The Transformative Arts - Green Egg Article from 1999

I've been going through my archives lately, finding articles and work that I quite forgot about.  Here I decided to re-publish an article I wrote for the late, great  Green Egg Journal.  Ah, those were the days.

THEATRE OF THE MIND

"We are the great work of art in progress.  We, ourselves.

  Our art is the dream of the awake state,

 and our dream is the art of the sleep state." 

  Rafael Montanez Ortiz

Masks, ritual drama and dance are primal ways people have petitioned the gods, enacted rites of passage, and achieved ecstasy since time immemorial.  And humans, everywhere, make masks.  

Yaqui Mask

Art historians may view tribal masks as "art objects", but their original use was as "power objects".    They were meant to be threshold tools that literally "brought the gods to earth".  Sacred masks were never made lightly - there were important procedures to be followed, including choosing the right materials from the right place at the right time, asking ancestral spirits what kind of mask they required for specific ceremonies, and consecrating the finished work. 

A great deal of psychic preparation was necessary, and the masks were activated and de-activated with great respect.  In Bali, I saw dancers carefully anointed with holy water before, and after, each performance.

"Everything was once made for the greater meaning and use of the tribe.  A spoon was more than a spoon, and a sacred pot was also used to store grain in - because they understood there had to be a weaving between the material world and the other worlds in order to live right and well.  An artist was one of those who did the weaving.  Except they didn't think of themselves as artists in the way that we do."

Sarah Mertz

Songhai ceremonial plank mask

Petroglyphs were touchstones,  magic for the hunt, or records of places that are sacred. Tibetan sand paintings, like sand paintings by Navajo medicine people, are prayers for healing, and invocations to the Gods -  offerings finally destroyed and released to the elements to do their work.    In Bali   sacred masks are tools to renew their contact with the gods and goddesses, to tell the stories of their Hindu religion.  

"Within these participatory traditions" performance artist Rafael Ortiz wrote, "there was no passive audience.  That’s a recent idea.   Ancient art process was a transformative process.  It wasn’t a show, it wasn’t entertainment." 

An artist I know once told me of an African mask at the Museum of Art in Milwaukee that, legend had it, sweated.  She said she went to view it over a number of days, and sure enough, there it was, if carefully observed, sweating away.  How is it possible something like that can occur in a glass case before hundreds of people unnoticed?  Magic is literally on display.

Among native peoples of central Mexico, masks used for corn and rain dances were destroyed after a number of years, because they believed that they accrued too much power over time, and could become dangerous as the spirit of the deity increasingly inhabited the mask.  This same sensibility is found in Noh Theatre.  Noh masks are created according to traditions that go back many generations, and represent stories that have firmly become animated by the mask.  Actors will often sit for days with a mask, creating fusion with the character.  In Bali, they are kept in the Temple, and are purified before performances. 

Yaqui Deer Dancer

"The primary function of the mask is to unite the indwelling wearer (and the observer) with a mythic being, or as Jung would say, 'an archetypal power'.  The mask, as we have found in our own work, becomes a transformer of energy, a medium of exchange between ego and archetype.  Thus in traditional societies one finds the taboos surrounding the mask, its recognition as a power object."

          Stephen Larsen,  The Mythic Imagination, 

The creative process is seamless, intimately personal and equally transpersonal.  I believe when we are in "flow", we find ourselves within a network of invisible collaborators. Some people call it synchronicity, some synergy, for me, it's a grand conversation any creative person is privileged to join.

The mask I made for Kali in 1997  is such a story.  Approaching 50, and recently divorced, I knew I needed to find a new life, to release old, self-destructive ways of being, no matter how painful.  I made a mask for Kali to symbolize this desire, as a kind of personal invocation.  And I wanted to create a dance for the mask.  I visualized the mask dancing with fire at her very fingertips, but had no idea of how this could be accomplished.  So my ideas remained in my sketchbook. 

A year later, I moved to California and opened a gallery.  I hung my Kali mask in the opening show, and noticed a young woman standing rapt before it.  As we talked, I learned she was a professional dancer. Would I be interested in doing something with her, she asked?  She showed me a tattoo of Kali on her midriff, and told me specialized in fire dancing.   And so, a month later, Serene danced my mask at our next opening, flames bursting from all her fingers. 

Drissana Devananda also danced the mask of Kali in ceremonial events, celebrating the Great Mother with her dance.  She commented that,

"When we create rituals we're really praying.  It's a way to remember. She dwells within us all the time. Not just when we wear a mask, or are in a workshop. We're physical emanations of the Goddesses, extensions of them. Not bodies seeking the spirit, but spirits seeking bodily experiences. Sacred dance is about re-membering that we function from our whole bodies, the "body mind".  That is the place we find the Goddess within ourselves."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Ritual dance and drama  experienced  thus is  about em-bodying what is personally sacred.  We open a temple within ourselves, and bring that temple to the floor.  And within that context, we can touch an often inexplicable timelessness.   "When I travel with a role", actress Barbara Jasperson says, "I often find that I become familiar with something I previously thought I knew nothing about.  It's as if it was always there within me, waiting to be known, waiting to introduce herself."  What happens when we invite the Goddesses and Gods, the archetypal powers, into our magic circle?  The answer is often, "If you build it, They will come." There is a magnetic field the dance engage.   "When you create within a sacred paradigm" Elizabeth Fuller continued, "you find a strange thing.  You are communicating with, and being fed by, sources you know are within you, but have a much greater reflection somewhere else.  You've touched something timeless." 

MASK MAKING, MASK WEARING

If you wish to explore mask work on your own, experiment with some simple masks.  They don't need to be perfect; your interpretation of what they are will have a lot to do with their effectiveness. You can find out what they have to say by making and embellishing them, and then moving with them.  Do some stretching.  Stand in front of a mirror.  Imagine how the rest of your costume might look, and see if you can sense the whole persona you're stepping into.  What sounds, what gestures, might it have to express?

Working with others generates intensity, so get together with some kindred souls and call it your improv theatre, your "place between the worlds".  Experiment with music, and enact some very simple scenarios.  Don't be afraid to make a fool of yourself - let yourself pass through that absurdly uncomfortable threshold to the spontaneity we once had when we were children.  After all, there's a mask on your face.  Let the music, the stories and feelings that arise, carry you into the mask. While you're there, explore polarities the mask may hold:  move between light and shadow, sad and joyful.  Is there a benign and dark side to each persona?  Then get together and talk about it.   You may find surprising things.  If you haven't done theatre, or used masks before, you may be shocked to discover that you are "possessed". You have been tapping your own interior council of masks, expressing the archetypal intelligences that inhabit you.

Some of these may be stifled and inarticulate, and hence, imploding with locked in energies.  Giving expression, within the safe arena of improvisation, to disenfranchised personae can release a great deal of emotion.  Each mask has its reserve of energy, its story, to be found not as an abstraction of the mind, but as an authentic experience to be had within our spontaneous, creative imaginations, and in the sensory, visionary immediacy of our bodies.  

"I wore the Sacred Clown mask for a ritual.  Now I have a rubber nose, and a chicken hat - I guess it took!"  participant Michael Stewart  told me.  "The Clown represents the element of chaos, bridging the mundane world and the world of the divine, the one who walks on the periphery.  Locating that is a source of continuing vitality.  It  reminded me that we are always bridging the worlds, and also, not to take myself so seriously, not to buy the idea that I'm so self-important."

I believe that we become more empathic beings when we free up a more integral, and mysterious, sense of "who we are".  We are all multiple personalities, and mask work can help to celebrate the  "circle of self" -  from the mundane to the divine, the angelic and the daemonic, the profound and the absurd. 

Lauren Raine
from Green Egg Magazine (2000)

Interview with Coreopsis Magazine 2015

Vol 4 No. 1 Winter/Spring 2015

Earth Tales: The Challenge Ahead

http://coreopsis.org/

 

Interview: Lauren Raine – Visionary

Profiled Artist

http://coreopsis.org/interview-lauren-raine-visionary/

 

 

CJMT: What is the link to your site? Where can we see your work?

www.laurenraine.com as well as my blog

www.laurenraine.blogspot.com

CJMT: What do you want the world to know about your work?

 I guess I would feel that I’ve succeeded if in some small way my work helps in the greater work of bringing reverence to the Earth, and to the arising of the Divine Feminine.

 

CJMT: Who – or what – do you see as your main influences?

 Early on I became influenced by the writings of Kandinsky (“Concerning the Spiritual in Art”) and others, and rejected what I saw as an aesthetic that disregarded spirituality and mysticism as being outside of “high art”. I find it ironic that spirituality was a significant impulse in the early development of Modernism. Theosophy, the Golden Dawn, Anthroposophy, as well as Einstein’s new physics, enormously inspired the work of such innovators as Mondrian, Kupka, Kandinsky, Arthur Dove, and others.

Later I discovered Joan Halifax (“Journey of the Wounded Healer”), met Alex and Allyson Grey (“The Sacred Mirrors”) and others, and began to think of art process in new terms. Art for healing, art for transformation of consciousness, art as a bridge between dimensions. During the 80’s I was involved with a group called the Transformative Arts Movement, and I even wrote a book based on interviews I did with visionary artists.

 Rachel Rosenthal developed a form of contemporary “shamanic theatre” that I found profound. I saw her perform Pangaian Dreams in 1987, and every hair on my body stood up. Sometimes, like a Sami shaman making the “yoik” she would allow sounds to come through her that were absolutely electric, sounds and words that charged the room. The Earth Spirit Community’s Twilight Covening introduced me to participatory ritual theatre and I made the “Masks of the Goddess” collection for the Reclaiming Collective’s 20thAnnual Spiral Dance. I have great admiration for what these two groups have developed as ritual process.

 

CJMT: Much of what you do seems to tell a story – even the single, stand-alone pieces. Where do you think that comes from?

 The poet Muriel Rukeyser famously commented that “the Universe is made of stories, not atoms”.

 

I believe Native American mythology – and perhaps contemporary quantum physics – would agree with her. My patron Goddess is surely Spider Woman, the ubiquitous Weaver found throughout the Americas in one mysterious manifestation or another. Among the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest she was also called “Thought Woman” (Tse Che Nako). As a Creatrix she brought the world into being with the stories she told about it.

 

Myths and religions are stories, some more glorified, archetypal, literalized or contemporary than others. I think it is so important for artists of all kinds to recognize that we are weavers of the stories of our time, we are holding threads that recede behind us and extend beyond us into the future. We’re never weaving alone. So – what kind of stories are we shaping, collaborating with, how do we understand the gift of “telling the world” that Spider Woman has bestowed on us?

 

CJMT:  How would you describe your art…? (influences, history, school-of-art, your aesthetic) 

 

Perhaps “Cross disciplinary”? I seem to jump around a lot, from sculpture to ritual theatre to painting to…………….whatever seems to be the best medium of expression at the time. Different “languages”. I guess I could say that my art-making is my spiritual practice, whether it is done with community (as in theatre and ritual) or alone in my studio.

 

CJMT: What did you learn from working in theatre?

 

Being a visual artist is solitary, and I’ve always wanted art forms that were participatory, collaborative. Masks lead right into theatre, and questions about the traditional uses of masks as well. Masks are such metaphors – you can’t look at a mask, really look, without it suggesting some kind of being that wants to manifest through it. They are vessels for all kinds of stories.

 My colleagues (among them Macha Nightmare, Ann Waters, Mana Youngbear, Diane Darling) and I have developed some wonderful ways of working with masks and community theatre/ritual. In early Greek theatre a performance had three components – the musicians, the narrators or Chorus, and the masked performers, who would pantomime and dance the characters. We’ve often used that approach, particularly with a Theatre in the Round, a Circle.

 Because the masks are dedicated to the Goddess, we’ve brought neo-Pagan sensibilities to the ways we designed our performances. This can include creating a ritual entranceway so the audience enters a magical space, adding audience participatory components to the performances, calling the elemental Quarters and/or casting a Circle in theatrical ways, and concluding all performances with some kind of energy raising activity with the audience. In Wicca that’s called “raising the Cone of Power” and by so doing the blessing or overall intention is “released to do its work”, finishing with “de-vocation”, which is often a great conclusion with humor, or everyone gets up and dances, etc.

 

It’s actually very effective, and can be integrated as good theatre. For example, in “Restoring the Balance” (2004) we concluded with “Spider Woman”. While the music played and the narrators told the tale, “Spider Woman” wove invisible threads. With a rising crescendo of assistants, she wove a web with the entire audience. And indeed, for that moment of breathless intensity everyone in the theatre was literally connected, holding onto a thread “from the Great Web” with everyone else. The “Blessing” was experienced as part of the performance.

CJMT:  What would you like to say to other artists (of any genre)?

“Our job was not to just re-tell the ancient myths,

but to re-invent them for today. Artists are the myth makers.”

Katherine Josten,   The Global Art Project

 I agree entirely with Katherine Josten, who founded the Global Art Project in Tucson, Arizona – we are the myth makers of our time. So, what kind of myths are we disseminating? What are the new stories, how are the old stories still important – or not?

 We have become a global society, with a global crisis. I may sound like I’m preaching, but personally, I don’t want to experience any more art forms that are self-indulgent, nihilistic, violent forms that don’t further evolution into empathy in some way.

I’m not entirely comfortable when people speak of contemporary artists as “shamans” as I have too much respect for the long traditions of indigenous shamans, which have evolved within their particular cultures for thousands of years. But I do know artists can participate in healing and vision, and can find new contexts for creating new forms of what might be called contemporary shamanism.

 

I’d like to quote from a 1989 interview I did with the early performance artist, Rafael Montanez Ortiz. In the 80’s he studied energy healing, as well as working with some native shamans in the U.S. and South America. Raphael was also a great influence for me. In the conversation I recorded and transcribed, we were talking about what an “art of empathy” might be, and he spoke about his studies in native Shamanism:

 

“You feel what you do……….Within the participatory traditions found in (indigenous) art, there is no passive audience. That’s a recent idea, which is part of the compromise, the tears and breaks from art’s original intentions. Ancient art process was a transformative process; it wasn’t a show, it wasn’t entertainment.  We need to see ourselves again as part of a brilliant, shimmering web of life. An artist at some point has to face that issue. Is the art connecting us and others in some way, or is the art disconnecting us and others? I think it is not enough to just realign ourselves personally either – as we evolve, our art should also do that for others, and further happen outside of the abstract. It must be a process that in its form and content joins us with the life force in ourselves, and in others.” (1989)

 

CJMT:  Do you feel that the questions of the spirit influence what you do?

 

I think Spirit influences much of what I do, and I’m not alone in that by any means! There’s a many-layered conversation going on all the time when you open creative channels.

 

Working in the collective process of ritual theatre is always amazing. When you make a strong, vibrant container with performance that is alive and meaningful for the participants, then dreams and synchronicities abound, the “container” of the developing work becomes charged. “If you build it, they will come”.

 

I remember in Joseph Campbell’s “Power of Myth” interviews with Bill Moyers, he spoke about “invisible means of support”. I think we’re supported by quite mysterious sources all the time, and when an artist finds her or his “burning point”, or for that matter a group shares it, doors do seem to open where we did not think they would. 

CJMT:  Would you like to tackle your relationship to the fines artes?

 

Oh, I get a headache when I think about “the art world”! But I did get an MFA, I have been a part of it, and I’m probably unfair in my allergic reaction. It’s just that I think the premise of the “art world”, as it reflects capitalism, is way off from the original functions of art.

 

Of course artists need to be supported by their communities. But when art becomes an “investment” and value is determined as a financial commodity (witness some of those Sotheby Parke Bernet auctions) you enter into a form of “soul loss”. Within this construct there is no acknowledgement of the transformative dimension of art. The conversation is corrupted. People are taught to appreciate a work of art because it is hanging in a museum, or worse, it is “worth millions”.

 

I always cringe inwardly when I hear someone talk about a painting they have in terms of what they paid for it, or what they hope it may be “worth”. The real “worth” should be what pleasure, insight, meaning, and questions they derive from being in the presence of a work of art, from being able to live with it in some way.

 

I had a real revelation in Bali, where they really don’t have an understanding of what we call “being an artist” at all, let alone the rather “macho” myth of the alienated “great artist”. When I lived there, I found that virtually everyone made some kind of art, whether dance, offerings, music, etc., and virtually all of it was “dedicated to the Gods”. It all had a ceremonial/ritual purpose. Art to the Balinese is a way to pray.

They obviously make many things for money, including masks. But the “special masks”, the sacred masks, are kept in the Temples, commissioned and repaired by traditional Brahman mask makers. They are not made available for tourists except as they may be seen in performances of the traditional dramas such as the battle between light and dark represented by the dragon/lion Barong and the witch Rangda; after such uses they are “purified” with holy water before being returned to the Temple.

 

This revelation became an inspiration to create a contemporary, multi-cultural collection of “Temple Masks”.

 

That’s how I conceived of “The Masks of the Goddess” – as special masks dedicated to the Divine Feminine throughout world mythologies. 

 

CJMT:  A Couple of technical questions: 

a)   What is the process you undergo in creating a mask?

 

For the face masks I find a person with a face I like. Then I take a plaster impregnated bandage cast that becomes a plaster positive cast, and then I form the mask over that cast with a thin, flexible leather. The technique is very similar to the old Italian “del Arte” mask technique.

 

b)    How did you find *your* media and materials in the very beginning?

 

I’d like to think the masks found me. But I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that in the very beginning I started making masks because I was broke. I was a jeweler at the Renaissance Faires and business was bad, so I started making masks hoping they would sell better. They did, and very soon they began to introduce me to a whole new world.

 

CJMT: What do you think the state of visionary art is today? 

 

There are some great visionary artists out there. Film in particular, with special effects technology, is quite astounding. Think about AVATAR – what an incredible feat, to create an entire cosmos in that way. The Life of Pi – astounding.

 

Ritual Theatre is an art form that is literally “visionary”, and I wish it was more widely experienced in mature, effective ways for audiences other than groups that are generally esoteric. As Americans, many feel we’ve lost our rituals by and large, or the ones we have don’t have much energy left in them. People are hungry for potent events that offer rites of passage, mythic enactment and immersion, and shared transpersonal, visionary experiences. It’s really a very ancient human heritage continually renewed.

 

I was thinking of a ritual I experienced with the Earth Spirit Community years ago close to Samhain, All Souls Day. We processed in the twilight through a field with candles into the ritual hall, accompanied by the distant sound of drums.

The final segment of the ritual involved everyone being seated on the cold floor, in a large dark room, and blindfolded. For what seemed like forever we heard distant voices, people brushed by us, hands moved us around, strange music was heard. It was powerfully disorienting, suggestive, and frightening. Then at last our blindfolds were removed, and we found ourselves in a room beautifully illuminated with candles. In the center of the room was a woman in white, surrounded with light, flowers, fruits, water – the Goddess herself, the “return of the light”. Finally, as we left we were greeted by figures with mirrors for faces: we beheld our own reflections.

 

I’ll tell you, you felt that experience! We had truly been “between the worlds”. When we left the ritual and gathered for food and drink, every one of us felt love for each other and joy for being alive.

 

CJMT:  Any final words? 

 

Here’s a quote I love:

 

“Stories are not abstractions from life but how we engage with it. We make stories and those stories make us human. We awaken into stories as we awaken into language, which is there before and after us. The question is not so much “What do I learn from stories” as it is “What stories do I want to live?” Insofar as I’m non-dual with my narratives, that question is just as much, “What stories want to come to life through me?“

David R. Loy, “The World is Made of Stories