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| "Spider Woman" - Ritual Event "Restoring the Balance" at the Muse Community Theatre (2004) |
In 2014 I did an interview for Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theatre, a wonderful online magazine. I really enjoyed answering the questions, and ran across it again this week in the course of answering new questions for an interview. Felt like sharing it again, and especial thanks again to Lezlie A. Kinyon, Ph.D for her faith in me.
Interview questions:
1. Where can we see your work?
2. 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.
3. 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 20th Annual Spiral Dance. I have
great admiration for what these two groups have developed as ritual process.
3. 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?
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| "Tse Che Nako, Thought Woman Weave the World" (2007) |
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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 arts
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.”
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. Any final words?
Here’s a quote I love by the Buddhist philosopher David Loy:
"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?"
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| "Dream Weaver" (2009) |
References:
David R. Loy, "The World is Made of Stories" (1999)
Ortiz, Raphael Montanez Ph.d, "Interveiw with Lauren Raine" (1989)
Josten, Katherine, "Interview with Lauren Raine", the Global Art Project (2004)
