Cultural Garden, Cleveland, Ohio

(4'x4' BFA Nest Installation revisited)

 

Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), National Poet of Ukraine, looking on.

Killing The Buddha

  
What does it mean to burn a book? Not just any book. The Book, the Good Book: the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament, otherwise known to Christians as The Bible. Political or religious protests are typically done in public. But if it is a private affair, of a more sacrificial nature, can this sacred text be put to the flame without guaranteeing the eternal damnation of a human participant?

The pages curl back one to another, returning to the nothingness from which they came. The wind and flames unveil written language for what it really is: words, symbols only. But history and tradition are not obliterated, nor abandoned. In the act of destruction, their significance is heightened, transcended even.

The interplay of this extraordinary text and an ordinary act offers a simple comprehensible beauty, and becomes a metaphor of release from the double bind that is living in an increasingly litigious and spiritually bankrupt society.

 Though a fraction of its former self, nothing is gained, nothing lost. The book is bound with steel wire, acknowledging and reaffirming its significance. Sacred yes, but an oftentimes idolatrous object nonetheless. Wax is applied to make this reality more palatable.

  

With the hope of restoring its humility and approachability, water serves to further degrade the piece.

Rust hastens the approach.

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." ~ Zen Saying

In other words.. when an aspirant of Truth becomes bound by the very zeal which drives their thirst for spiritual freedom, they remain ignorant and attached to religious fetishism.

Stone Binding

(Preliminary Studies)

What does it mean to bind stones? A stone being a solid material object, retains the history and evidence of time. To accentuate a stone's form is to reject an otherwise shortsighted dismissal of its physical being and account for the effects of time. To bind a stone is to elevate its inherent essence and to acknowledge its being as something more than an otherwise dumb and inanimate thing to be discarded. To bind a stone is to appreciate it, spend time with it, communicate with it. It is nothing less than becoming one with the stone through the deliberate concentration of awareness and attention.

(Cuyahoga Valley National Park)

To go out in search of stones to bind in their natural environment adds another deeper layer of realization in this understanding.

To go out into the stones' natural environment is to account for the environment. Full of intent, this may not be initially evident. After exhausting all efforts to find a suitable location, spending an afternoon with stones minimizes imposition and gives way to further observation and attentiveness. This overwhelming sensation of mindfulness is possible through the absence of self. There is only the stones in their environment.

The environment becomes an active participant, interacting with me as much as I do with it.

This interaction allows for my efforts to be made celebratory.

The stones are suspended above their source, destined to soon return to the water.

The light begins to fade and I walk away, denying myself the sight or sound of their final offering.

Visions & Ideals

The Great Buddha; Todai-Ji Temple, Nara

THE DREAMERS are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity can not forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know.

     Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage these are the makers of the afterworld, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived; without them, laboring humanity would perish.

     He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it; Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it; Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into it.

     Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.

     To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve. Shall man's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain: "Ask and receive."

     Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.

     The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

~ from As A Man Thinketh by James Allen (1864-1912)

THE United States

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. The above image is in response to a recent apprenticeship in Shigaraki, Japan, from August through November of this year. Living with, working for and studying under internationally celebrated artist, Yasuhisa Kohyama, was one the highlights of my life. To be associated with his greatness, however brief in duration, changed me. The days in Japan were long and each seemed to arrive earlier than the one before it, always carrying the promise and excitement of new sensory stimulation and all things unfamiliar. I once calculated that each day was the equivalence of a week's worth of knowledge while still in school. Its been a month now, however, since I returned to The United States. It seems that readjusting to my own culture has proven more difficult than was accepting and getting acclimated to the order and gentility that is Japan. 

     I was surprised to learn how proud the Japanese are as a people. Unlike Americans, however, they do not determine their identity by individuality and personal interests. Concern is for the shared sense of a general good feeling. The establishment of seniority and rank within necessitated groups and subdivisions is an important measure by which this expectation is met. Japan and The United States have each benefited from a relationship which we continue to foster and share. Contrary to popular opinion, however, the Japanese do not want to be American. What they do want is to be recognized, despite their small stature and isolation, for a heritage of adaptability and accomplishments that make them a world leader.

     The above image depicts the United States land mass as surrounded by and fortified with a wall. While in Japan, witness to the great pleasure people take in being Japanese, I was forced to consider what it means to be an American. This brought to mind the current state of our economy, the apathy well entrenched in the minds of our youth, and our military might. How dramatically our society changed as a result of the Vietnam War. Perhaps its time we forgive ourselves of this conflict. The cost of our recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have proven that we can't afford to assert ourselves by military strength alone. The United States is in desperate need of a different kind of pride, which celebrates the shared ingenuity and inventiveness of its citizens. After coming to these conclusions I imagined this wall America built up around itself. Perhaps Alaska and Hawaii are sold off to pay for our debt. Of course I realize this is unlikely and unrealistic, but until we begin reinvesting in ourselves here at home, the respect from the rest of the world we so concern ourselves with will not be forthcoming. The fear that comes from the barrel of a gun is not really respect. 

     But what does any of this have to do with art, one might ask? Everything. Art is about awareness and observation, perception and practice. Art is about creativity, the birth of inspiration and ideation. Art is about action, practice and change. Art is about reckoning and resilience.

Cleveland Institute of Art BFA Presentation and Defense:

For my BFA presentation and review in May of 2010 at the Cleveland Institute of Art, I chose to present a body of work that concentrated strictly on circle forms. I felt this was the best way to demonstrate a consistent development of thought and process, and the circle embodies many of the ideas pertinent to my work. The backdrop to this set-up was a grid, as I find the circle and the grid to be two symbols of perfection in opposition to one another. Whereas the grid represents a Christian/Western mode of being, the circle has been adopted from Zen Buddhism.

AS WORKS IN PROGRESS: For me, this is where the real excitement is in working with clay, and I suppose also with any other material or art form. In the same way a sketch has more vitality than a tightly rendered drawing, so too life is in the doing and not the destination. The final piece acts only as a marking point from which more ideas are generated and further detail worked out.