imagici
"spheres"
of inspiration
If you find true meaning in one area of your life, as in art, chances are you will find it in others.
The human figure is an extension of the soul. It expresses the smallest thoughts, its unconscious secrets, its deepest emotion and its wildest dreams.
Art is like a whisper held lightly in a child's hand . . . or it shouts like a lion in a canyon.
When we cannot define art, we fail to define ourselves. Art should suggest the potential of the human spirit.
Art is a fire in a secret place that never ceases to burn. And my desire is only to get closer so that I might add more fuel.
"People in this day and age (primarily due to television) have no clue as to what Art is and/or what it is when they see it. We have trained our eyes to impressions and away from expressions. How unfortunate. We have been trained to expect, and thereby have trained our expectations. We expect the blazing gun, the exploding car and our hidden senses await these as a signal to be aware - to see. To view less, we are as satisfied as the glutton who dines only on the snacks and is denied the main course. And so it is with sensuality; we must see it all - not feel - but see. Not suggest, but blatantly reveal to the point of shock before we are moved. We have taken a finely tuned Stradivarius and, after stripping it of its strings, have used it as a bludgeon. And the result? Like any appetite that seeks and has been trained to seek immediate gratification, it bypasses all nuances and subtleties, all grace and suggestion, to fill its voracious need: Impress me . . . Give me something more than I had last time . . . AND SHOW ME ALL!
"Result: It takes more and more, bigger and better . . . explosions. Explode my senses or I will not feel. Result: I do not see. I am trained to look past it all for the next big bang. It must me sexual - not sensual. Dress to impress. A thousand meaningless images flashed at me per minute - feeds my eyes, but never touches the heart.
"In contrast: the artist Edward Hopper said before he died: "The older I get the less I need. I could spend the rest of my life just painting the sunlight on the wall." This is sight . . . and appreciation of the wonderfully, delicate and sensitive instrument that he was given.
"Have something - always - for the imagination to feed on . . . .
"My art is often a funnel for madness."
-- John Arthur Williams, discovered as an inspiration in 1988
J. A. Williams. (personal communications, 1997-1998)
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"Development of the individual artist can both recapitulate and foretell the evolution of art. An original artistic vision is both acquired from the surrounding culture and attained through a depth of personal experience and introspection. When artists give form to revelation, their art can advance, deepen, and potentially transform the consciousness of their community.
"Art spans human history, from prelinguistic cavedweller to postmodern city dweller, and stands as witness to an ongoing creative process, an evolution of worldviews, a historic unfolding vision of nature, humanity, cosmos, and consciousness itself. Every work of art embodies the vision of its creator and reveals a facet of the collective mind. Artists offer the world pain and beauty of their soul as a gift to open the eyes of and heal the collective. In order to produce their finest works, artists lose themselves in the energetic flow of creation, become possessed by an art spirit. Art history shows each successive wave of vision flowing through the world's artists. Like the seers and oracles of old, Art sings and shouts from the axis of truth to wake us up to who we are and where we are going.
"The genesis of art is a mystery buried deep in the psyches of our prehistoric ancestors. At least forty thousand years ago people started to draw, paint, and sculpt, and probably to make music. What is this deep need that drives humans to symbolize their feelings and ideas? Art can transfix and exert a strange influence over us; we freely and curiously give it our attention. Art seems to be a spark of the eternal coalesced with a distinct historic moment, driving artists to do something that witnesses their depth, that expresses their most personal and universal insights. Artists compose music, perform theater, paint pictures, sing songs, write poems and books, make cartoons, videos, websites. They somehow make their mark, and their art asks us to open our senses and take in the world anew, to experience and appreciate the full range of life in all its terror and glory, its strangeness and beauty. Art helps us maintain our creative excitement about life, and at its best, art can inspire and transform us. The mission of art advances as individual artists express their culture's view of the world, in a personally hewn collective vision.
"The history of art is a vast record of tens of thousands of artists and their acts of disciplined passion bringing vision to form. Such a program of passionately committed actions could be called a mission. Yet the mission of art cannot be limited or strictly defined with words. It is much as Lao-tzu said of the Tao, "the way" of enlightened wisdom: The Tao that can be put into words is not the real Tao, not the ultimate eternal Tao. The artist's mission may not ever be reduced to words or rationally understood, but its invisible magnetizing presence will infuse an artist's work completely. The goals and visions of artists will vary greatly, depending on their temperament, their nationality, and the epoch in which they live and work. For each culture, artworks come to embody and communicate insights that help to interpret life and take action in the world."
-- Alex Grey, discovered as an inspiration in 1995
Grey, A. (1998). The mission of art. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
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"AS I WALKED THE EARTH WAS DENSE AND RESILIENT BENEATH ME, WITH THE CONSISTENCY AND FEEL OF A CORPSE. I REALIZED THAT WITH EACH STEP MY FEET PRESSED DOWN ON GENERATION UPON GENERATION OF MY DEAD ANCESTORS. THEIR BONES, THEIR ROTTED AND TRANSMUTED FLESH, HAD BECOME THE SUBSTANCE OF THE EARTH. IN EATING THE FOOD THAT HAD BEEN TAKEN FROM THE GROUND, I ATE THEIR ESSENCE - THE FERTILITY THAT SURVIVED THEIR DECOMPOSITION. IN THIS WAY, THEY LIVED THROUGH ME AND IN ME, AS I WOULD IN TURN LIVE THROUGH ANOTHER PERSON'S CONSUMPTION OF FOOD, AIR, WATER. EVEN IN BREATHING I BREATHED A MIXTURE OF THE GASES THEIR BODIES EXUDED IN THE PROCESS OF DECOMPOSITION, OF RE-ASSIMILATION INTO THE BIOSPERE. I BREATHED, ATE, SWALLOWED, AND CONSMED THEIR SOULS, EVERTHING INTERCONECTED, EVERYTHING FEEDING ON ITSELF, SEARCHING, DIGESTING, REITERATING, COGITATING, CHEWING, IMAGINING, REJECTING, KILLING, CONSUMING, REPRODUCING, TWISTING IN ON ITSELF, DYING, DECOMPOSING, AND BEING REBORN, IN AN INFINITE RELECTION OF ITSELF IN AN ABSOLUTE ABSENCE OF CONSCIOUS PERFECTION. IN ORDER TO PROPERLY SEE IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO REMOVE THE SIGHT FROM MY EYES. WHEN I HAD KILLED MY SENSE OF IDENTITY I WOULD SLIP AWAY AND ENTER MYSELF, COMPRISING THE ENTIRE WORLD, OF WHICH I WAS AN INTEGRAL BUT UNNECESSARY PART."
-- Michael Gira, discovered as an inspiration in 1998
Gira, M. (1990). untitled. Retrieved December 27, 2009. www.swans.pair.com
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"Throughout history artists have been obsessed with humanity's Taboos and Phobias, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Sade, Goya, Poe, Dali, Hitchcock, Irving Klaw, Bacon, Dan Oniroku, H.G. Lewis, Hermann Nitsch, Carcass. Our fascination with Fear, Terror and Evil, like Death itself, knows no racial cultural or religious barriers. It resides in our collective unconsciousness, binding us together with ropes we try, but are ultimately unable to sever. Only through violent trauma, or the convulsive viscera of artistic vision does it rise to the surface, reminding us that, in truth, it has been there all along."
-- John Zorn, discovered as an inspiration in 2002
Zorn, J. (1992). Liner notes from John Zorn. Avan 002.
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"The idea of doing nothing is so foreign to our culture because we constantly have to do something or achieve something, even in our free time. Again, coming back to the Tibetans, they told me, ‘When you wake up in the morning and you have enormous amounts of energy what do you do? You go shopping or call friends or do whatever and spend energy, and then you go home, have a drink, get very tired, and sleep. But if you have all this energy, just sit in the chair and do nothing and see what happens. All this energy that would go outwards turns inwards, and something else happens.' You asked about my work in the beginning and whether I sought to create space and to shock. Now more in my work is how I can find a kind of formal structure so that I can actually elevate the spirit of the audience. That's actually my main objective, not to put spirit down - there are so many works that do that, it's too easy to put down the spirit of human beings - but to create some kind of work that is almost empty of content but which still has a kind of pure energy that elevates the spirit of the spectator."
-- Marina Abramovic, discovered as an inspiration in 2003
Abramovic, M. (2008). An interview with Klaus Biesenbach. In Marina Abramovic.
London: Phaidon Press.
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"Thinking, imagining, wondering, searching, reflecting, and questioning are all aspects of formulating a concept of art therapy that serves as the basis for our work. When these methods of developing a conceptual basis for art therapy are drawn from artistic vision, there is integrity to our work. From the inside out, art becomes the thread that links our vision to our practice."
"As art therapists, a crucial aspect of our readiness to provide a hospitable environment for new growth in ourselves and in others is the cultivation of our identity as artists. This cultivation involves a devotion to the arts that both opens us up so that we breathe in life more freely and unsettles us so that what is familiar and comfortable is turned upside-down. It is a never-ending process of refining our sense of artistic vision and our capacity for aesthetic empathy. Empathy, the softening of boundaries that allows us to project our subjective state onto an object or person, occurs in art making as well as in our capacity to resonate with clients' affective experiences.
"The world is full of opportunities to hone my artistic sensibilities - to listen for the poetry in casual conversation, to hear the music in everyday sounds, to bring rapt attention to the potential dramatic enactment in the simplest of experiences, to see the visual artistry in what is right in front of me, to discover the performance art in the small acts of daily life. The sharpening of our artistic sensibilities as therapists begins with careful attention to the world around us. If we practice experiencing our everyday lives through the eyes and ears and hands and hearts of artists, we may become so accustomed to this way of perceiving our world that we experience our clients, our work, our colleagues, and our workplaces in the same way."
-- Cathy Moon, discovered as an inspiration in 2004
Moon, C. (2002). Studio art therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley.
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"My work takes me to extremes. On site, I navigate traditional psychiatric settings experiencing what they hold and speaking in clinical language. Then, to understand my experiences, I immerse myself in my images to find their deeper meaning. My years of clinical work and teaching have been supported by my response art. I define response art as art made by the art therapist to contain, explore and express their work. From the beginning of my practice as an art therapist, I knew that my images could be an important support.
"Those of us who treat people who have been exposed to trauma take on the stories of those we work with. Harm's touch (Fish 2006a) is an original term used to describe how the events and interactions witnessed by therapists, in and outside of therapy, affect them detrimentally.
"We are intentional witnesses in our work. We are also exposed to the pain of others in our daily lives, unintentionally, and without our consent. Harm's touch can occur as we intentionally listen to a client's story, or as we passively watch images of war on television. These experiences have the ability to deepen our empathy, but are not without cost. Harm's touch is unavoidable and cumulative for those who practice deeply. We have the choices about how to address it.
"Response art is a resource for exploring the issues that the images hold. Investigating experiences this way can be a fruitful way to deepen understanding of harm's touch and what experiences have to offer personally and professionally. Images can be a resource over time, offering different information depending on my intention for the investigation, as well as my perspective on the event that inspired the image.
"Harm's touch is a call for self-care. It is an opportunity to be informed, achieve clarity, and form a deeper human connection. Response art can be used to contain intense experiences, explore them to bring deeper understanding, and express them as a vehicle for communication and social action. Addressing harm's touch through response art helps us to be informed by our experiences, making them valuable to others and releasing them without residue."
-- Barbara Fish, PhD., discovered as an inspiration in 2004
Fish, B. (2006). Image-based narrative inquiry of response art in art therapy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Fish, B. (2009). Harm's touch: The gifts and costs of what we witness. Proceedings of the American Art Therapy Association 40th Annual Conference, Dallas, TX, 34.
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"Always, art has been a companion in my thinking, feeling, and sensory life, giving me a mission that I have not experienced in any other way. Art came to me early and never left, a constantly available friend to talk to about my experiences. Art always understood my feelings and thoughts. It helped me prioritize and communicate to myself and others experiences I find noteworthy. I hope that others may see how art accompanied me as I learned about life, experienced emotion and loved my senses, and how all of this helped me to appreciate and love my people, myself and my relationships with other human beings as well as my space and times.
"Art has a history of doing, looking, and understanding how to bring things together and can help people understand how to pull together parts of our life and make them part of something bigger, whole, significant, and I think that's an area that we need to understand more fully. It is not interpretation of art, it is more like an understanding of art that helps us to understand how it was accomplished.
"I see that the movement of science and the movement of art and the movement of education have all been gradually expanding, expanding, expanding to be more or less able to accept within the realm of life experience other ideas, newer ideas, that come from different sources.
"By its hybrid nature, art therapy is a field of provocation and contradiction. The marriage between the visual art process, human psychodynamic process, and therapeutic intervention is uneasy at best. Successful art therapy, however, demands that these contrasting and sometimes conflictual areas be effectively integrated.
"The value of art history in a cultural context helps us to understand and to assess the impact which art has had upon the evolution of that society. . . . Each individual in any community possesses a personal art history. The impact of art which has influenced a person can vary from a calendar image which a child has seen and remembered to the 'great art sanctioned by the society.
"The value of art experience over a life-time creates a sequence of esthetic events which connect to life in such areas as appreciation, creativity, perception, expression, and communication which is valuable information both to the client as well as the therapist.
"My personal history has convinced me that the materials used in art processes are available as bridges toward understanding human connections. This relational approach gives me a better understanding of how the basic elements and principles of art serve as links between artist, object and viewer.
"The process of art making involves many aspects of the brain including sensation, motor, memory, emotion, spatial, symbolic and high-level function.
"Transformation is inherent in art, therapy and in life and materials can serve as examples of this experience.
"Feelings, fantasies and ideas of the artist must be measured against the limitation of the material, his skills and his experience. . . . Each medium (drawing, painting, sculpture, etc.) sets its own limits and quality of imaging so the choice of medium should reflect as closely as possible the vision of the artist."
-- Don Seiden, discovered as an inspiration in 2005
Seiden, D., Calisch, A., & Henley, D. (1989). Graduate art therapy training within a school of professional art. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 16(1), 21-27.
Seiden, D. (1997). Personal art history. [Abstract] Proceedings of the American Art Therapy Association 28th Annual Conference, Milwaukee, WI,90.
Seiden, D. (2001). Mind over matter: The uses of materials in art, education and therapy. Chicago: Magnolia Street Publishers.
Seiden, D. (2006). Artobiography. Chicago: Fisheye Graphic Services.
Vick, R. M. (1996). An interview with Don Seiden. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 13(3), 191-197.
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"To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theater; the essential thing is not to believe that this act must remain sacred, i.e., set apart - the essential thing is to believe that not just anyone can create it, and that there must be a preparation.
"This leads to the rejection of the usual limitations of man and man's powers, and infinitely extends the frontiers of what is called reality.
"We must believe in a sense of life renewed by the theater, a sense of life in which man fearlessly makes himself master of what does not yet exist, and brings it into being. And everything that has not been born can still be brought to life if we are not satisfied to remain mere recording organisms.
"Furthermore, when we speak the word "life", it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach. And if there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames."
-- Antonin Artaud, discovered as an inspiration in 2006
Artaud, A. (1958). The theater and its double. Translated from the French by Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove.
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"We have today the opportunity of confronting people from other worlds, other humanities, other paths. We encounter others who are very impressive spiritually. One cannot ignore this truth and put it out of one's mind without endangering one's own attachment to a particular path. This realization would help a person to continue to be fully attached to the path he or she is following while also respecting, even becoming dazzled, by other paths.
"We cannot understand forms other than those of our own world by going horizontally from one world of forms to another. To really understand in the deepest sense we have to go from our world of form to the Formless in order to gain access to the principles of the forms of an other world.
"Without a sense of that Formless, an inner experience of the Formless, religious encounters beyond the borders of our own religions become, at best, diplomacy or courtesy but not a penetration into the forms of the other, into the sacred world of the other. This courtesy is all right, but it is a minimum. Today we are called to go much deeper than that. We are called to realize the Face of the One in the other."
-- Sayyed Hossein Nasr, discovered as an inspiration in 2006
Nasr, S. H. (2005). An interview with Sayyed Hossein Nasr. Parabola: The search for Meaning, 30 (4), pp OOO.
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"The theater I'm committed to is rotten as soon as it excludes people because of money. If I have to make any compromises due to the rules of the theater, it feels rotten. I have to take to the streets a few times a year to get beyond those rules."
THANX
notes on acknowledgment
as a primary weapon
against thot control and historical
revisionism:
gratitude is a political strategy.
myth and history
myth and intimacy
what's happening?
this is a culture of disappearance.
what proof is there that you exist?
where are the mirrors to reflect
our voice of dissent?
i can't always find myself in
history.
i have descended
from an unruly tribe
of numb cannibals
who thrive off the life force
of indigenous beings
everywhere.
get clear!
it is not money
which builds these ‘FREE'ways.
it is the forgotten blood of witches, slaves, wives, and
fags.
it is the forgotten pain
of daily rape, circumcision,
vivisection, deforestation, and
police brutality.
our collective memory is under
attack.
no wonder that the state
prescribes thorazine.
forget it!
‘forget it' is a national prayer.
we can interrupt this cycle.
now if John acknowledges Joe's
pain,
then John must feel his own,
and Joe will have a place in John's
life
forever.
no disappearance.
you are immortal
in order to die
in peace
everyday.
dare to feel connected.
dare to fight the loss of soul.
to feel to witness to bless
this is our struggle
and our gift.
ps.
if you have never done it,
i prescribe a media fast
to cleanse your self-perception
glasses:
No television, no daily news, nor
hollywood movies
for three to ten years,
and after that, only with support
-- Keith Hennessey, discovered as an inspiration in 2008
Hennessy, K. (2009). Republished 'zine for the performance Saliva, including the article: (February 22nd, 1989). Anarchy Under the Freeway. San Francisco Bay Guardian (San Francsico, CA).
