Life on the Edge

Each day a little closer.

The process to survey the two blocks of land I intend to sell for the further development of the Windgrove Artist-in-resident program was begun this week. An interesting process, indeed, as we walked and drove any number of kilometres just to do the preliminary work of establishing the north and east boundaries of Windgrove’s 100 acres. Next week the west and south boundaries. Only then, in the third week, will the boundary lines for the actual smaller 6 and 8 acre blocks being sold get established.

One might wonder why didn’t we just do the two small blocks and leave it at that? You know, find the stump with the 80 year old axe mark in it that farmer John used to initially clear this land and use this as a starting point and go from there. I mean, what’s a few meters or feet between good neighbours when we’re talking acres?

Good question, I thought, as I helped carry up some survey equipment to the top of a hill nearly a mile away from the blocks to be sold (and off my property, as well). But what is required by law is that our survey had to be accurate to within one mm or 1/16th of an inch. To pinpoint the corners of the existing Windgrove acreage to this degree of accuracy meant we had to start at a government established “trig” point; points located on certain hill tops around Tasmania consisting of a brass disk set into concrete.

From this brass disk, all other lines are drawn.

Hence, the need to climb the hill.

But, oh, was the view divine.

Today’s blog has been written by Sally Horne, Windgrove artist-in-residence from December till the end of February.

My quiet activism: Chinese Medicine and mandalas as a means of creating harmony.

We learn to speak a language. And then within that language many of us, perhaps on a spiritual journey or a journey of seeking meaning and a deeper sense of connection, try to find a language that better articulates and deepens our experience of communication about the world and its inner workings. I am learning the language of Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is all together an art, a science and a spiritual path, and likewise painting mandalas is an art, science and spiritual pathway. Both are intricately intertwined in my life. In many ways learning the language of Chinese Medicine is enabling me more and more to comprehend and to translate the silent language of mandalas and their significance in the healing arts.

As the world of natural therapies grows, the concept of wholistic medicine—the consideration and treatment of healing of a disharmony on physical, mental and spiritual levels—has become well known. It is the deeper aspects of medicine, disharmony of the psycho-emotional and spiritual planes that truly interest me. This is where, I believe, most of our problems reside and where our destructive relationship with the world stems from. Part of what attracts me so much to Chinese Medicine and what I connect with through mandala painting is the grounding in interconnectedness and interdependence that both offer. Chinese medicine communicates a complex system of interactions that does not begin or end with self. Likewise the journey of painting a mandala links into the web that moves beyond self. Both aim to deconstruct notions of self and separation from other through a realigning of the subtlest levels of one’s energetic web of interactions.
 
Chinese medicine speaks of the five aspects of spirit as the energetics that give life to form. These spirit aspects connect with the primordial (Tao, connective unconscious, Buddha nature) and have their grounding in the physical. Being closest to the primordial they are the storehouse of our own personal destiny/pathway and act us guides or conduits of our greater plan. This is expressed in an inspiring interpretation of an ancient Chinese text called Rooted in Spirit: the Heart of Chinese Medicine. The author states that the most significant part of needling when acupuncturing is ensuring that there is a “rooting in the spirits”. By this he means accessing the spirit level of medicine. Loss of communication with oneself leads to loss of communication with others and one’s environment. A closer communication with our spirits leads to a richer, more meaningful, more connected and peace-centered life.

 

So what exactly are mandalas? To me they are visual representations of earthly/heavenly vibrations. They are energetic mappings of the silent underlying rhythms within self and beyond self.

The Process of painting mandalas:
It all begins with an empty circle. This is the beginning of all the mandalas. Sometimes it remains an integral part of the painting, sometimes it loses visibility, but it is ever-present in the foundation.

The empty circle is most significant in that it is a sacred circle that gives birth to intention and endless potential. This sacred circle provides the space for the initial image that comes to me most often during meditation. This image is the key that unlocks the artwork; it is the nucleus from which the layers of imagery unfold. And from there, I disappear into another world of colour, image and vibration. Each layer emerges from the previous and gradually the mandala sprouts into life, fruition and maturation.

The significance of the journey is darkly visible along the way, insight comes in little bursts yet clarity comes in strongly towards the end. Along the way I notice my often tumultuous thoughts and emotions that arise and know that as I paint I am both the receiver and creator of healing vibrations. The act of creating also embodies re-creation, the re-creation of self. I evolve as the mandala evolves. And in turn, as interdependence dictates, this influences the evolution of the earth in its small yet significant way.
 

The Windgrove paintings:
 
The trilogy of paintings that I completed at Windgrove represent a single journey. The only initial intention was that they facilitate in some way the resurrection of a fragmented self, of darning my frayed edges. And that harmonising of self would link into the web of interconnectedness and have a positive influence on the frayed edges and fragmentation of the world.

Initially, I began with two paintings: The Moving Away and The Return. These I worked on simultaneously, all the while dealing with the clashing energetics of the two paintings.
 
#1. The Moving Away: yang in nature, hot, expansive and outward moving; vivid, hard-edged and angular, robust and powerful.
 
#2. The Return: yin in nature, inward and downward spiralling; cooling, shadowy, reflective, circular, soft and quietly powerful.
 
On a personal level the tale is apparent, two opposing forces that were having trouble integrating. Going Away came out strong and with ease while The Return was a personal battle. (Perhaps a struggle to manifest my inner vision, a preference to hold it quietly inside, a fear of displaying my quiet vulnerable feminine side on canvas or fear of expressing the softer emotions.)
 
My struggles are your struggles are the world’s struggles.
 
We see these two opposing energetics at the foundation of Chinese Medicine; the interplay of yin and yang. In the deeper energetics of ourselves, within our yin aspect, we hold our arcane visions, our innate selves, our true pathways. It is the outward and upward moving yang that lifts the energies stored in the yin crevices of our being up and out into the world. Yin is storage, yang is action. In the perfect harmonious interaction of these two opposing forces are the holding and manifestation of the individual and the greater vision. It is hard for me to believe that the greater plan would be one of discord and worldly destruction. The seeds of perfect harmony must be within each of us.
 
#3. The Axis: grounding, unity, centering, interconnection.
 
The Axis represents the meeting point of two fundamental interdependent forces. It aims to facilitate and strengthen the return to a relative state of harmony so that spiritual growth and positive reconnection with all other beings and our environment may flourish.
 
It is difficult to articulate and summarise what my paintings are about because they seem to sit between contradictions. They are both simple and complex. They represent the fragment “and” the whole. They are the mending of self, the mending of other.

They are about nothing and, yet, everything.   
 
 

In order to help fund the Windgrove artist-in-residence program, Sally Horne has kindly agreed to put these three oil paintings up for sale with a third of the sale price of each painting ($1,500) going to the residency program.

Price each: Aus$ 4,500. 
Price includes all taxes, packaging and air freight.

Size: 2ft 6in square / 760mm square

Please contact me for further details:

Up to date info:  the painting “Axis” has been sold.

Song (4)

Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.

And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone

into the darker circles of return.

Wendell Berry

By happy conincidence, I came across the above Wendell Berry poem a few days before Sally Horne set up in the studio to paint a series of four mandalas while in residence at Windgrove. With today being a “solstice” event, it only seems appropriate that she is painting circles within circles.

Myself......?  I have come to accept the coming and going of Wingrove residents who leave me “changed, changing”; each resident a new cycle within the many cycles that we all turn in.

Also, in the mail this week, a copy of D.H. Lawrence’s version of the importance of recognizing, through ritual, that the solstice turnings are a necessary component of deepening our love for all and sundry. 

“Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal—merely personal feeling—taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magical connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth, the sun and the stars, and love is a grining mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life and expected it to keep on blooming in our vase on the table…

...it is a question of relationship. We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos, through daily ritual—the rituals of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of kindling the fire and pouring water...”

Nine years ago while still living in the bus, I built a simple storage room and office plus spare bedroom. Then, when I moved into the main house it sort of reverted to a small studio space for visiting artists. The problem, however, was that the space was relatively dark and every artist that tried to paint inside this room had some difficulty with the lighting. There was also the small problem that a fire almost burned the place down five years ago and the walls had a sort of sooty look to them.

So...... three coats of white paint, new curtains, new floor, new shelves and new light fixtures add a whole new chapter to this room. Climbing up and down the ladder to paint the ceiling was challenging, but, wow, what a transformation.

The next artist-in-residence, Sally Horne, arrives tomorrow. Hopefully, this new studio will be a joy for her to work in.

I’m also very much aware that fancy facilities don’t necessarily translate into inspired work. Even in my commercial grade, stainless steel, spotless kitchen, I can burn the toast. The question can even be raised: “Can one be given too much?”.  If we’re surrounded with luxury, does the artistic muse fall asleep?  Was my artistic output greater or lesser during the four years from 1992 till 1996 when I had no electricity, no running water, no toilet, no telephone?

Nothing human manufactured, anyway. And herein lies a possible answer as there were plenty of “earth” luxuries. Windgrove was a beautiful then as it is now so the key might be to balance the comforts with the discomforts.

Last week, when 12 year old Vincent and I sat on hard granite stumps and shared stories, we didn’t seem to mind the lack of a leather lounge suite.

Then again, there is the saying: “The mind can only absorb what the butt can endure.”

Upon returning from Hobart yesterday (about the time the sun was just beginning its descent over the edge of the world), I walked out to the Sunset Bench with its new deck. It had been built by Pino and myself just two days earlier and I had quickly come to like, even as one sat firmly on the bench, how the deck floated and nudged one’s spirit over that edge and out over the water.

The difference, however, between sitting on it the first couple of days when Bill’s and Pino’s energy and friendship were still amply present at Windgrove and last night when, once again, I was alone, was starkly evident.

It had only been a few hours since I had left Bill and Pino in Hobart to begin their journey back to America, and as I approached the Sunset Bench and saw it positioned empty out in space, the not-unexpected sadness of their departure stripped some of the color from the day. The deck and bench hovered black and white tempting me to “take a seat”, but it was difficult to climb on board for I feared something could take hold of me; something that I had kept pushed down for years.

The sadness I accept as a consequence of love. The fear, I will work on.

Oh, to embrace life fully—to embrace even friendship fully—is to spread the jam of bitter sweetness upon the bread of one’s existence. Get used to the flavour, I say. It is most nourishing.

*************

This morning the color has returned. If you don’t believe me, just take a walk with me down the Peace Path. Hidden in the bushes and floating two feet off the ground is Bill’s sculpture, “Fishing for Peace”.  Made up of found objects from the beach and my studio, this little boat of blue, maroon, orange and yellow will bring joy to anyone.

It gladdens the heart.

Weighing in at 1000 pounds and over ten feet/3 meters in length, the top half of the Gull Stone Bench has finally been hoisted into position within the circled native grass sanctuary overlooking Roaring Beach. After ten years in the making, walkers of the Peace Path now have one more place to rest and enjoy the view. It’s a stunner.

Everyone has heard variations of the following, but it bears repeating. Three people are all at the same construction site doing the same thing. When asked what they are doing the first person says, “Making $20 per hour” and the second person says, “framing up a wall”. The third person, however, says, “I’m building a cathedral”.

Having Bill and Pino around Windgrove for the past two weeks clearly demonstrates that their approach to work falls into the third category. Nothing is too difficult to do, or too demanding or too “un-vacation” like. The days spin with creative energy, resourceful work and playful banter. Their motivation stems from a philosophy that work of any sort can be worthwhile.

Jared Diamond writes in “Collapse” about how the younger people are leaving the farms in Montana for a more easy, more prosperous life elsewhere because they view their grandparents has having had to work too hard with little to show for it. Diamond then writes: “Montana farmers today who continue to farm into their old age do it in part because they love the lifestyle and take great pride in it. Jack Hirschy is still working on his ranch today at the age of 83, while his father Fred rode a horse on his 91st birthday.”

The clue that seems so obvious to me, but not to the younger people Diamond writes about, is that the farmers doing the hard, hazardous work are in their “80’s and older” and all the more happy for it. How many CEOs live this long?

Contentment and a long life do not always flow out of a cushioned life.

Let me add, however (before I scare off any future applicants to the artist-in-residence program), that along with the wonderfully hard work at Windgrove there are many options (and time) left open for play.

I first met the iron worker/ sculptor, Bill Brown, when he was a hell raising 19 year old chasing, in equal measure, women and the demons within himself. This year, turning 50, he reckoned that a good way to celebrate both his birthday and his 25 years of being totally committed to Alcoholics Anonymous would be to come to Windgrove from his mountain home in North Carolina, hang out as an artist-in-residence for a few weeks and chew the fat with me.

For a week now, Bill and I, along with his travelling buddy, the energetic, younger Pino, have been having the equivalent of a “boy’s night out” with great peals of laughter and lots of food accompanying the recounting of our times together at the Penland School of Crafts in the late 70’s and early 80’s. This “catch up” has been tremendously rewarding as all three of our hearts have been massaged. And, even though Bill and Pino bemoan the lack of their womenfolk (Liz and Annie) partaking in our joy, we are also appreciative of this opportunity to “just be guys” together.

Any of us who have met up with friends from years past understand the bittersweet quality of such a meeting. Sprinkled into the good natured humor and telling of stories are those accounts of deaths, trials and tribulations. Over the years we have all experienced the full gamut of emotions and somehow we have survived.

What is tremendously rewarding for me is to see how Bill’s passage through life has left him a truly caring, compassionate and generous person. He demonstrates this in many ways, but what is most impressive to me is his weekly role as an AA sponsor in a North Carolina state prison. That’s courageous work. It is also creative work. Bill doesn’t separate this aspect of his life from his studio art. One feeds the other.

Bill demonstrates that talent as an artist is not a birthright. It comes with living.

I salute you, Bill Brown, for the life you have carved out of the material given you.

Look carefully at the above photo (especially the shadow area beneath the feet) and it appears that Melanie Mowinski is flying, paper in hand, going from tree to tree, drawing, drawing, drawing. Charcoal brought from America was soon used up. Charcoal from the Peace Fire, charcoal from elsewhere. Everywhere, broken, worn bits of charcoal littered the ground as Melanie tried to capture the essence of “tree” onto paper.

Urgency? 

You bet. And not just because Melanie only had a month at Windgrove as the resident artist. She, like all environmentally aware people intuitively knows that messing with the environment gets one into a mess of trouble.

Like hurricane Katrina.

Any mention of global warming behind the fate of New Orleans?

How many will suffer because of a lack of commitment to tackle this issue? Bush might continually state that “the American way of life is not negotiable”. He may live in denial about weather patterns changing because of America’s prodigious appetite to consume. But the handwriting is on more than one wall and what happened to New Orleans is about to happen more frequently and with more devastation to rich and poor alike regardless of Wall Street.

And this brings us back to Melanie climbing trees. She does so, not literally to escape the rising flood waters, but in a metaphoric way to search out, through drawings, how humans might connect with “tree”. In this way we humans can regard trees as our kin, if not our kind, and learn to live in a way that is protective, rather than destructive, not only of trees, but of all of life. Not to do so imperils the whole family tree.

Melanie, as a visual artist, wants all of us to look at trees the way the poet, William Stafford, did when he exclaimed: “Part of me.”

My advice.  Either start protecting the environment or install an inflatable raft in your attic.