it is viewed and presented are false.
This brings me to another problem concerning spirituality and art. The modern and otherwise Euro-Western perception of art and spirituality is that it is a tangible physical entity which it is clearly not, no matter how much the capitalist mind set wants it to be. I mean the tangible makes profit, and we are all out to make profit. However, art and spirituality are ever changing and at no point are they tangible because the art is in the way you do it and not the product you receive. The product you receive is a painting or a sculpture or a cup. Just as the spirituality is in the devotion, not in the ritual. The ritual is the product of devotion. So, in the capitalist mindset, we end up with people creating paintings without artful sense and people practicing rituals without true devotion for the purpose of achieving and attaining wealth and power and the problem with that is, no matter how much they say they know, they really don't know what it means at all.
In Buddhist philosophy, the point of Nirvana(one with the universe) happens when the body ceases to acknowledge time, space, and physicalities. When the consciousness achieves a state of non being and feelings of anger, greed, and lust have dissapeared. This is the idea I am depicting with the images I paint. The moment during a ritual artistic act in which the subject has transcended time, space, and human physicality for a momentary realization of universal and cosmic connection. These realizations are powerful and important to being a level and semi- centered human being. I mean, face it, humans cannot be completely centered all the time because thats just not how the physical plane works. If we were always centered we would have nothing to work on or learn from. However, these experiences can improve the well being and understanding of every human being. What I am attempting to provide for the community through my work, is a revival of old wisdom traditions and ritualistic acts put in a current context that relates to the here and now. The ideas of connection and continual devotion to the Earth, Our Mother, and the sacred
breath of life in conjunction with art becoming a ritualistic and devotional practice are not unique or new at all. These are very old ideas that are put in the context of current indigenous cultures, artistic practices, devotional philosophies, and transcendental experiences that relate to the current world crisis. The loss of god, devotion, and compassion. In this way the overall installation I am presenting is a place of devotion, a sacred space, with revived mythical characters and spiritual ideas.
Chapter 3: The Experience of Ritual. Here and Now
Throughout my life I have never been able to completely explain why I feel the need to express myself through art. In a way I don't really have an answer except for the impulse I feel to do it. So I just do it. Often the idea comes without a whole lot of preconceived thought except that I know I want to paint it or make it on the wheel. In most cases the associations come while in the process or afterward, and hopefully through this process I will stumble upon something I really feel is profound. After going through the process for a while realizations come to light and patterns start emerging and I get glimpses of who I am and why I'm doing what I'm doing. These glimpses however, are just what they are and disappear the moment I realize them. Now this is really starting to sound like a mushroom trip!
Don't worry! mushrooms are not completely necessary for the experience, but if you have some, now might be a good time!
I have come to realize, or at least I think I realize, that what I am doing during the artistic process is experiencing love and devotion in the here and now. The artistic process has become nothing less than a sacred ritual I participate in that fills my life with joy and meaning, and moreover connects me to the cosmic consciousness. On the physical plane, this outer world, my artistic practice is a political philosophy. What I mean is it has become a refusal to be categorized within the bounds of contemporary capitalist culture. The reason I paint and throw pottery is because it is hand made, not mass produced or run through a machine. In this age of materialism and mass production, the context of the objects we possess, or believe we possess, has been completely removed. What I mean is the cloths we wear, the shoes we walk in, and the food we eat is prepared in some way by someone before it gets to us, so very few people in this institution have any conception of what a corn plant looks like, or where cotton comes from, or how much labor it took to get that gucci purse knock off all the way to J.C. Penny where it was sold. This causes a general abuse of things. Things that are inevitably connected to Mother Earth. This decontextualized abuse is the primary cause of the hell we have created for ourselves on this plane. Why? Because it starts with you, it starts with me, it starts with all of us. It starts with the realization that everything is equal and deserves love and compassion. So, when I decide to make a cup or a painting I am infusing the material with my spirit and current context just by making it. When I give or sell this object to someone, the person will be more likely to take care of it and give it new context in their life. I know this because I take care of all the artistic gifts I have received over the years, and every time I wash a cup a good friend gave me I have immediate associations in my brain that bring me joy and encourage me to keep the cup around. This is sustainability. We were meant to use this earth, not abuse it.
“Listen to this and I’ll tell you about the heartache. I’ll tell you about the heartache and the loss of god.” - Jim Morrison
What I am creating with “Gaia: The Consecration of Earth” is a sacred space for all who wish to experience it in the here and now. It is a celebration of equality between apparently separate cultures, ideas, and forms of art. In my paintings I am depicting differing ritualistic acts in which the subjects are interacting with the same connected experience of devotion. In other words, the experience of ritual is the same even if the ritual itself is different. The display of pottery at the center of the gallery is communicating many ideas. First of all, it is giving a physical reference point of clay in relation the human experience because clay and stone were the first artistic objects to emerge in the human story. Displaying them in the center communicates their relation to the point of emergence, and metaphorically communicates their relation to the experience of being centered. The circular display also references the idea of the earth, out of which these objects emerged, and the circle or wheel of life which the viewer must traverse in order to look at the pottery. I am presenting three apparently different styles of pottery in the same space which reinforces the equality of the practices and moreover communicates that its all clay that came from the same Mother Earth. Likewise, I am presenting this same idea of art equality with the display of ceramic and painted works together in the same space. The overall exhibit is meant to be a celebration of equality in the here and now tied to the transcendental human experience within the context of the southwestern quasi hippy culture unique to this region with major emphasis on harmonious relationships with the Earth.
Bibliography
1. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab12
2. Cambell, Joseph. Transformations of Myth Through Time. Pg 25-47. HarperPerennial 1990
3. Mariam-Webster online dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/. Sacred Definition 2.
Bibliography
1. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab12
2. Cambell, Joseph. Transformations of Myth Through Time. Pg 25-47. HarperPerennial 1990
3. Mariam-Webster online dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/. Sacred Definition 2.
