Icons for the Earth

Study for "Numina"

I can't believe that in a month I'll be heading west again, back to Tucson. I wish I could remain on the East Coast, see the snows and the spring come. I left my heart in the East a long time ago, and can't seem to drag it entirely into the arid lands.

My sculpture Weavers is laid out on the floor of the studio, and will soon be finished and mounted at Wesley. I was amazed to see that after I assembled it (it's about 9 feet tall) it had a cohesive story within its structure. Of course, I had to lay it out to see that! More later, when I have some photos.

The first deities of Rome (before it became an empire, and before it adopted Greek mythologies) were called "Numina", roughly translated, "spirits of place", or the  "mind of place". These early deities included Pomona, goddess of the Orchards, and other local deities concerned with the well being of trees, springs, deer, etc. As I thought about creating my personal Icons, I returned to the intelligence of nature, the invocation of the  "numinous".


Sometimes I see that the Deity I felt in the woods as a child, the conversations I had with beaches and stones and butterflies, are not entirely lost to me. There are still places I can go, where those friendly and mysterious voices still invite me to join the conversation. The divine is beneath our feet, in the roots, the cracks, the dragon trails of wind and rain moving across the expressive faces of the day. I like this image, I think the eyes mean to me that immanent presence I feel in nature.

16 million tons of rain
are falling every second

on the planet,
an ocean
perpetually falling
and every drop
is your body

Drew Dellinger

Icons - Some Reflections

"Sophia" by Betsy Walker

There is a show at the Dadian Gallery here at Wesley, Icons in the American Style with artists Peter Pearson and Thomas Xenakis (October 28 - December 18). Last week they had an opening, and a lecture about orthodox Christian icon painting. Thomas Xenakis said in his artists statement, "The contemplative time during the painting of the icon is most important for me. I do not allow the product to overwhelm and pressure the process of the making.......the comfort and peace I glean in the writing of an icon transcends definition."

Mr. Xenakis is a contemporary contemplative, whose traditional icons are for him a way of praying. In quoting him, I put my own emphasis on "product" and "process". The word "product" encapsulates, for me, something so intrinsic to our economic and value system that it can quickly overwhelm and overshadow any form of authentic expression. We're bent on production, at ways to keep generating objects and means, at quotas and, under it all, commercial value (do I sound a bit world weary here?)......all of this can "de-soul" a work of its vital essence in no time at all. The vital essence is the process and intention immanent within its creation, and more subtly, the energies that become focused and generated as the "object" manifests in some kind of material form. Does that make sense? 

Peter Pearson, in his artist's statement, says: "Ultimately, the best icons do not draw attention to themselves, but to God.........So the work of a faithful iconographer is not about anything other than creating an image that will invite and facilitate that movement." In my studies of indigenous masks ( like the sacred mask traditions of Bali), my fascination with Navajo and Pueblo weaving, and traditional Icon arts, I see my own life-long quest for a spiritual meaning, and vitality, I have never found within the modern art world. A longing to discover the "holy" roots of art. I use parentheses for that word because I don't mean it in any denominational sense, but I do mean it in the mystical sense.

"Anima/Animus Icon" (2003)

A sacred mask, in traditional Balinese society, "belongs to the gods", is kept in the Temple except when used for ritual theatre, and were maintained, and protected, as "vessels for the divine". That inspired my 10 year project of making masks for the Goddess, my own devotional offering to the Divine. I think of the Navajo tradition of leaving some small piece of a rug flawed - because only Spider Woman is a perfect weaver. Gold is the most highly valued metal in the world. When an icon is painted on a backdrop of gold, when a halo is created with gold leaf, and especially when an icon is framed in gold, using alchemical metaphor, the icon is saying that this vision is taking place against an ineffable background, infinitely precious and purified of "dross". 

To surround an icon with gold was to sanctify it, creating a window or portal into a sacred vision, a sacred space. A sacred work of art can be a potent receptacle for energy. This was exactly why sacred masks in Bali were kept in the temples, and performers were anointed with holy water before and after using them. It's also why icons are often associated with special places of geomantic potency, such as sacred     wells or caves.

Here's a wonderful commentary by Martin Gray, in his truly epic book, Sacred Earth: Places of Peace and Power. He is writing about the Black Madonna of Guadalupe, Spain, the object of  millenia of pilgrimages.

"It is important to consider the legendary description of the icon as having miraculous healing powers. How are these powers to be explained? The current author theorizes that the healing powers of certain icons, statues and images derive in part from their capacity to somehow function as both receptacles and conduits for some manner of spiritual or healing energy. To grasp the implications of this concept, consider the matter of how physical objects, upon being exposed to various types of energy, may actually build up a charge of that energy and then radiate the energy back into the environment. For example, a stone after being removed from a fire continues to give off radiant heat, and a battery having been charged with electric energy thereafter has the capacity to conduct that energy into an electrical appliance. Perhaps, in some currently unexplained manner, sacred sites and sacred objects are able to gather, store, concentrate and radiate energy in a similar way."

He continues with,

"It seems possible that the so-called 'miraculous' healing icons somehow function as storage batteries for the prayer-transmitted spiritual energy of the millions of pilgrims who visit the sacred shrines. These ‘battery-icons,’ continuously charged over hundreds and often thousands of years, act as conduits and radiant sources of the energies they have stored, and it is these energies that are partially responsible for the 'miracles' of healing so often reported at the sacred sites." *

I love the author's use of the term "storage batteries" and receptacles, which affirms my own sense about the creation of sacred art for many years. As someone who used to make amulets for people with crystals, "charging" the crystals with intent as well as chosing the crystals, stones, colors and symbols to fit the needs of a particular client..............why should an icon, a sacred mask, a revered reliquary, not function as a crystal as well, "crystallizing" and recording psychic, geomantic, and emotional input?**

I am not saying in this entry that "all art" has to be sacred, all art has to have contemplative or spiritual intention. We would have a very dull world, with universal scapegoating and projection, if there was no room for the secular and profane. Heretics would be much in demand. But its no secret that modernism has gone way, way too far in the other direction.

We live in an increasingly de-sacralized world, a disposable world, to our collective sorrow and immediate peril. There are times when I feel overwhelmed with it, overwhelmed with the numbness and indifference, the "sound of silence."

"Tree of Life", Icon, 2005

* Sacred Earth - Places of peace and power

Martin Gray PO 4111 Sedona, AZ 86340

** I hate the hard edged cynicism people give to the "new age" explorations of the '80's. Yeah, there were certainly excesses, exploitations, and lots of naivete, but is there any public investigation that doesn't have these frailties? I have held many a crystal, and many a "talisman", in the palm of my hand and felt it change my affect and energy system. Radios and computers are basically utilizing crystals - "Silicon Valley"?

A few new works

"Seeing in the Dark"

I've been busy lately, spending a lot of time (and very gratefully) in the studio, just playing and exploring to see what emerges, having rare indeed time to dialogue with art process. I've produced a couple of black ground paintings (one is above) that I honestly don't know what to think about, except that I kind of like them. The photos here are more yellow than the actual paintings. Are they "illustration" versus "real art"? Who knows. I suppose, being one who has always been interested in mythic time and the dream time, they are only a further step in that conversation, as well as tentative efforts to find my hand with paint again.........

How do we "see in the dark"? What happens when things are obscured, hidden, not illuminated with predictable means? What other kinds of vision, what "night vision" do we need to cultivate?

Icon #7

More hands with eyes...........

"La Mariposa"

Here's my not quite yet finished "Butterfly Woman". I really like her, she makes me smile. For one thing, I love the Hopi notion of the Butterfly Dancer as a mature woman with the strength of experience necessary to do the work of pollinating the future. This is a job that requires weight, depth, good humor, and "las ovarias" (as Clarissa Estes would say). And I also enjoy stepping on three art world taboos in this painting. (this residency has put me through the wringer, as far as "art world identity" goes).

One, it's an old woman instead of yet another pretty woman (usually naked). And that's not how I see the Goddess either. As a woman of 60 now, I'm feeling completely inspired to paint women and men who are lit up from within by age and experience, the external shell beautiful and withering.

Two, she's smiling. It's almost de rigor, as I remember from those endless art critiques of long ago, not to mention perusing art magazines, to portray serious, if not angst ridden, be-pained faces.

Third, the thing has butterflies. That's because it relates to the Hopi legend, and also I've been thinking of the short story I wrote in 1997, "La Mariposa".

"Roots"

This is an assemblage study for the big "Weaver's Hands" piece I'm going to do. I like the way it turned out. I wish I had a kiln here, so I could do some more clay work.

"There's a crack in everything"

This, of course, was one of those happy accidents that became a visual poem based on a poem by Leonard Cohen.

"Forget your perfect offering.
There's a crack
in everything
that's how the light gets in."

I have some photos of myself that I am thinking of doing some black ground self portraits with. They aren't flattering. I have in my mind the image of opening the heart chakra, opening the chest cavity, to "let the light in". Or not, just the act of opening is good enough.

Or, to let the curling, twining, vegetative green heart out, like roots, the tendrils of vines, the pollen that needs to pollinate. Or, like a tree unfurling, emerging from the inner life, flowering.

Reflections on remembrance and honor

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not corpses,
cosmetically renewed and boxed,
their faces familiar and serene.
Or pale ashes
in elegant canisters.

I ask for the other dead,
those ghosts that wander
unshriven among our sleep,
haunting the borderlands of our lives.

The dead dreams,
The failed loves.
The quests,
undertaken with full courage
and paid for in blood
that never found a dragon,
a Grail, a noble ordeal
and the Hero's sacred journey home.

Instead, the wrong fork
was somehow taken, or the road
wandered aimlessly,
finally narrowing to a tangled gully
and the Hero was lost,
in the gray and prosaic rain,
hungry, weary, to finally stop
glad of bread, a fire,
a little companionship.

Where is their graveyard?
Were they mourned?
Did we hold a wake,
bear flowers,
eulogize their bright efforts
their brave hopes
and commemorate their loss with honor?
A poem? A stone to mark their passing?

Did we give them back to the Earth
to nourish saplings yet to flower,
the unborn ones?

Or were they left to wander
in some unseen bardo,
unreleased, ungrieved.
Did we turn our backs
on them unknowing,

their voices calling,
whispering impotently behind us
shadowing our steps?

1997

It was moving last night to participate in a candle ceremony at Wesley, connected to the Dia de los Muertos altar that I and my class made this past week. I thank Deborah Sokolove and Dennis Crolley for initiating the ceremony. I lit candles for my brother, friends lost in the past several years (including animal friends), and a candle as well in memory of all the species endangered and extinct as humanity continues to overwhelm and change the life webs of our world. I mourn the loss of all my fellow life.

I was thinking, as I do at this time of year, about remembrance and honor. "What is remembered lives" is a chant from the Spiral Dance, and like to think of it in terms of re-membering as well, re-joining and re-connecting what is part of a whole. That's what a "webbed vision" means to me - to see the links, to seek out the connections, aware of a lattice of interconnection that continually expands beyond our limited personal views. Seeing in inclusive instead of dissecting ways, in terms of relationships and reciprocities.

I think honor is a very important word, particularly within this understanding. If we cannot honor the unknown ancestors who made it possible for us to live, if we cannot honor the people, living and dead, who have informed our lives and experience in every way, if we cannot honor even the animals and plants, which are not "commodities", but living beings, whose bodies and lives made it possible for us to live......if there is no honor for this intimate and also vast web of giving and taking, of exchange of energy, of relationship ........if there is no honor, there is no cohesion. The center cannot hold.

A few years ago, I began receiving some well meaning New Age emails from a group called "Go Gratitude" that was promoting gratitude as a worldwide cause (along with perky emails to circulate, and a necklace with their logo you could buy.) There was some of the magical thinking in their program I associate with "The Secret", which implied that with an "attitude of gratitude" (and positive thinking) one could also achieve "abundance" ...and presumably get the things one might desire. While I appreciated them, I also found it kind of appalling that all those slogans and "abundant more-ness" (since we are a society that cannot do something unless there is a suggestion of profit) were deemed necessary to promote a fundamental virtue. Foundational, and profound. To me, gratitude is the only logical response, the only remaining affect, one can arrive at when understanding and vision has expanded beyond the most limited and immature means. Gratitude, in other words, is the natural outcome of any kind of spiritual maturity.

I remember that Carolyn Myss, in her book Spiritual Anatomy, commented that honor and gratitude were like the backbone, the skeletal structure upon which an individual builds his or her sense of purpose within a perceived community. Without a sense of honor, it is hard to "stand" or to have "standing". To comprehend that our life stories are woven into a vast tapestry, a continuum, a greater whole that somehow, even when we cannot see it, lends "holiness" to our lives. Lends an appreciation, a comprehension, of the "whole".

The Sixth Extinction (2007)

"In 1987, the last Dusky seaside sparrow disappeared from the earth. Imagine the people of Merrit Island, Florida, gathering to hold vigil on the marsh's edge each June 15, the anniversary of it's passing. Or imagine the citizens of San Francisco gathering in the spring, beneath rustling eucalyptus trees at the Presidio, to remember the Xerces blue butterfly. That was where the last one was seen in 1941. Can you imagine the California condor, it's wings circling in the desert air? Can you hear a Mexican Grey wolf, howling in the night? Psychologists have not begun to ponder the emotional toll of the loss of fellow life. Nor have theologians reckoned the spiritual impoverishment that extinction brings.

To forget what we had is to forget what we have lost. And to forget what we have lost means never knowing what we had to begin with."

Mark Jerome Walters THE NATURE CONSERVANCY, 1998

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)

Día de los Muertos is on November 2nd, with celebrations beginning on November 1, (Día de Muertos Chiquitos--The Day of the Little Dead) ( also All Saints Day) and continuing on November 2, (All Souls Day). It is a joyous occasion when the memory of ancestors and the continuity of life is celebrated, and a beloved holiday in Mexico and South America.

Like the Celtic traditions of Samhain, which were also associated with the end of the year and the last harvest festival, it was believed that at this time of the year the souls of the departed can return to visit the living (the "veils are thin"). It is not a time of mourning since, as the Latin saying goes, "the path back to the living world must not be made slippery by tears".

Celebrations for the dead originated in indigenous Mexico before the Spanish conquest. Following the Spanish conquest of Mexico during the 16th century there was a blending of indigenous customs with the new Catholic religion. All Saints' Day and All Hallows Eve (Halloween) roughly coincided with the preexisting Día de Los Muertos resulting in the present day event. Although the skeleton is a strong symbol for both contemporary Halloween and los Días de Los Muertos, the meaning is very different. For Días de Los Muertos the skeleton is not a scary or macabre symbol at all, but rather represents the dead playfully mimicking the living.

Very often, a large community altar may include many small personal shrines, such as the one below that includes Frieda Kahlo.

Or this simple "box" shrine.

Or here are some personal shrines made by artists:

Preparation begins weeks in advance when statues, candies, breads and other items to please the departed are sold in markets. A sweet bread, pan de muerto, with decorations representing bones is very popular, as are sugar skulls made from casts. All sorts of art objects and toys are created. This gives the economy a boost in much the same way as our Christmas season does. Alters ofrecetas (offerings) are set up in the home with offerings of sweets and fruits, corn and vegetables, as well as the favorite foods and beverages of the deceased. It's not unusual to see a good cigar and whiskey bottle beside a photograph of a loved one. These offerings may later be given away or consumed by the living after their "essence", and the loving remembrance, has been enjoyed by the dead. Marigolds are the traditional decorative flower.

The particulars of the celebration vary widely. On November 1, Día de Muertos Chiquitos, the departed children are remembered. The evening is sometimes called la Noche de Duelo, The Night of Mourning, marked by a candlelight procession to the cemetery. On November 2, Día de los Muertos, the spirits of the dead return. Entire families visit the graves of their ancestors, bringing favorite foods and alcoholic beverages as offerings to the deceased as well as a picnic lunch for themselves. Traditionally there is a feast in the early morning hours of November 2nd although many now celebrate with an evening meal.

There are sugar skulls and toys for the children, emphasizing early on that death is a part of the life cycle, and the importance of remembering those who have passed on to another kind of life.

Some potential paintings.....

Study for painting "La Mariposa" the Butterfly Woman

The Butterfly dancer, among the Hopi, is an older woman. This is because the butterfly in the final stage of its life, has the sacred duty of being a pollinator. This is a job that requires some weight, and some depth.

Study collage for painting - untitled as yet -

More hands and eyes........and seeds.


I want to do some black ground paintings before I swing into color.

I suppose this one is corny. I never seem to be able to get away from this image. It also occurs to me that at 60 I'm way beyond giving a damn about whether anyone thinks I'm corny anyway. Corn is the staff of life, here in the Americas anyway.

"Earth Mind"

Self portait as a tree.........

Now

The umbrella

As tradition dictates, upon entering his Zen master’s house, the disciple left his shoes and umbrella outside.  “I saw through the window that you were arriving,” said the master. “Did you leave your shoes to the right or the left of the umbrella?”  “I haven’t the least idea. But what does that matter? I was thinking of the secret of Zen!”

“If you don’t pay attention in life, you will never learn anything. Communicate with life, pay each moment the attention it deserves – that is the only secret of Zen.”

             Paolo Coelho, 2009

I've been having fun lately just BEING. I walk in a fall symphony of leafy color, meeting creative and thoughtful people, looking at art....

My mind is full of colors, half-suggested compositions, dancing mythologies, obscure symbols that drift like smoke trails, and the de-light of rain, sun, dappled pavements. Even my solitude, which felt so unbearably lonely when I first came here, is now enjoyable. Not to mention the antics of squirrels. Oatmeal in the morning with in-season apples.  Shadow dapples.

Creativity engages the reservoir of all we learn, our skills, the conversations and story lines of our lives, the cultural context we speak and move within. At the same time, the only place it can ever really be live and available is in the NOW.

I am content at this moment in time, and accept it as a gift. Happiness comes in small things; yellow leaves, orange leaves, red leaves, each as unique and brilliant as a snowflake, miraculous. The trees are performing their Grand Finale..........