Tag: artworks

shared joy is twice joy, shared sorrow is half sorrow (2021)

ceremony mandala series #2

rooted in the form of the truth mandala (stick, stone, dry leaves and empty vessel) and incorporating the wheel of the year, this piece reflects the physical evidence of the multiple crises faced by the community within the local social ecology over the past year: the fires of fall 2020 (represented by charcoal/biochar), the ice storm of winter 2021 (represented by wood chips – the product of many fallen tree limbs), the respiratory pandemic of spring 2020 (represented by dessicated leaves), and the social unrest (represented by stone / gravel reflecting our urban environment). the X shape can also be read as the “extinction rebellion” logo, reflecting the ecological moment that these crises are rooted in

being framed, the piece takes ecological materials, which are loose, living, changing, compostable, and places them in the context of art which we usually experience as fixed, ephemeral, memorial.

exhibitions:
salem art association’s “better together” community show, salem, OR july 2021
art center’s “what would nature do?” juried exhibition, corvallis, OR oct-nov 2021
big heart gathering, lyle, WA may 2024

truth mandala (2020)

land art installation, costa rica, 2020. beginning of ceremony mandala series

dry leaves representing our sorrows, which demonstrate our caring for the world
stone for our fears, and the courage to rise above them
wood for our anger, born of our longing for truth and justice
an empty vessel for our confusion, our emptiness, which is met by our creativity
in these times great truths are emerging, even more powerful than the events which caused us to see, more than specific acts of god, limitations of men

joanna macy, introducing the truth mandala, says: “truth telling is like oxygen, it enlivens us. without it we grow confused and numb. it is also a homecoming, bringing us back to powerful connection and basic authority.”

song circles

I have been singing in song circles since discovering universal spirituality, ecstatic circle dances and spiritual music within the Unitarian Universalist youth community. having been steeped in circle singing for 25+ years, I started leading song circles in 2015 and find myself as a song carrier and song tender in the emerging circuit of song village gatherings.

2015-2016 Dances of Universal Peace. Canticle Farm, Oakland, CA.
2015-2016 Heartspace Healing Salons. Holistic Underground Collective @ IYI, San Francisco, CA.
2016 6th Annual International Sound Healing Conference. Vocal chorus with Kismet-Mahal Ensemble, musical director, Evelie Delfino Sales Posch. Sausalito, CA.
2018 50th Anniversary of the Dances of Universal Peace,   Mentorgarten, San Francisco, CA.
2019-2023 Cantando La Vida, Finca Amrta, San Ysidro de el General, Costa Rica.
2023 – Singing The Soul Alive, Sedona, AZ. Circle Leader, Song-Leading Teacher, and Event Co-Producer
2024 Singing Alive Gathering, old growth canyon, shaw, OR – circle leader

universal self-portraits (2012)

run of 100 unsigned linoleum prints on japanese postcard stock

“hey mister, where you from?” –every 8 year old indonesian boy
“saya dari ibu bumi” (i am from mother earth)
“me too”

a series of performance-art prints to depict our common home in reproducible form, the symbol “one of infinite” yearning for both the regeneration of the biosphere as well as in tribute to the smallness of our position in a universe

performed at:
taipei arts village, taipei, taiwan;
tacomepai ecovillage, pai, mae hong son, thailand
love space, ubud, bali

artists instructions (2011)

words by peter sellars
letterpress in english by michael tank, run of 500, anonymous circulation (2010)
chinese translation by marina lin and ji-ling lin (2012), taipei, taiwan

by twist of fate i extended my stay in taiwan one week in the hospitality of travel writer marina lin and photographer / acupuncturist ji-ling lin. after translating the mantra cards i had been distributing, they directed me to visit the movable type foundry (with a hand written note for directions and instructions). soliciting a translator from the street, we convince the very boisterous woman at the counter to allow me to purchase the characters. she summons me downstairs to the basement where the typefounder sits, an old man, a printer all his life. I demonstrate my linoleum stamps and prints of the planet earth (universal self-portrait)

“beautiful” he says, standing, and bowing deeply to me in the way of respect

ARTISTS INSTRUCTIONS
1. Dream of the world you’d love to live in
2. Create that world
3. Live in it

ecology of gratitude (2009)

a deck of cards for each individual subject that received a sense of gratitude in a 2008 poem, connected together in visual representation of what each of those subjects would express gratitude for as the cards were drawn at random, creating a web or ecology of gratitude, and filled a journal with poetry based on those explorations. In exhibition, patrons were invited to follow the same meditative process and add their own literary contributions to the piece.

The Ecology of Gratitude was produed for and exhibited in the “Thank You” show at Re:Generation Church, Oakland, CA, 2009, and was gifted to the impermanent collection of Xenia Community House, Davis, CA.

the forgiving tree (2008)

sculptural installation, installed at experimental digital arts gallery, broad art center @ UCLA
June 5-14, 2008

the forgiving tree lies at the intersection of art, design, and ecology. it aims to represent and encourage the precise ecological gesture that is needed at this time in human development – the use of closed loop regenerative technology in all departments – of a cradle to cradle technosphere. our current civilization is much like the little boy in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, who uses up his natural resources completely. The Forgiving Tree makes transparent the process of making media from Earth, and asserts that humanity, as individuals and collectives, must directly and locally reconfigure our built environment for wise and frugal sustainable human impact on the ecological system we live in.

“The garbage can is a design flaw. Like many physical manifestations of our culture, its use is rooted in a world of unlimited resources that never existed. The fact that we continue to build a culture centered around disposability and obsolescence proves that we have not yet learned to adapt to the world we actually live in.”

“In nature, trees are a closed loop. Consider the apple tree. The apple tree draws water and nutrients from the soil, and absorbs solar energy from its leaves through photosynthesis. The blossoms of the tree grow large and bear fruit. If the fruit is not all eaten, it will fall to the ground and rot. The seeds will become exposed and some of them will grow into new trees. The remaining seeds and rotting fruit decompose into soil, which continues to nourish the tree as it grows larger each year.”

“The paper tree is a closed loop. Sheet paper is shredded and bunched together to create the foliage. The foliage can be harvested, soaked and blended together with water to form paper pulp. The pulp is then screened and molded into sheets, drained, couched and pressed. If left to dry, the resulting paper product retains some of the qualities of the tree paper, and can be shredded again. If wet, the paper pulp can be applied to the paper tubes to strengthen the tree trunk.”

The Forgiving Tree was featured in Coalesce, the 2008 Senior Show at UCLA D|MA Experimental Digital Arts Gallery.

we lifted candles to the sky as if the stars were interactive (2008)

featured in landscapes of possibility (2013) and at in the voyager update project at space collective: http://spacecollective.org/tank/3542/Final-Thoughts-and-Appendices-on-the-Human-Suit-written-in-a-car-racing-up-Interstate-5-inbetween-nonviolent-actions-and-amongst-the-redwoods

Christmas day, nineteen sixty eight
in the winter twice after the summer of love

on that day
a single photograph encircled the globe. humanity,
no more a brain divided into east and west lobes. it was
the first photo of the earth as a whole. we instantly
saw ourselves as one species whole.

we gave premature birth to global consciousness that day.

when a human child is born, they say, 
their eyes stay fixed and focused
not more than one foot through the space in front of their face
this is precisely the distance 
from their eyes to the eyes of their father's mistress
as they are savoring the milk from her breast

and for one day our eyes were focused on Earthrise
it was no big surprise to those of us who’d just arrived

after birth, soon we notice children's eyes start to wander
they recognize patterns and the world fills with wonder
the eyes develop depth perception, sensitivity to motion
and they turn from their mothers - 

interested in the abstract notions
their absent fathers attached to the celestial motions

and so we, three years after our due date, 
sent a message to the stars
to an unknown species inquiring quietly as to who we are

thus again we turned our backs and all humanity was distracted
our mothers skin we peeled away and fossil fuels we extracted
blind eyes to our plunder like government memos being redacted
we lifted candles to the sky as if the stars were interactive

we say hey kids thought these lighthouses were there
to guide others through the night
to say "hey! somebody there?"
but only distressed vessels carelessly dare
burn their rations of ancient sunlight

a newborn’s pleaing and crying through the night 
to tell its mother that something's wrong
i am crying, 
something's wrong in my world - 
my mother is dying
and i hold today

her last photograph from a satellite flying, and its plain to see
on the print there shine a million candles lifted skyward, crying
out a fiery message of distress 
past the hospital bed to the ether at the universe' end

and this candle is trying to speak not with aliens but with future generations
on behalf of an alien species, baby humans just developing the hand-eye coordination to facilitate the movement by which the woman on the bed will collectively awaken

to communicate this condition in the languages learned during gestation
to send a kernel of information to we who will soon be a mature and native product of speciation

because soon after a child begins to understand 
that sunsets lead to dawns
the trauma of childhood will be repressed 
into the collective subconscious
lessons learned, without memories to linger on

only hospital records 
and photographs 
of our mother 
lighting birthday candles