I titled it "Spending Time"

Today I read a conversation between artists David Horvitz and Alexandar Provan wherein the topics of time and space - as delineated by modern society - are challenged or re-explored so as to perhaps find oneself unconfined by the ideas.  After all, we can mostly all agree that time and spacial organization are tools that we've devised to organize ourselves and do not actually exist apart from our mutual understanding and agreement.  There was a time (haha) when we knew approximately what time it was simply by the appearance of a star on the horizon line or by a cast shadow.  In that era, intuition and the reflexive "body clock" were still of great relevance compared to modern life - wherein we stay up all night working because the deadline is tomorrow and we need global synchronicity (ie: working simultaneously with partners in Japan) to stay ahead (of?).  Yikes!  Always trying to get ahead.  The "keeping up with the Jones" theory morphs into global competition.  What a huge drag!  How completely exhausting!
This Victorian era "clock" designed to tell time based on the moments in the day when flowers bloom should give a lift after that depressing thought:

Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus proposed use of this time keeping device in Philosophia Botanica (1751)

All that to bring up what I thought as I was reading about the irrelevance or pliability of time and space - two things: 1. I've recently learned the technique of transcendental meditation which seems to exist in a space of no time and 2. I titled my first cross stitch double portrait of myself and husband "Spending Time" - more on that....

The experience of transcendental meditation has been somewhat miraculous to me in that I haven't ever felt the way I feel while practicing this meditation.  All other types of meditation have left me feeling frustrated and wondering if "it's working" or if I'm really doing anything to help my most basic anxieties.  This technique seems to do as it's named, transcend.  I actually don't experience time (even though my thoughts are going on and on just as "normal"). Instead, there's this inexplicable experience of all and none, here and nowhere, now and forever.  I have a short, set amount of time that I'm shooting for to spend meditating and it's important that I don't meditate all day, but the precision of time just doesn't matter.  It's the activity that takes precedence and must be repeated twice daily along the rise and fall of my typical human energy levels and moods.

The more personal realization of how I work on my artwork as a timeless technique came to mind as well.  I'm currently working on the 2nd (of what may be a series of) cross stitch double portraits of myself and my husband.  There are almost 41,000 stitches equaling the number of pixels in the 10" x 16" photograph I am reproducing.  When I did the first one, titled "Spending Time," I approached it much like the honoring meditations of my repetitive artworks before it.  Spend a lot of time working on it through a repeated action, practice precision and contemplate the work as it slowly evolves however sometimes frustrating or other times freeing.  To me, this idea correlated with my understanding of myself in a long-term (marriage) relationship.  However sometimes freeing or other times frustrating, it's all time, spending time, it's an accumulation of everything all intermingled together into one big jumble of "us."  And then, there's the "no time."  I'm reminded of the buddhist "no mind." There's also the "no us" and the "no me."  The slowness of making my art also flies in the face of contemporary art making practices which run along the same rat race (art market) as the rest of our capitalism based self making.  I realize that I am just NOT cut out for that race.  So, as long as there is "no time" and  I'm "spending time" I'll be taking care of the otherworld, perhaps the neitherworld (like Horvitz captures) of the Art world.

Working on my self.

Art and practice.

Speaking of books, another book I have been reading is Buddha mind in contemporary Art, a collection of essays and interviews regarding the relationship of Buddhism to art making and artworks.  There are so many valuable and inspiring commentaries by artists, critics, curators, and just art "people "in this book that it is difficult to choose one idea to share here.  I picked up the book because of a curator I liked - a few of his writings I'd read just rang true to me.  I've  always been interested in Buddhism, so this book has proven inspiring to me as it addresses, from various points of view, the  remarkable similarity between mindfulness practice and art making.

When I was in college, I studied printmaking and fiber arts as I was magnetically pulled toward those  repetitive disciplines.   Much like my love for running as exercise, hiking, and other sustained, contemplative activities, I was unaware of how my art-making resembled mindfulness practice and pointed to my essential desire to create space in my own mind and cultivate the mental state of flow.

 Upon introduction to meditation technique, I realized my art making was so similar. I also realized my art making could provide context and  inspiration for mindfulness as the end result is a product that continues to exist beyond my own contemplative practice. So I started to make  art, however sophomorically, that pointed toward these ideas I was learning in a novice Buddhist study.  I still love many of those well intentioned works.

In my recent years of having stepped away from the art community, I find (through reading, art making and learning new art 'languages' such as piano and Spanish),  that my mindfulness practice is stronger and more important to me than ever.  As a student, I was not fully aware of the potential for mindfulness practice in my art making, but over time I see there is always an unfolding realization of this essential aspect of my work.   Perhaps the only purpose of art making for me is to cultivate and present the possibility for mindful living.

Current progress in my time of slow contemplation of my marriage, the "spending time" that is "us" and that unequivocally builds my awareness for our growth (with all it's rises and pitfalls) as partners.

cross-stitching-again-again-again-again-again-again-again

spending time
again
with thread and needle
with my face
and yours
spending time
again
and again

resisting the restlessness
exploring ordinary
time
with my self
and you
and the thread
and the needle
and the tiny
moments
and the meditation on
each pixel
a stitch
another stitch

yours
and mine

and everything in between
the fabric

the artist's assertion

In thinking about this past year, I see it as a year of regaining a stronghold on my personal desires and activating a listening ear to my own intuition.  What of a person's desires?  I'm realizing it's possible to live decades of one's life aspiring to the desires (sometimes demands) of others, of societal norms, of institutions - all the while putting one's own desires aside or behind in priority.  Add to that the lack of attention (at least in American, East coast, protestant tradition) given to identifying and valuing one's own intuition.  Intuition, that inner knowing that percolates, converses and sometimes screams as the counterpart to rational logic takes a back seat and often just gets left on the side of the road in our thinking and feeling.

The most complete critical thinking and authentic living comes from a balance of intuition and the rational mind.

I believe I have had a strong intuition since childhood.  I relate these natural emotive and sensory driven gut feelings to experiencing fulfillment, self-direction, clear thinking, creative work, and relationships.  When I have ignored or put aside my intuition (as a way of fitting in, as a way of staying in a rational mode, because I feel like a weirdo - the only one feeling this way), I have suffered disappointments, felt confused or disoriented, and have spent much time, sometimes decades feeling the consequences of pushing a good friend aside.

This has been a critical topic in sessions with my therapist, and I have regained a sense of confidence and belief in that beautiful and wise, old woman who resides in my soul, Intuition.

I bring this up in this forum because, as an artist, the intuitive voice is a critical component of the creative work that I do.  I could talk extensively about my thoughts on intuition and self realization and the part these play (or not) in contemporary artists' work, but I decline that unintelligible rant because it's sometimes upsetting enough for me to lose all verbal acuity.  It's upsetting mostly because of my own habitual ignorance to intuition within my creative work and the American Higher Ed's lack of attention given to developing one's intuitive guide in creative work.  And that's what I really mean to get at: the intuitive voice as guide in the creative work - from the choice to place blue here, and red there to the choice to make a collection of drawings depicting my dreams (a brave undertaking).  Seems simple stating it like that, but conversely, when the intuitive voice is ignored or weak, creative work may focus mainly on pleasing professors, making art that sells, making art that's safe for conservative audiences, or just making the same art for years because the first time we made it, enough people "just LOVED it."  Am I talking about myself?  yes.  And despite making work that I still think was good work, I neglected to make even more work that was important to me.  I dismissed ideas as too weird, too personal and instead focused on ideas that fit better into the popular program of design and art-making.  Even now, I still put others' desires ahead of mine and often find ways to put my creative work (which my intuition is calling me to do) behind what I think are my responsibilities to others.  I would go so far as to say that the 3 year project called, GroundSwell Gallery became a way of ignoring my own desire to make art in order to fulfill others' aims to exhibit art.  It was good work, and I am glad to have had the experiences and relationships from that chapter of my life, but...  admittedly, I desired my own creative spotlight on my own life's main stage.

Who wouldn't put this adorable animal first? 

Questions about self direction, career, calling, purpose all came up along the way in this year of separation from all things past (we closed the gallery, left another long-held job, built and then moved into a new house, got a dog, etc.).  Despite my intuition's percolating doubt, I tried on the Real Estate professional's shoes, I considered exhibiting in local galleries, I poured myself into training my dear dog, and found numerous other ways to fill my time... whilst my desire to make art was placed to the side and the creative work was left undone.  It seems that even quitting jobs and wiping the slate clean can still lead to two choices:  1. reforming the same behaviors of self diminishment and avoiding creative work or 2. forming new behaviors that respond to the intuitive voice that's been speaking all along - i.e. listen to the beckoning intuition that says, "Make your art now.  this is your chance to do it for yourself.  You have that freedom."



Perhaps I begin a meditation practice whereby I repeat such assertive words to myself:

I am making my art now.
I possess the opportunity to do this for myself.
I am free.

(repeat)

quilt quilt quilt quilt quilt quilt quilt

If I say the word over and over it starts to sound unfamiliar and I have that bizarre feeling of not knowing the word nor its meaning.  I'm doing this as a way to disassociate with the traditionalist understanding of the quilt and stay grounded in my "I'll do it myself" mentality.  Once again, I've used an antiquated (though certainly rising in popularity again), homemaker's media to express concepts of dream symbolism, theories of color and design and to recognize and experience the meditative work of repetition.  I made a post about my quilt before as I've been working on it since last December, and now it's basically finished.  Yesterday, I sent it off to the quilter, Amy Wade who will use her computerized long-arm sewing machine to connect my top layer of piecework to bamboo viscose batting and raw silk backing.  Pre quilting:

The colors are all dyed 1 - 5 times to reach desired saturation and shade.  The dark blue is made using indigo - a totally new dyeing process for me.  The overall dimension is 80" x 88" and each square (of 2 triangles) is 4" x 4".  The Anni Albers textile design and color theory inspiration comes from her artwork, Triadic Series D.  For me, the principle definer of my design was not the triangles so much as it was the orientation of diagonals for each 20" x 20" area (each 20" square area rotates to create a diamond pattern within the grid).  

Anni's screenprint: 

Anni Albers. “Triadic Series D.” 1969. Lithograph

Anni Albers' work was more about pattern design and textile fabric design - her work was so crucial for modern textiles and she paved the way with her design theories and inventive ideas for fabrication.  For me, she paved the way for my planning in making this quilt.  I knew I needed a pattern and though I wanted symbolism incorporated, the pattern was most important for a textile I planned to see regularly in my bedroom.  Anni's patterns and design theories lend themselves to the gaze - harmonious repetition with just enough variety to keep us meditatively looking.

The dream symbolization for this blanket is just that: a blanket over our dreams.  Of all the things we can lay over ourselves each night, I wanted to create something to inspire and evoke dreams.  Mentioned before, I have been  seeing a psychotherapist and she is particularly adept at recognizing my visual nature through discussing my dreams and other visions.  I find myself now more dedicated to the stories of my dreams and I place more intention into the work of remembering them.  Beyond dream symbolism, this quilt certainly marks the place where my husband and I share the most intimate space in our home.  The rectangle of yellow and blue-gray is placed over our hearts as an offering of and recognition for light. 

Yes, this is my latest art work, though it doesn't yet have a title.  Yes, it is also the most functional artwork I have ever made, and we will be using it, inhabiting it as that might be it's real completion.

total number of pieces: 880.  I wonder if there's any auspicious meaning to that number....

newest

(detail)
from my newest drawings and interdisciplinary work referencing simplicity and clarity - Primary Platonic.

This is a retro-self portrait.  Myself when an infant, wrapped tightly in primary colors and platonic shapes - the most basic and simple elements of form and color. 

This is part of an exercise with my artwork to meditate on basic self-understanding and self-knowledge while putting intention toward simpler and clearer thinking and experience.

303

Laney McVicker of 303 Magazine wrote an  article about myself and my work.  You can see "The Hol Sum Art of Meditation" article on 303's site for the Fall Fashion Issue 2011.

I'm especially grateful to Laney for quoting me when I said about my art work, "Really, it's just a practice of working toward something beautiful or peaceful."  This is true for me.  I am most accurate as an artist when I'm creating work that offers beauty and opportunity to rest in one's own peace. 

lettering mantras

Dedication of Merit

By this merit may all attain omniscience.

May it defeat the enemy, wrongdoing.

From the stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death,

From the ocean of samsara, may I free all beings.

By the confidence of the golden sun of the great east,

May the lotus garden of the Rigden’s wisdom bloom.

May the dark ignorance of sentient beings be dispelled.

May all beings enjoy profound brilliant glory.

Studying mantras and poetry for a new project....  Such awesome study.