Monday, December 7, 2015

Journey through the Space between Time


Following The Great Transition blog entry came directives for a new illumination. I was to look for a maze in the form of a Vesica Pisces – the () intersection of two circles. In my search an additional maze turned up that was also to be used. That second form is called a Baltic Wheel. Here are what each looks like:

Vesica Pisces


Baltic Wheel




As you can see, the Baltic Wheel functions here as cross-section through the center of the entry spirals of the Vesica maze –  an entry and exit point.

The arrangement indicated was the Vesica maze in the center and a Baltic Wheel on either side. The left side wheel was to have the entry point facing up, the right side wheel's entry point was to face down.



Two figures needed to be added to this arrangement, both in fetal position. The expiring figure is over-ripe: 



the counter figure, not yet individuated, but moving towards birth: 




I was also given the arched framework that was to hold this coded arrangement, creating large areas of empty space.

Early stage of Matrix after etching

As you can see from this image of the final version, there are two additional elements that have been added.  The story of the light lines ascending and descending from the Baltic Wheels comes in the continuation below.


Matrix - Journey through the Space between Time

On Thanksgiving I had two artist friends come over for a potluck. One noticed Matrix when she walked in and walked over to it. As if compelled, she proceeded to give an all inclusive de-constructive critique of one element after another of piece as it was, though she had a hard time articulating what exactly didn't work. The other artist then walked over to it and began a giddy proclamation: Where's the pregnant woman? Where's the teenager? Where's the old (I can't remember if it was man or woman)…?” Perhaps one would call this re-constructive criticism? It was all so curious coming from these two who heretofore have expressed nothing but love & support my work. I was all the more amazed since I had not solicited any input. Despite my astonished amusement, I understood from the spontaneous, well-intentioned abuse, that there was likely something missing in the work's symbolic code that kept it from being intelligible, that is to say, resonant with what is known within the human cellular experience. So that night I brought Matrix into my bedroom in hopes of receiving some additional instructions.

I had a dream.

My dream Nov 26th, Thanksgiving night

I was wandering the streets seeing if I could find somebody who could tell me what I would find if I were to go through the maze and come out the other end. I saw a library and went in. The librarian was a leanish man with glasses who sat me down at a table and wanted to engage with relish in a debate about the validity or invalidity of belief in reincarnation. I felt annoyed with this guy who was on some intellectual trip and left to go back outside in search of someone who could show me what it was like to come through and out of the maze. I then came upon an old woman whom I seemed to know. She was pretty no-nonsense. She told me to follow her and she would show me what I was looking for. We came to a field and I remember us rolling on what felt like a soft grass. I kept my eyes closed. We kept rolling and rolling until I felt the feeling of “arrival”. I opened my eyes and found myself facing a wall in a kind of anteroom with two openings – one behind me from which I had just come and one to the left which was apparently an entrance to another place (an exit from the maze). My first impression was that the space seemed dark – not dark dark, but a room which had no windows and no particular light source, though I could see just fine. There was light coming from the entrance behind me – bright sunlight, as it were. The exit seemed to be to an internal place that didn't have it's own source of light, but did have some form of reflected light that was less intense. The shape of the room was like this:

The form of this anteroom is the shape of the Hebrew letter Hei lying on it's side and in mirrored form.

Hei is the number 5, the number of potential Souls within the human experience.

Hei is the Breath, the root of the Verb of Being. 
I turned back to find the old woman who was ready to move on. I pulled out a calendar to see when we could meet again. The calendar page was blank but was full of small empty squares, except for one square that contained the number “5” about two or three columns from the left in and several rows down. The moment I looked at that 5 I knew it was the day she was going to die.

The only other part of the dream that sticks with me is that I looked down at her left knee, which was a kind of a colorless transparent white. Though I saw no bruising, I knew it had suffered some injury, probably from all that rolling. I remember wondering what I should do about it, if I should be concerned about her injury. I was also thinking that I should thank her for showing me the way. Neither seemed appropriate at the time.

I have pondered the meaning of “knee”. I woke up feeling the word to be significant. Upon waking I couldn't think of anything that might signify. After some consideration I transliterated “knee” into Hebrew - Nun Yud – equivalent to the number 60 in gematria. Sixty is the number where things begin to transmute or take a quantum leap from plane to plane. Sleep is 1/60 of death; a dream is 1/60 of prophecy... 60 is also associated with the Priestly Blessing and the transcendent light of Havaya.

I awoke shortly after the dream and looked at Matrix sitting on the floor by the bookshelf in my bedroom, wondering what alterations I needed to make in order to incorporate the dream teachings. I saw where a single line on each side could create the number 5 symbolic language of the anteroom.   






Ultimately, the entire figure takes on this double 5 formation if viewed from a depth dimension where the space between the junction of the 5's is the saturation space of the Vesica Pisces:





Matrix - Journey through the Space between Time
Illuminated 



Monday, October 12, 2015

Fundraiser for London Exhibit - UPDATE 10/30/15


Sometimes you just have to jump off the deep end and hope there's a life guard.

UPDATE 10/30/15
Thanks to all who have been so supportive in jumping off the deep end with me. I'm afraid that the reality was not quite equal to the appearance. 
Having submitted a full proposal and asking to set the dates of the exhibit, I received a delayed response that included a Terms & Conditions form for my "perusal" which made it very clear that I was certainly welcome to exhibit my work in the Sacred Space Gallery -- for a hefty price.  

I am in the process of returning the funds that were so generously donated.  I am very blessed by your friendship and buoyed by your awesome support.   

Friday, August 14, 2015

The Great Transition

It's the time of transition into the month of Elul (an acronym of Ani LiDodi V'Dodi Li – “I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine”), the month before the next Hebrew New Year and Yovel.

I find myself wandering on the other side of the veil, having gone to the cremation of a beloved woman of our community at day break yesterday, my mind is lingering on the profound, personal transition that awaits us.

During the cremation ceremony (see Crestone End of Life) there was a recitation from Savitri, the epic poem of Sri Aurobindo that went right to where I lived. That  and the poem Tagore poem set to music by Sylvia Hazlerig that we are singing in Sacred Song are very present today.

As it happens, I also received guests to my studio yesterday and spent some time focusing on Reflection & Passage – Through the Thinning Door. 

All three are below. 


Immersed in voiceless internatal trance
The beings that once wore forms on earth sat there
In shining chambers of spiritual sleep. 


Passed were the pillar-posts of birth and death,
Passed was their little scene of symbol deeds,
Passed were the heavens and hells of their long road;
They had returned into the world's deep soul. 


All now was gathered into pregnant rest:
Person and nature suffered a slumber change.
In trance they gathered back their bygone selves,
In a background memory's foreseeing muse
Prophetic of new personality
Arranged the map of their coming destiny's course:
Heirs of their past, their future's discoverers,
Electors of their own self-chosen lot,
They waited for the adventure of new life. 


A Person persistent through the lapse of worlds,
Although the same for ever in many shapes
By the outward mind unrecognisable,
Assuming names unknown in unknown climes
Imprints through Time upon the earth's worn page
A growing figure of its secret self,
And learns by experience what the spirit knew,
Till it can see its truth alive and God. 


Once more they must face the problem-game of birth,

The soul's experiment of joy and grief
And thought and impulse lighting the blind act,
And venture on the roads of circumstance,
Through inner movements and external scenes
Traveling to self across the forms of things. 


Into creation's centre he had come.
The spirit wandering from state to state
Finds here the silence of its starting-point
In the formless force and the still fixity
And brooding passion of the world of Soul. 


All that is made and once again unmade,
The calm persistent vision of the One
Inevitably re-makes, it lives anew:
Forces and lives and beings and ideas
Are taken into the stillness for a while;
There they remould their purpose and their drift,
Recast their nature and re-form their shape. 


Ever they change and changing ever grow,
And passing through a fruitful stage of death
And after long reconstituting sleep
Resume their place in the process of the Gods
Until their work in cosmic Time is done.

Savitri - The World-Soul - Canto XIV



NONE lives for ever, brother, and nothing lasts for long. 
Our life is not the one old burden; our path is not the one long journey.
One sole poet has not to sing one aged song.
The flower fades and dies; but he who wears the flower has not to mourn for it forever.
Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.

There must come a full pause to weave perfection into music.
Life droops toward its sunset to be drowned in the golden shadows.
Love must be called from its play to drink sorrow and be borne to the heaven of tears. 
Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.
Beauty is sweet to us, because she dances to the same fleeting tune with our lives.
Knowledge is precious to us, because we shall never have time to complete it.
All is done and finished in the eternal Heaven.
But earth’s flowers of illusion are kept eternally fresh by death.
Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.

excerpt from Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener



Reflection & Passage - Through the Thinning Door

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Bee Light




 Here is the illumination which came to fruition in the last few days.

The first name it  received was Invocation.

The instructions were very specific: 1 bee, 2 bee-ish flowers and an 8-fold form within a mihrab.

The mihrab form (the arched doorway shape) is suggestive of a womb space.  This illumination followed on the heals of Mihrab ar-Rahman which, itself,  contains an 8- fold form arising into aliveness from out of the "Breath of the Compassionate".  The similarity here suggests that there is a "coming into beeing" happening here.  The particular 8-fold luterose I was directed to use here appears to be made up of pre-sequenced bee parts, sort of a reservoir of elements.

Even though 8 is the Source, a hexagon lies in the very center towards which an actual bee can orient.




...and now for the light...

Not enough of that sweet, honey colored, mica left to use here.  Remembering that amber mica sheet I get is made by fusing mica flakes with shellac,  I saturated a piece of pellon  (translucent insulating material) with some recently acquired amber shellac.  Lo -- it yielded a very similar appearance to the mica, only a little grainier.  So close but not it.  I then looked to see what kind of rice papers I might have to mitigate the graininess and found a remnant square of blue mulberry paper which closely matched the blue metalic wax used in this piece.

unilluminated luterose where only the mulberry paper is visible

 Interesting, but missing the honey.

Playing around, I placed the shellac infused pellon behind the mulberry paper and illuminated from behind. Oh my! Bullseye!



I love to sit, gazing at this piece in muted light, where illumination comes in through a window but the bee itself either comes to light or remains in shadow.   I love how it transforms as the ambient light changes throughout the day. I am moved to feel the nature of things coming in and out of being.  Invocation as a title was no longer cutting it for me and I asked if there might be an Arabic title to which I might better relate.  

What I heard was Nur an-Nahl - "Light of the Bee."   

In light of that, my own soul finds comfort.


Nur an-Nahl/ Invocation Acid etched copper with fretwork and engraving; oxides, vitrial enamels, metalic wax and amber shellac; backed in Japanese mulberry paper and pellon infused with shellac; mounted on cedar.  
17”x12.25”x1”

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Enlettered Essence

"The Holy Essence of Blessing transformed itself into letters in order to take up residence within the underworlds"
Midrash Tanchuma, Naso 16

This latest illumination is about being as "enletterment". Life is encoded, as we know.  From the standpoint of Hebraic Mystical Tradition, the Hebrew letters themselves .are the matrix of mattering.  All aspects of Life are embedded with a resonant frequency, a song cycle.  

It was wonderful to find that the central spinning geometry precisely incorporated all 22 Hebrew letters beginning with Alef in the center.
work in progress

Two bees find there place to imbibe Divine nectar from the flowers.

I have the sense that the spheres on either side are the sefirot of cHesed and Gevura - "fluid benevolence" and "restraint,"  harmonizing the elements.

I thought of this at first as a threshold piece, something in a garden, maybe a library's garden.  The vertigris patina is so subtly lovely however, that I'd rather see it a bit more protected.  Still as threshold sema, perhaps, but at the covered entrance to a home or a library.  I even think it would make an exquisite crown to Hekhál or Aron Hakodesh (Torah Ark) within an intimate setting, or as a focus piece on a mantle or within a circumscribed sacred space.

The size is relatively small - 25" wide by 14" high by 1" deep.  Lighting from behind would amplify the swirling pattern of the glass plate behind the central geometry and the textured glass behind the two sefirot.

Acid-etched copperwork illumination with cutwork backed in textured glass. Letters are engraved.  Framed in cedar.



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Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Dynamic Intervention

Acid Etched Copper in two parts with fretwork, engraving and oxides.  
Fretwork backed in amber mica. 
29"x16.75" x 1.5"

Here is the latest illumination to unfold in my studio. The name I was given for it is Dynamic Intervention. I can tell you some of the elements that I believe I understand.  Anything that you see here that sheds more light on the meaning of this piece is, as always, much appreciated.  If you aren't up to posting a comment then please email me (as usual).

The seed for this copperwork arrived with an investigation of the Hindu feminine divinity known as Aditi - the power underlying temporal reality and the primordial energy that powers the universe.

According to that gratifying, ubiquitous and omniscient source, Wikipedia :
Aditi (अदिति "limitless") is mother of the gods (devamatar) and all twelve zodiacal spirits from whose cosmic matrix the heavenly bodies were born. As celestial mother of every existing form and being, the synthesis of all things, she is associated with space (akasa) and with mystic speech (Vāc).  

That reference to 12 caught me immediately as the thread I was to follow and that you can see expressed in this copperwork as the theme of 12 around 1 in various iterations.

As I continue to explore the meaning of the symbolic elements I was directed to include, I came upon an article which, within its discussion of quantum string theory suggests that 
"Our civilization is out of balance, and it all starts with our God image, (God, a.k.a. the creator, the field of intention, the universal super consciousness, the matrix of all matter, divine intelligence). We have overlooked God's other half, the Goddess energy, the healing and transformative power of heavenly mother."  

To paraphrase the article:
Rather than the 3 dimensional definition of reality that is limited to hard animate matter we see, sense touch and feel with our five senses, matter does not arise from hard animate building blocks or particles of anything solid. Atoms are 99.9999% empty space, and, recent theories of Quantum physics describe a "field of infinite possibility" from which all matter arises. This energy field has even been described as being responsive to the intentions of the observer.

Perhaps it is the response to the intentions of the observer that is implied by the name "Dynamic Intervention."   Dynamic Intervention may be a pictograph of an evolutionary process (suggested by the DNA spheres) that is emerging out of our collective "mattering" intentions. 
 








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