The Cloak Wants to be Performed

This is the Cloak I began early this year, at that time I was calling it "Cape."  I went to an artist's residency in Mexico with the intention of making a fiber cocoon, in which to perform my embodiment process.  What I ended up making was a wearable piece that must be performed to fulfill its purpose, as the testimony that it is.

As of now I have publicly perfomed the Cloak three times.  It could be said the Cloak has performed itself through me.

Here is the latest performance, done with a very small group in Egg Harbor, WI.  The final piece lasted over 2 hours.

A few video segments...

In this segment I explain how the Cloak came to be...

Visit my YOUTUBE channel here 

Before that performance I did a livestream performance with the Cloak, which involved a reading of "The Ship of Skeletons."

And finally, the first performance, which took place in Mexico, at the Zocalo in Puebla. 

 

It has become evident to me that the Cloak is a garment of initiation, and being an initiatic process, the Cloak is changing as I change.  The entire experience is metamorphic, being documented as a living testimony to the experience of becoming through change in the time and the world I live in.

More information about the residency ARQUETOPIA

                                     

Reflecting on Art as it Reflects Us.

“Art is a mirror to nature.”  Shakespeare

House in the Woods 1989

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality

but a hammer with which to shape it.”  Bertolt Brecht

The Gulf Stream 1995

“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.”  Ernst Fischer

Watch Man 1997

“My art is the knife the tears through the surface of reality; 
then it becomes the needle and thread that stitches it back together.”   Dawn Patel

Ancestor Dress 2016   photo credit: bloomphotographybykara

Break (it) Down

The Prophet             by Kahlil Gibran

And a woman spoke, saying Tell us of Pain.

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over the fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen,

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseeen’

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

Mariposa 1994

Break (it) Down

I have been thinking about the tension of opposites.  Engaging with the world in a time of turmoil has flung me into the tension of opposites.  I am beginning to see how this experience, if not consciously broken down, leads to a breakdown.  The last time I experienced it I gave into the grief for a very long time.  This time I am stepping back from the world when needed, for self care and reflection.   Sometimes I have to get to the point of spinning my wheels (and flailing my arms) before I realize it is time to step back.  Painting has a great deal to do with stepping back, for my approach to creative work includes hours spent in meditation, gathering information, shifting and understanding.  The painting is only the tangible record of it.  Painting is the material world, the body of work.  The rest is spirit.  

Journey 1995

   

Love for the world creates a desire to enter the world.  That, and the realization that it is not possible to retreat from life.  It follows you and pulls you back.  The more “alone” you make yourself the more your senses adapt and hear the smallest heartbeat, the tiniest call.  You feel the pulse of the world as acutely as if you were standing in the center of it.  It has lead me to a very conscious decision to reconnect.  One could say I picked a fine time.  I know I am not the only one.  This love can be so easily transformed into grief with the day to day experience of witnessing the world we love.  My grief has turned into action, but that has thrown me into a world of activity that is also motivated by fear and anger.  The fear, grief and anger are all so related they end up on the same team.  My conditioned response is frustration, inarticulately communicated to friends and acquaintances… leading to more frustration, of course, and ultimately frustration with myself.   

Untitled 1995

Jung’s theory on the tension of opposites concludes if one stays in the discomfort of this tension a third thing arises.  A “quantum leap”  of thinking and being, ultimately of consciousness.  It cannot be predicted because it is new, born out of opposites.  Try to force it would be like trying to determine the personality and destiny of your unborn child.  Sometimes we have a “feeling” about these things, sometimes even visions.  But in these bodies, in this world, we still have to wait and see.  How can I remain with my love for the world and my grief without breaking in half.  It seems only with the qualities of joy and hope, which are not always my natural states.  For me joy and hope have to be worked at, earned through understanding.  It is not just an intellectual understanding, it is a whole body and spirit experience, my definition of faith.

Faith 1995

I go into the world and am pulled by the tensions.  I act and react, often in ways I regret, and then return to my inner world where I can quietly break it down.  This is a conscious act, brought about by the same conditions an emotional breakdown would be.  I am approaching it these days as “beating it [a breakdown] to the punch.”   Taken to the point of a breakdown, I am able to break down the opposites and see them more clearly.  In this understanding I find myself in a more open and honest state, where trust, not in a determinist future, but in the vast universe of the present, can grow.

Juggernaut 1995

I found these older paintings of mine to be surprisingly effective for illustrating the tension of opposites that I am so aware of today.  Something to revisit in my work this year....  Perhaps my paintings will see the third thing before my conscious mind can grasp it.

The Female Center

I sometimes hear voices.  I kept pretty quiet about that my entire life, because, well, I was afraid of being judged by minds that do not understand such things.  This has been a month of letting go of fears... so that one's gone too.

In the early morning hours I sometimes hear a voice, telling me one thing at a time, helping me understand. It's always been a fatherly voice, until yesterday.  Yesterday the voice was female. It told me to Enter. 

The words were "Put yourself inside of me."  (If you immediately thought about sex read the next paragraph.  If not, you can skip it.)

The sexuality of the phrase, while undeniable, could easily become a distraction from the larger lesson of the words.  Making female power centered on sex is a way of taking away female power, by limiting it to one dimension of human activity.  If we as a culture had a healthy relationship with feminine power, then the relationship between sexuality and all the other forces that drive us as humans would exist in harmony.

I reflected on the words I had heard, "Put yourself inside of me" until I finally decided to paint.

My first interpretation of the voice was that of the earth, the mother, the female.

Fire inside, fire in the center.  What to enter?  The Center.  It is in the entering that the understanding begins to unfold, through the feeling, through the energy, through the very act of entering.

We are at a time in history when we have so much to look back on and sift through.  Books and knowledge excite me, offering so many paths of thought and exploration for the mind.  But, in the end, I have to get out of my head for the clarity I need.  The clarity that is needed for peace comes from calling my ancestors and finding my center.  It comes from a place that cannot be defined with words.  

The knowing that comes from the mind and the knowing that comes from the heart's center do not need to be in competition.   Coexisting, they work together, for we are in the world, as well as the spirit, at this time.  This is the conflict I see around me, that of opposing poles.  How does one shift that magnetic push of opposition into an alignment?   By entering the center, where the forces no longer push or pull.  Rather than split the atom, enter it.

What my ancestors and spirit are telling me is to release fear.  This happens by facing fears, not suppressing them or pushing them away.  Looking at fear and then letting it go is the way through the anxiety of our time.  It leads to a centered calm.  Everything must change, in a profound and all encompassing way.  That change is happening, and in order to adjust to the change, a strong and centered female energy is needed.  And this is an energy that is misunderstood in a patriarchal world, where equality is often sought on male terms, and feminine power is still confined by those very terms. 

The imbalance has been focused on male, light, linear thought, hierarchy and force.  We are witnessing its final stages.   It cannot be tamed, let alone fought , with more of its own .  A receptive, dark, female energy encircles it and tames it, not with force but with unimaginable power.  This happens on every level of human activity, from the most intimate to the most public, through personal relationships to political struggles.  All we need to do is look to nature and spirit to bring our human world back into balance.  Starting with, but not stopping at, ourselves.

Female is reception.  It is Yin.  It is the stillness in the center of the storm.   It is the heat from the center of the earth.  

That is where I enter.  

The Holes in the Fabric of Forgetting

Ancestry Cloth is an esoteric act, a symbolic act, a metaphor for the immigrant, for the nomad, for the wanderer.  It is a daily meditation, weaving together a forgetful monochromatic present with the colors and patterns just beyond memory.

When I'm cutting and stitching, I often think about Indigenous peoples around the world, who were ripped from their homes and taught to forget.  When I listen to elders who are still connected to the sentience of the universe, I know what was almost lost, a wisdom for the present that we need for our survival.  Despite the suffering, the abuse and the losses along the way,  Indigenous cultures, by some miraculous triumph of the human spirit, have endured.  Their memories are not meant to be appropriated into the Colonial Culture.  Their memories teach us how to regain our own.  Those of us Enculturated into Colonial Culture have forgotten so much.  Yet, we have the memories of Ancestors in our bodies, calling to us.  We are also survivors, waking up to those quiet voices waiting to be heard, when we slow down and listen.
The survivors of this world, those who remember, create a strong and beautiful mosaic of memories from the fragments that remain.

I think of the dream I had as a child, everyone around me turned to skeletons as I hid to save my skin.  I can't get this dream out of my mind, my childhood nightmare haunts my waking hours. It is no wonder I sew.  I sew this cloth, made of layers and layers of past and present.  I am creating a new skin.  It often looks like the hide of a animal.  Sometimes I see earth and the fire within, and sometimes it is a topography of the soul.  Other times I see rhythms of a distant dance, ebbing and flowing through the holes in the fabric of forgetting.. 

I am making a new skin for the skeletons: connective tissue for myself and my human family.  I am making a cloth to cover our bones and to make us remember.  They are the Time Traveling Champion Capes for defending the spirit.  They are the Memory Headdresses for channeling what we have always known.

They are dresses of Armor, to warm us in the cold and steel our nerves when we cannot see through the darkness our forgetfulness has left us.  They are the ceremonial attire for the dancer who spins to the music that brings collective memories back to the surface.

They are the wardrobe for the Nomad on her long Journey Home.

Special thanks to photographer Kara Counard http://bloomphotographybykara.com

Ancestors - India

To speak of Ancestors of to speak of the past in its human form.   

Dad leaving India

An Ancestor Cape I finished this week

All my life I’ve thought about India.  Before I was born my father left on a ship.  It set his life on a course that took him further and further away from his birthplace.  And all my life, even before I knew it, I have been drawing and painting, and crafting a path back.  

Miniature Painting: The Victory of Ali Quli Khan on the river Gomti-Akbarnama 

When I was a very small child I drew meticulous miniature drawings, with battle scenes and leafy trees, looking like something out of the Mughal Empire, without the skilled hand of a Court Painter.  It was like that all through my childhood, sometimes just a shape or a pattern of curves, or a color palette, would bring a little India back into my present day life.  When I began to recognize this it seemed a bit like magic, as if the voices of the past were whispering in my ear.  Very possibly the books about India that were scattered throughout the house, as well as a family trip right after my tenth birthday had more to do with these visual tendencies; either way my interest in Ancestors was sparked.  By the time I was a graduate student in the arts I focused a great deal of study on Indian history and art, even taking a Hindi summer course with UWMadison’s own Virendra Ji, where I flailed through the intensive study of a language that felt surprisingly foreign to me. 

I find it ironic now, reflecting on my personal quest in the nineties, when I was so focused on India Past.  Simultaneously millions of young Indians were pursuing new careers, moving to cities like Chennai and Mumbai, and looking towards a American ideal of the self made man as a new way of seeing themselves and their futures.  While they were casting away Old India I was catching it in my net and spreading it out on notebooks and canvases, creating a visual incantation of a past I had so little connection to, apart from the blood in my veins.  What we were all doing was putting holes in the walls that blocked out the light of our imaginations.  For me the light filtered bits of a past where I imagined I belonged, and for the millions of young Indians at the end of the 20th century,  a yet to be imagined future.  I wonder now if we had torn down the wall completely would we have found each other standing hesitantly on the other side?

My painting: Mughal's Climb 1996 

At the time, focused on All Things Indian, I was forging a path back through the terrain of weeds and heavy brush that had grown in my father’s footsteps.  He had left it all behind a generation earlier and my idealistic quest for cultural belonging both amused and annoyed him.  I was poking holes in the veneer of Being an American - something he had worked so hard and long to afford us.  But right under the surface of the veneer was a richer history that my restless fingers picked away at.  Of course the holes I created were small and only offered a tiny glimpse of the full picture.  They were almost harmless, like tiny moth holes in a wool sweater.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t unravel the mystery of my own past enough to understand my place in the present.  In Virendra’s Hindi class I realized I had less in common with the Indian kids than the Caucasians.  But the reality, that I belonged to neither gnawed at me enough to make me continue picking and poking, until my whole world looked like Swiss Cheese.

Layered Print, one of many I made in the 90's

With all those holes in my psyche it was time to start the process of REPAIR.  And so began a lifetime cycle of tear and repair , that has revealed to me who I am as much as it has made me.  

Layers, Labyrinths and Ancestors

Mughals Dream  1996

I've been so busy sewing cloth lately I can't find time to write, but I have thoughts floating through my mind that threaten to leave me if I don't give them my full attention.  Thoughts can be fickle and needy that way.  But perhaps they are just realistic, most anything ignored fails to thrive.  

I have a photo shoot scheduled and I want lots of new pieces of Ancestry Cloth.  The photos will be taken in the woods where my father's ashes were spread.  For me this is a gesture of respect and honor, was well as a beckoning for energy from Dad, who now exists in the Ancestor realm. 

  

Innocent and Kind  1994

                              

Ancestry Cloth 2016

As I sew I think about layers.  I have painted in layers for years.  These layers represent time and memory and the limits of both.  How we view things from the present changes the image of the past. It is impossible to see everything at once, so we pick and choose the details to focus on and those to cover with new experience.  Which brings me to patterns, because it is our patterns, of thought, of language, of noticing, that determine the final image.

While I'm sewing and cutting Ancestry Cloth I realize I am doing the very same thing, but (at the moment) in abstractions.  Because I am creating these patterns and layers of abstract shapes my mind is free to take them to places unrestricted by a storyline.  They are simply layers and patterns, the ancestors talking to me and me talking back.

Ancestry Cloth, back view 2016

I have also been noticing my stitches spiraling into labyrinths.  So I think about labyrinths. There's the trap of the labyrinth in the story of the Minotaur.  But there's also those in the Buddhist Stupas, a spiral walk intended to center your mind.  These are the labyrinths that intrigue me most.  This stitching centers my mind in a way that makes me think at times I can almost articulate the emotion of this work.  

This emotion feels a lot like caring, and it is possible that it is love.

Adinkra  2014

"Love is the only Engine of Survival"  L. Cohen  (from "The Future")

Ancestor Dress 2016

A Brief Introduction to Ancestry Cloth

I made a promise to myself that I would start to write about art again when I felt like I had something to say, something worth putting out into the world.  That’s a heavy proposition.  Who has something relevant to say?  With all the voices on the internet, in the news and on the street I have been leaning towards silence lately… silently making clothing and art and not saying much.

Now, after much silence I feel that I have a few things to say.  I don’t think it will change the world or anyone’s vote in the next election.  Nonetheless I have had some revelations in the studio and at the sewing machine and in the shop.  Now that the days are getting shorter, the leaves are just starting to fall, the reflection sets in. So, here I go.

Ancestors.

We all have them.  Mine are often a mystery to me but at the same time I am very aware of them.  They are always with me.  Without embarking upon any religious or magical worldview, I can say with all certainty that I know my ancestors walk with me AND I do not know exactly what that means.  Could it be that being in a family that has crossed oceans away from the PLACE of their ancestors makes it more difficult to know?  Or could it make it more poignant and pressing, a connection fused from a stronger longing than any native could know?  I don't resist the areas of “not knowing” because I love the mystery; in fact I love it so much more than the certainty.  While certainty provides some comfort, the mystery is alive, ongoing and always changing.  Without an acceptance of unknowing, all becomes stagnant and dead.   So everything I create must in fact express that belief more than any other.  If I have any religious belief at all it is that 

change is the only constant, and mystery is the only certainty.  

 

And I have a mysterious certainty that my ancestors walk through this life with me, changing me as I change them.  

Out of this belief of mine a fabric took form, and I call it Ancestry Cloth.  This cloth is formed from days of destruction and rebuilding.  I accidentally discovered the process, which makes it even more special to me, because I don’t really believe in accidents.  Sometimes “accidents” happen because we are not present, and missing the signs we misstep.  But sometimes “accidents happen because we are very present, acting on intuition and listening to the silence and seeing the unseen. 

Many of us call this serendipity.

  

One sunny day this summer I “accidentally” distressed  (it was actually falling apart!) some very expensive fabric in the process of drawing with bleach.  The creative and somewhat desperate solutions I came up with to bring it back led to some telling discoveries, about fabric and clothing as well as about myself.  

Because I make the Ancestor Cloth it is specifically a story of my ancestors, and I hope to be able to articulately tell that story in words and pictures in the coming months.  But it is often in the most personal stories that the most universal truths are told, so I can only hope that my paths of destruction and repair are metaphors that many can understand, whether or not they have walked the immigrants path.  After all, we are a country of immigrants, with the exception of the the original Americans, the native tribes of this land.  (And perhaps Native Americans have had to repair the most destruction of all, as it is still happening.)

The final stage in the Ancestry Cloth is the “wearing” and that is, I believe, when the magic occurs.  

The Journey

It's one of many overused phrases in our culture, that, once full of possibility, have become slogans that sell everything. (especially cars)  But... nevertheless... I have to start this post with these words:

It is not the destination.

It IS the Journey.

Here I am.  50 years old.  Still figuring out what painting means to me.  Well, not in every sense.  Not in the deep down in my gut way, the way it has pulled me deep down into my interior... in that sense I've always known.  But understanding the relationship between me and painting and the world, that's another story.

I finished another painting this morning.  I thought it was finished a few days ago, but I was wrong.  That happens a lot. 

Here's what it looked like two days ago:

Not too different, but not quite right.  Quite right is a very understated emotional moment when I have pulled out everything the painting is able to give me.  I just know it, if I'm paying attention.  Paying attention to what?  Paying attention to the painting, while equally paying attention to my gut. By that I mean a feeling deep inside.  A deep feeling that is truthful, not "nice" not "pretty" not what I necessarily "want" to hear.  

I believe Truth is something you feel.  It's a heavy and quiet feeling that slows down my breathing and centers me.  I know it and I trust it.  The more I practice this the more I have no need to react to anyone else's "truth" and, therefore, I find it easier to be in the world without being swallowed up by the world.

This is why I paint.

I looked back at the photos I took of this painting in it's many stages of development.  As it evolved it had many looks, and some are probably more appealing visually that the final product.  Luckily for me I have no longer set my sights on painting for profit.  I'm not worried about what other people want, what would be prettier, more pleasing and more trendy.  What I'm worried about is pulling something out of a painting. Something that is inside of me, something that is in the air around me. Something in between me and all the forces outside of this body and mind I reside in.

One

This is how it started.  A grid and a wall and couple of cats and a man.  He's reaching for a tree.  And that tree, reaching out of the ground, reaching, like the man.  And walls, rooms, spaces... keeping everything separate and trapped and safe.  And a ceiling that has stopped the tree from reaching any further.  It might look pretty, but it's got to be resolved, because I know there's a problem that needs to be solved, a question to answer.

Two

How I get to that answer is to just keep going.  In the beginning I just let myself act on intuition.  To look, respond, look again and respond again.  And on and on again.  I'm in this state of consciousness that is everything but literal, linear and verbal.  I can look back on it and tell you what I did (in this case I defined what I was seeing with black lines)  but at the time I probably couldn't explain it.  Just doing.  With paint

Three

By day three I realize there's something bigger than all the little parts.  I try to pull that out, with shadows.  At this point I thought it might be figure, just the head and shoulders.  A larger version of the little man, keeping everything else contained within itself.  The grid has become an animate living thing, which still has elements of the grid inside of itself.

Four

And then that being, be it a man, a woman, god, mind... whatever that was it has been swallowed up by the parts again, but this time the grid has become an organic web.  This was a really pretty part of the journey.  I wish I had taken a better photo.  I think in the future I will set up a good camera with a tripod and be ready to capture these stages in a good high res file... just in case I want to print it up really large and enjoy this part.  It is a beautiful place.  I liked being there.

Five

Day five, the image takes a radical turn.  No longer moving through the larger plane of the world, a path has been chosen.  The original character, the "subject" of this painting, has entered a new and protected space.  The space, inside of himself, is isolated but bright.  He's no longer swallowed up by the structure of the grid, nor the constant movement of the web.  He has a focus and stillness that was lost.  He is ready for transformation from within.

Six

In day six he begins to see the web that he is.  His own little cocoon begins to form a body and he is no longer a small little man but a little piece of something else that is just being born.  His body becomes part of a pattern, of something larger, something that is not yet itself.  I lost focus for a little while here and indulged in all the other busy things happening in the painting.  All the other busy things are just similar stories unfolding, all at once.  Every living thing that is born on this planet starts out like the first single cell organism to divide and, within itself, discover the endless nature of life.  I felt like I may have taken a giant step backwards, getting all caught up in simple forms when I thought I was already past that.  This part of the painting was a struggle.

Seven

The struggle is not to be avoided.  I seem to have to learn this over and over.  I want to curl up under a blanket and turn on Netflix and think about fake little worlds and dramas that are easy and entertaining. Metaphorically I have done this many times.  And literally.  But this painting keeps telling me this, "Come back,  attend.  The movement and the stillness and the looking and the thinking keep it going, keep it evolving and this is why you paint." 

That little red man wants to stop, he wants to hide and he wants to sleep, but he keeps reaching and he becomes a pattern on the wing of a butterfly.  The butterfly needs him to let go, in order to break out of its chrysalis.  It doesn't need him to hold on and be "strong."  It needs him to change with the other changes that are happening all around him.  Not to be frozen in time, not to be afraid, not to be lazy, stubborn or proud.  Not to follow and not to lead, just to evolve.

Eight

He doesn't let go, he is unable to.

Nine

And I realize that this story has been told, it has been pulled out of me.  The butterfly is frozen because the man could not let go and this is not a happy ending.  But it is not really an ending.  It a painting and it is one of many, I hope.  It is a lesson and I like lessons.  

And that is why I paint.

And our foolish man blows his trumpet triumphantly,
thinking he has won when he has actually killed the forming butterfly.
The butterfly is now a ghostly shell in which he is trapped. 

To be continued...