Crevasse by Robert Hardgrave

Robert Hardgrave, a self-developed artist based in Seattle, works with the present moment. Robert has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at the Joshua Liner Gallery. Painting from the periphery of consciousness, Hardgrave evokes subtle assembly languages of consciousness, which flow quietly in the background of conscious awareness.

Within his paintings are implicated the ‘countenances of spirits’ – fleeting, subtle and enigmatic glimpses of beings, totemic forms, labyrinthine fluids, schools of thought, and diverse laws and customs in potentia, whispered through vortices conjured in flowing curves and lines.

It is with great happiness LILA can present this exclusive interview with Robert Hardgrave.

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Daniel Mirante :
How do you develop a piece? I am interested in the working method of spontaneous art as it seems to involve an opening to another level of organization to work through the artist – somewhat similar to the techniques that shamans and mediums use to draw from or represent non-ordinary forms of intelligence.

Robert Hardgrave :
I work in a sort of nonchalant fashion by working on a bunch of different things all at once. Whether its canvas, paper or panel I just start laying down marks to work with. With so many things to choose from I don’t get sucked into the feeling of making something too precious where the dread of ruining something is removed. This allows missteps to be destroyed to make something better. I believe work will always rise to the top and finish itself just by the mere act of trusting your ability to make something successful. While I am working I am searching for what the painting or how the materials are guiding me. At some point I find out what the painting is and develop the work in a more deliberate way.


Daniel Mirante :
It sounds like you have to stay in the moment to allow things to emerge, without falling into ‘painting a picture’. So what do you find useful in facilitating this flow state where you can allow art to self-organise without too much attachment or assertion of ego ? Have you always made art this way or is it something you’ve grown into…?

Robert Hardgrave :
You’re right. It also means I have to have a strong discipline of being in the studio everyday. Constant processing of the materials to maintain that flow is necessary. Before I leave the studio I take a digital photograph of whatever I’m working on so I can see it on my computer. It adds that need perspective you can’t get from being right next to the work. Often times if something isn’t feeling right I will put it away for a couple weeks and pull it our later to see if anything I’ve learned in the meantime can be applied to that piece. Working this way keeps me from getting “stuck”.

I haven’t always worked this way. Learning how to best utilize my time in the studio took a long time for me to understand. I used to try to have too much control over the work and it seemed lifeless to me. Understanding that we have such little control over how our lives progress is where I started to apply those principles to my work. I am much happier being an accepting vessel rather than being a taskmaster over my work.


Daniel Mirante :
One of the things noted about your work is the calligraphic mark-making element. It is almost like your paintings are written in a kind of ‘ur-sprach’, a primal language/syntax. Do you ever contemplate during painting or at the end of a piece an evolving narrative ?

Robert Hardgrave :
In studying different cultural design motifs I have discovered that there are many similarities in visual syntax throughout different cultures. Be it from the limitations of the hand or the nomadic nature of humans, writing and decorating can be a connecting thread to our species. I am a contemporary painter in the way a lot of things are synthesized from many different places. Collage for instance, in my opinion, is probably one of the most important and inevitable occurrence in modern image making and beyond. Since we all know there is nothing new, we tend to juxtapose disparate items to find new things. It happens in all art forms, be it music, dance, theater, painting, etcetera. For me it’s the work that was/is made as part of a lifestyle; clothing, rugs, pots, totems, spirituality. I don’t want to recreate that sort of work, but I want to apply those activities to the spontaneity of my process, challenging my perceptions and find things that I wouldn’t have normally thought of on my own.

The beauty of my current process is that there is this dream like interpreting that happens during and after the image is created. I don’t tend to remember my dreams from sleeping since I feel I dream plenty while I am awake. Most of the narratives that surface do relate to my life in general, or at least that’s how I interpret them.

Submerged by Robert Hardgrave

Daniel Mirante :
What is the role of the natural world in your life work? I see more relationship to the process in which the natural world develops and evolves, than in the kind of linear engineering processes common to the man-made world.

Robert Hardgrave :
You are correct. I tend to work in a completely organic fashion. Having a set formula wouldn’t be an interesting process for me at all. I have found that If I have a clear plan I end up being much less excited about the work. This also means that it probably takes me longer to produce work, but making the work is the best part anyway.


Daniel Mirante :
Thankyou deeply for sharing these insights into your artistic practice with us.

Bio :
Robert Hardgrave, a Seattle resident for the past 17 years, lives with his lovely wife Stephanie and two sweet dogs, a Beagle and a Pug. Visit his website at www.roberthardgrave.com

A relatively young artist, Sage has travelled widely across Indonesia, Europe and the United States, and studied with master teachers such as Ernst Fuchs. Having developed a strong studio practice, Sage has developed her painterly technique alongside a continuing blossoming and honing of theme and style.

Currently in artists residence at The Hive gallery, L.A, Amanda Sage generously shares her energies to discuss recent developments in her art life with LILA.

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Daniel Mirante
Thankyou for taking the time to engage in this interview. Could you tell us a bit about the significance of the egg motif that recurs in your work ?

Amanda Sage
The form of the Egg came to me in 2006, when I went on a 2 month painting sabbatical to Bali Indonesia. It had been 6 years since I had been to Bali, this trip being the 7th time I’d been there since 1996. I was at a turning point in many ways in my work and self, looking for reflection and new lenses thru which to express. I remember doing a small drawing looking to meld in some visual simplistic way, the three major locations on the planet that I had lived and felt influenced and connected too. Colorado, Bali and Vienna (they coincidentally also make a pretty good triangle on the globe). I had reduced them down to the primary colors of red, yellow and blue – trying to make some sort of sense of this balance I was observing, but still feeling uncomfortable and unclear in how I should paint this feeling I had, it being abstract in a sense and very personal.

One of the first paintings I did in Bali came completely out of the subconscious. I just started painting and went with the forms that developed. This painting became ‘Dreams’ and in it appeared a mystical snake with eyes on it’s scales and in it’s mouth it held an egg.

This is where the egg came into the picture, and it baffled me how it was exactly what I was looking for. The most reduced organic form, where in I could feel safe, indestructible and unique. New birth and new beginning in each piece, and it dawned on me that I could be painting eggs for the rest of my life. They became portals, doorways, something that I could put anything into and it wasn’t an oval, circle, square or rectangle – it was in itself the symbol of new life. As time progresses I am still painting ‘Eggs’ and long from being finished with them. I hope to paint them large enough to feel like one could step inside. I feel intuitively that this form is something so deeply imbedded in nature, as nothing is completely symmetrical. The term ‘organic symmetry’ seems to sum up this natural flow of multi-dimensions in these pieces. They have a language to them that hopefully speaks to a deeper level of our consciousness; calming, harmonizing and healing. (although not all of my ‘eggs’ are with the intent of healing, some I do just to see what will happen, and as we are all made up of dichotomies, some may seem brighter and with more intent then others.

Daniel Mirante
Has transition to America effected the theme and content of your work ? If so in what way ?

Amanda Sage
Yes I’m sure it has. Although I see myself being ever more a global citizen, my concentration is currently more focused in Los Angeles and the U.S. at the moment. I feel more empowered about the purpose of my work by coming here at this current time. That it goes so much further beyond creating aesthetic or even ‘new’ work in the eyes of the Art World. I feel a deeper calling to be more conscious about the current awakening that is direly needed in this world to transform into a global sustainable culture. Being in down town L.A, I feel I am at one of the epicenters of a new world. In the midst of the twirling thoughts of 13 million denizens, a massive piece of machinery hurtling towards what? There seems to be others that also are feeling called upon to bring balance and light. And I feel like I’ve fallen straight into a nest of these visionaries since being in L.A. The fragility of being on the ‘front’ so to say, is feeding the vision, keeping one on their toes – I find it totally exhilarating to be here at this point in history.

Daniel Mirante
You are an artist in residency at the HIVE. Could you tell us a bit about your art there and what projects you’ve been involved in ?

Amanda Sage
The HIVE is an amazing collaborative of Artists and creators, under the umbrella of Nathan Cartwright who is the owner and curator of the gallery. ‘Resident’ artists have honey comb spaces in the second half of the gallery, each renting out their spaces monthly with the freedom to create and exhibit what they want from their invidivual spaces. I arrived in a whirlwind of colleague visionaries for the ‘Temple of Visions – International Visionary Art’ show that premiered in January 09 at for the HIVE’s featured show, curated and conceptualized by L.A. artist Jimmy Bleyer. Being able to fly out for the opening of the show – blew open doors that I was not quite expecting. Over 600 people came to the opening and my piece ‘The Oracle sold’ before the show even opened. The response and enthusiasm that I experienced about my work really blew me away, I felt a strange familiar resonance with the HIVE and the whole artist infested building above it, that just goes by ‘725’, and had a little moment with the Universe and asked for it to give me some more clear signs in the ensuing few days, and if I should be here, I will come.

So low and behold I am working and living in the historic ‘725 Spring St’ building planting seeds and watching them grow in downtown L.A. with my artist and visionary yogi neighbors, such as Cheri Rae who is in the midst of building ‘PEACE’ a huge yoga and art studio down the street. Thrust into pre-destined projects and fate of finding, cultivating and creating new sustainable life in the midst of the concrete jungles. ‘You can’t get any further west from here, this is the final frontier’… said a fellow visionary artist that I’ve met here and greatly respect, Christopher Ulrich. Being the new girl on the block, I’m getting offers to participate in shows left and right, it’s hard to keep up with it all! Half of the shows are elsewhere on this continent and I find myself not having enough work to share in all these simultaneous shows!, but I love the challenge and am so inspired to be apart of the collective exhibitions and creating a larger awareness for this work. For example the IAM touring show that starts on May 3rd in San Francisco, Montreal’s first Visionary Show put together by Chris Dyer, as well as the PUSH studio show, ‘Catalysing Collective Creativity’ in SF and this is yet a small pocket of the events and exhibitions that are lining up around the world!, and the list goes on…

The great net of our interconnectedness is becoming stronger and more visible, as we nurture and stick to our intuition and visions. The most recent amazing crossing for me happened on my 31st birthday on April 19th (bicycle day- the day Albert Hoffman first experienced LSD in 1938) – I met Alex and Allyson Grey for the first time at CoSM’s temporary home in NYC for a talk Alex was giving. We shared and connected synapses of synchronicity, I always knew there would be a time when we finally would meet and it was so absolutely perfect that it was on this day… completely unplanned and perfect as I was in NY for a totally different artistic purpose. This amazing place that they are building and creating only an hour and half from NYC is going to be a mecca for the new world, a place of healing, growth, knowledge and inspiration and it brings so much hope and joy to know that it is happening. This is yet the beginning, and the network of light is strengthening, intoxicating those who have the receptors to expand.
I am so proud and humbled to be apart of this ever growing global community of artists, educators, musicians, dancers, writers, the list goes on and on who feel the drive and passion for bringing on a new way of living and harmonizing with the planet… to reflect and inspire and give thanks for the beauty that surrounds us and to strive for a sustainable future

Blessings –
Amanda Sage
www.amandasage.com
Los Angeles, April 2009

Artist Bio

Amanda Sage was born April 19, 1978 in Denver, Colorado. Starting in 1996, her travels and projects bounced her between Bali, Indonesia and Vienna, Austria. She studied traditional painting and etching for one and a half years with Michael Fuchs, and has been a student and painting assistant to Ernst Fuchs since 1999.

Amanda has been blessed with a beautiful studio in the WUK since 2000, a self-governed culture house in Vienna, as well as being involved in creating new systems of group-interaction and presentation.

Most recently she has become involved with the HIVE Gallery & studio’s, and is currently living and working as an artist in residence in Los Angeles.

She has exhibited in Galleries, Salons and in various projects/events worldwide, including London, Vienna, Munich, Bali, Colorado, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and most exotically in Entheon Village at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, 2007.

“Through my work I aim to shatter the ‘illusion of separation’, to challenge the viewer to question, and evolve out of ignorance, conditioning and ingrained genetic habits. In life I strive to take responsibility for the effect of my existence, and through my actions and images, inspire others to think/dream beyond their immediate capacity. Ultimately I seek to create portals that open to the infinite possibilities of being and expressing, so that we may remember and re-discover who we are, where we originate from and where we are headed. My aspiration is to paint messages, visions and narratives that communicate with an ‘older & wiser us’, awakening ancient memory; as well as the ‘present us’, that we may grow up and accept the responsibilities towards ourselves, each other and the rest of existence on this planet… now”

Gil Bruvel grew up in France and began drawing lessons at age 9 and learning sculpture basics. He began working with oil paint at the age of 12 and the local environment had an enormous and lasting influence on his palette –giving him luminous colors he continues to use today. Gil Bruvel has been exhibiting his work since 1974 in various places around the world and including: France, Monaco, England, Denmark, The Netherlands, Hungary, Japan, Singapore, New York, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Hawaii. His work has received many awards and his collectors span the globe. See more at www.bruvel.com

Daniel Mirante : What are your major artistic influences and themes?

Gil Bruvel : My work seeks to explore the intersection of the conscious and unconscious, to examine and, to some extent, negate the idea that there is a division between these two “worlds.” Instead, I’m seeking a new way of seeing–what I call “visionary”—a way of being in the world as it was really meant to be—whole, rich, profound, and absolutely magnificent in its precision.

What I want my work to do is open the realms of imaginative experience for audiences. So the canvases delve into deep personal mythology and explore visions as a way to create a link between the conscious and the unconscious. My intention is to get closer to the mystery of the transformative process of living and life—whatever is engendered by growth and metamorphosis in the world of human experience. So my paintings merge physical and organic forms to at once approach this state of change and flux and also represent it on canvas via an amalgamation that is part human, part idea, part consciousness, and part spirit. I think, as Joseph Campbell famously said, “The role of the artist is to mythologize the world”—that’s what I am trying to do. I’m working with a certain lexicon—the color, the figures, the forms—that produce a mythology that you can step into, that you can inhabit and share and make your own.

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My primary influence is the natural world and the startling geometries that occur in infinite variations all around us. From there, I ground my work in my training, which was classic and quite extensive. I studied at Laurent De Montcassin’s Restoration Workshop in France. And then as I grew as a painter, I admired and was influenced by the work of Max Ernst, The Fauvists, Francis Bacon, Vermeer, Gonzalo Fonseca, Antonio Gaudi, Noguchi and others. In Ernst’s work, for example, you see every moment is, as he says, “an invention, a discovery a revelation.” He invokes not “the plastic invention of a felt reality,” but really, to quote Shakespeare, “the thing itself.” So my work seeks that immediacy, that quality of fresh realization that is both surprising and stunning. That’s why the merging of forms, the fantastic visions, the use of color.

Lately, I’ve been also working with sculpture and functional art to find different expressions for my ideas and also bring my art from private collections out into the world. It’s exciting work, as it allows me to let my ideas flourish.

Daniel Mirante : What role does the computer take in your painting and sculpture?

Gil Bruvel : Well, the computer helps me design in 3-D when I’m working on functional art or with sculpture. It’s a great way to play a bit, but the original idea, the vision, the inspiration, the force behind the work is already complete in my head.

I don’t use the computer for my painting process whatsoever; instead I use my hand as a kind of seismograph that records the intuitive impulses of my brain.

So the computer is a tool, like a paint brush, and it’s useful to help me get where I want to go.

Daniel Mirante : Have you been to the worlds that you describe through your art?

Gil Bruvel : To the extent that this world exists for all of us, yes, of course. I reject the idea that my art displays a “somewhere else”; instead, it opens up a reality that is right here, right now, and I’m simply inviting the viewer in. Each canvas holds an experience, or perhaps many experiences, and I am simply providing the window, you see?

Art should be this “in the moment,” this inspirational. It shouldn’t take you away—it should bring you more fully to the moment and to yourself. That’s the revelation.

The organic and synthetic forms within Sakamoto’s work are enigmatic. Rendered in deep saturation, often deep red and green, the entities recall the folds and creases of renaisance robes and cloaks, except more plastic. Elsewhere, coral-like filigree structures grow with lace-like delicacy. Exploring the paintings deeper reveal all manner of suprises, deep oceanic caves, sperm-like rock clouds, molecular tubes and brain-like dwellings for unimaginable presences.

The refinement of Satoshi Sakamoto’s painting has been noticed by others:

In the Serious Artworld of International Fairs and Biennales…the word “Visionary” seems to have the pejorative stink of unsophistication. Many artists carrying this torch admitedly deal in a currency of formula and cliche (or maybe the word is “kitsch”)..but I feel like it would be unfair to dispense wholesale artists who are inspired by the fantastic. Artists such as Satoshi Sakamoto seem unconcerened with the self-conscious ironies of paintings recent history..and more energized by the fertile fields of their own imagination… (his) work might be able to appear comfortably in both Juxtapoz, Art in America….and maybe in a not so far fetched future…Artforum. Not that any of this matters to these artists, who seem enthralled enough with their own muses.

Jacques de Beaufort

In this revealing and inspiring interview with Daniel Mirante, Satoshi Sakamoto kindly offers his thoughts on the artistic process and the state of visionary art in Japan.

Daniel Mirante :
I was very interested, watching your photographs of the progress of one painting over a year, how it seems you start with a very abstract expressionist style of working, and then you draw from this potential the shapes and forms of your composition. This reminds me of the working method of Max Ernst, and also HR Giger, to draw a kind of order out of chaos. I have sometimes thought that such a technique is similar to divination and mediumship, allowing more subtle energies and patterns to come through. How did you develop such a way of working ?
　　　

Satoshi Sakamoto:
I tried to show the progress of the painting UNAWANG　because people wouldn’t know unless it was recorded day by day. People can appreciate the final details on the surface that hide so many improvisations behind it. But actually the progression is more meaningful for the artists themselves, I think.

I would like to expose something that already exists in potentiality. Although I dislike math, my operation is similar to math that which seeks the strict structures in a blank field. Mathematical theory even exists potentially, though nobody knows that.

Also my work is like mountain climbing with two movements of up and down. Actually climbing up to the top is much more important than descending. Imagine an exploration to reach the goal without a map or compass and it wouldn’t be necessarily a pleasant hike. Sometimes it goes through some kind of madness and uneasiness as if a small child is roaming alone in the intricate vast forest. In fact to depict the details, to finish the canvases is not a big issue for me. Because after the discovery of the top and seeing the whole perspective, it would be a safer route to the end. So I have two kinds of goals concerning my art to reach the top of the mountain and to get back onto the flat ground to make people understand with the details. If I had a clone assistant, and I wanted to leave the rest of my job to him for boring finishing work. I would say “ OK. I have found the top and caught a prospect to finish. I will let you work on it. I will move on to a new mountain soon, bye.” Sometimes depicting the details on the surface demands slavery from painters, meanwhile I know it is unavoidable labor.

Indeed Max Ernst was the first master who reminded me of profound memories of nature. But I have to say that my art working started around 1987 when HR Giger came to Tokyo and the unusual popularity arose among Japanese young generation. At that time we could buy his Necronomicon everywhere at book shops nation wide

Apart from such enthusiastic followers, I had been singly considering the nature of Giger’s art. When I was an art university student once I said to a teacher “ My master is Giger.” He replied “ It ’s not a good idea, you should stop it.”

I knew that superficial followers easily would come to a nonsense exposing their personal abnormality. But I believed Giger had established a quite fundamental principle of formative art such as Cezanne. I thought most of all descriptions about Giger’s art were not enough to explain his universal method. Those morbid themes like biomechanoid or black magic strike people and sometimes such an unusual eccentricity overshadows his genuine artistic formation of more truly abstractive level. I appreciated Giger’s art concentrating on the form itself rooted to certain archetypes resonating to each other like music.

In 1992 I began to use airbrush and oil paints to carry out my ideas. I thought it must be possible to visualize archetypes in an abstractive level without figurative shapes. Instead of psychological symbols I have been using more direct vivid colors than Giger’s. Now that many years have already passed, I still feel my trials were far from enough.

Inspirations on my art works are not such a dramatic experience, rather it is very subtle even sometimes tiny rubbish that people wouldn’t notice. Hands and paints are exquisite device to magnify the neglected senses into a grand scale. Yes, it is similar to divination and mediumship.

Stages in the evolution of the painting ‘Unawag’ by Satoshi Sakamoto

Daniel:
Does your painting combine with any meditation practice ? It must require much concentration to work on such detailed compositions.

Satoshi Sakamoto:
I have never tried any practice of meditation. I think nothing is better practice than painting for me. But as you suggested, everything is up to my brain state. I like walking and watching the skies to relax, also I won’t avoid talking with people to share the current social problems. Totally it depends on how to build my usual life in order to concentrate on the canvases, maybe as many artists know.

Also I read books a lot about spirituality like Rudolf Steiner to keep working, on the assumption that an invisible world exist. But I do not have a spiritual constitution which lets me see any invisible entities.

Daniel:
How has your work been received in your homeland ? Is there a strong visionary art community in Japan ?
 

Satoshi Sakamoto:
In my town some people may recognize me as a painter who is making peculiar images that ordinary people wouldn’t understand. And some friends are looking forward to seeing my next exhibit. But my family doesn’t like my art.

I have joined many competitions and held some exhibitions. They have ended up with a very small practical reaction. So a few years ago I decided to concentrate on the internet not to waste efforts.

In 2006 the Japanese visionary art group IFAA was established. As far as I know this is only community to exchange information about the international visionary art movement.

For the first time I participated in IFAA for the annual exhibition in Tokyo and Kyoto 2008. It was a pretty interesting show by around 40Japanese members and two foreign guests, Leo Plaw and Luigi La Speranza. This was a rare occasion to make me think as to what is the visionary art. As you know, because there is no strict definition for this genre.

Personally I think the Japanese prime visionary artist is Hayao Miyazaki the animation creator, but his works won’t be categorized as visionary art movement. Also, a very eminent Japanese artist like Tadanori Yokoo has been obviously standing by visionary and spiritual possibility. But his works should be categorized as New Painting movement.

The Japanese cultural scene is progressing in chaos involving various genres like anime or manga, and both contemporary art and traditional paintings without definite category and system. So it is hard to imagine how the Japanese visionary art movement will develop in the future in a very different climate from western civilization. Of course I am not familiar with the western situation though.

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Daniel:
You say you like to ‘expose something that already exists in potentiality’… do you feel that these ‘existents in potentiality’ relate to what people describe as the world of spirits ?

Satoshi Sakamoto:
The phrase of “The world of spirits” indicates many aspects for each individual or group. So concerning theology or occult science, it is beyond me. At least “exists” did not mean entity like ghost or angel. “Existence” that I feel on my working is a quite normal sense to distinguish meaningful characters from senseless chaos. And subconscious body working gives me a little bit of trigger to start paint.

Sometimes I find spiritual doctoring to escape from body into what is called “the world of spirits”. But I believe that my corporal eyes are enough to find potentiality. The invisible world and the visible world are not separated. Actually potentiality already embodies in presence. Everything is up to the attitude of the observers.

Daniel:
Have you worked with psychedelics ? If not, how do you explain the sympathy between your work and psychedelic visions ?

Satoshi:
Definitely never. I have never regarded myself as a psychedelic artist. However I know my art shares with psychedelic vision in some ways. I am not familiar with the history of psychedelic culture.
But I think we should not care a lot about style or phrase, rather should go back to the original reason why we needed psychedelic style.

I think because we needed to find a vision by ourselves purely independently not as a slave. But psychedelics have a slight trick to harm our independence. We have to care about who made it. If we made it by ourselves for us, it would be no problem, I think.

A reason why I am making a kind of psychedelic is… I feel a necessity to stand on for those social collapses. Maybe it is close to the situation when the psychedelic movement began.

Other than that, I believe my vivid colors come from both Asian tradition and the Renaissance. I haven’t investigated on the cultural history of the world. But sometimes I imagine humankinds has been fascinated by the magical effect of vivid colors, maybe sometimes for rituals since the beginning. Vivid colors easily get faded over time. So we tend to imagine ancient worlds with monochrome. But it is not living history. Even if we imagine vivid old Asia, vivid old Europe ,vivid old Middle East, it wouldn’t be wrong.

Strong saturation effect overwhelms self-awareness also it stimulates our emotion. Red can change anger into mercy. Blue can change sadness into hope. About yellow, I am not sure yet. I think there is still much room to develop color techniques for the future.

Also I attempt to create images which will be able to deconstruct the self-image of human body into something unknown. I hope it would stimulate people’s desire to dance spontaneously. However I don’t like dancing by myself.

Daniel:
Thankyou very much for sharing your amazing work on Lila!

Short bio of Satoshi Sakamoto

“I was borne in Aomori prefecture in 1970. I learned oil painting in university in Tokyo. Since 1996 I live in Hirosaki city in Aomori prefecture.”

Indigenous peoples are displaced by wars and corporations

Avatar is real: Pandora exists in our planet and it’s located in South and Central America, and Africa. The Na’vi peoples, the Indigenous peoples in those regions are being displaced and killed right now, in order to extract the natural resources laying underground. The names of places and peoples may be different in the movie, but the facts of reality are almost the same.

Distant regions of green, tropical forests rich in beauty are in danger, due to their abundance in unknown treasures hidden behind human’s eyes. In order to get those resources needed by rich countries, multinational corporations are using governments, armed forces, paramilitary and guerrillas to massacre and displace Indigenous peoples.

In the next generation, Central and South America will be the next battle fields for rich countries fighting over natural resources which they need to continue growing and keeping up with their consumerists, excessive ways of life. Minerals, oil, drinkable water, natural gas, forest and bio-tech resources are widely available in areas kept in balance by Native peoples for thousands of years.

Thus, the last pristine virgin forests on Earth, could be taken over by powerful military armies, working on behalf of multinational corporations, especially those based in the U.S., Europe, and Canada; and perhaps soon India, China, and Russia.

This is not fiction. It’s happening already in the tropical forests and mountains of Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Ecuador, where big mining, oil, lodging, tourism, real state, pharmaceutical corporations are invading the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples and stealing their cultures and heritage in order to profit, all of which is done with the complicity of the local puppet governments.

In the film, the attacking thugs were a bunch of cold hearted and insensitive corporate and military folks who would invest money in science, researching and cultural programs in order to win the hearts and minds of Indigenous peoples living in sacred, untouched, pristine forests of a balanced but fragile environment. Those places are the final destinations for destructive mining machinery, ready to extract the insides of the mother land.

Sebastian Machineri is a leader of the Yaminawa indigenous people that live in the border area of Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, deep in the Amazon forest. He was recently in Washington, DC, participating at a working meeting of the Organization of American States for a continental declaration of Indigenous rights. Sebastian Machineri told me that Indigenous peoples in Brazil are being killed, attacked, displaced, and exterminated by the federal government and private ranch owners. “I have no hope that anything will change in the near future” he added, when I asked if international legislation in behalf of Indigenous peoples rights -like the UN declaration adopted in 2006- can help. He said that greedy powerful interests are pushing governments to destroy our planet.

This is the truth. In 2009 the Indigenous peoples around the Americas faced increasing violence, deadly military attacks, displacement, persecution and incarceration from governments, paramilitaries, guerrillas and military forces linked to corporate interests and extractive industries.

In order to do displace Indigenous peoples, governments in Latin America are forced by powerful interest groups to pass special legislation based on the “free-trade” policies model, which was designed by Wall Street. This economic trend known as “neoliberalism” has opened the doors of protected areas to private corporations with enough money and influences to do what they please, without considering the rights of the Indigenous peoples living there.

Last June 2009 in Peru, hundreds of Awajun and Wampis Indigenous farmers were massacred by US-trained militarized police forces of Peru, in the Bagua region. The Natives were protesting peacefully against government legislation that allowed corporations to take over their lands resources, without previous consultation. Also as a result, many policemen of Indigenous heritage were killed by a riot of Natives who heard of the Bagua massacre. Months later, the Awajun and Wampis peoples detained five employees of the Canadian mining company IAMGOLD, who didn’t have authorization to enter their territory.

In several regions of Peru, mining corporations are causing pollution and the poisoning of entire Indigenous towns. This has led to social protests and a growing Indigenous movement, but the response of president Alan Garcia has been of racism, violence and repression, accusing the Natives as terrorists, criminals and second-class citizens. Many community leaders have been incarcerated when protesting against the government plans, which includes leasing 73% of the Amazon forest and extensive areas of the Andean mountains to multinationals.

In 2006 the Bush administration forced Peruvians to accept an abusive free trade agreement (FTA) which was entirely written in the United States. The massacre of Bagua was an indirect result of the policies included in that FTA. The authorities of Cusco were forced to pass legislation that bans bio-piracy or “the appropriation and monopolization of traditional population’s knowledge and biological resources”, in order to prevent the negative effects of the unpopular and controversial U.S.-Peru FTA. But that is not it.

Jeremy Hance denounces more atrocities faced by Indigenous peoples in Peru in this excellent article posted by Mongabay News:

Just weeks after the bloody incident [of Bagua], Texas-based Hunt Oil, with full support of the Peruvian government, moved into the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve with helicopters and large machinery for seismic testing. A scene not unlike Avatar, which shows a corporation entering indigenous territory with gun ships. The seismic testing alone involves 300 miles of testing trails, over 12,000 explosive charges, and 100 helicopter land pads in the middle of a largely-untouched and unknown region of the Amazonian rainforest. The reserve, which was created to protect native peoples’ homes, may soon be turned into a land of oil scars. Indigenous groups say they were never properly consulted by Hunt Oil for use of their land. [...]

In the film the Na’vi are dismissed as “blue monkeys” and “savages” by the corporate administrator. Both the corporation and their hired soldiers view the Na’vi as less than human.

In Peru, President Alan Garcia has called indigenous people “confused savages”, “barbaric”, “second-class citizens”, “criminals”, and “ignorant”. He has even compared tribal groups to the nation’s infamous terrorists, the Shining Path.

There is no end in sight in the struggle between the indigenous people of Peru and government-sanctioned corporate power.

Lets move on to Colombia, where the Amazonian Indigenous peoples are caught in the middle of the internal war between the government, the guerrillas and the government-supported paramilitary. Twenty members of the Awa Indigenous community were killed in 2009 by the guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and by the end of the year 74 more Awas were killed by paramilitary groups linked to the illegal drugs cartels. Many Indigenous peoples are forced to leave their lands due to this type of violence, and the abandoned lands are taken by agro business corporations.

Also last year, more than 2,000 Indigenous Embera people in Colombia have abandoned 25 villages and their territory, in order to escape violence from paramilitaries. Meanwhile the Colombian House of Representatives approved a controversial program to convince local women to submit to sterilization. This same type of program has affected over 330,000 Indigenous women and men in Peru in the 1990s.

In the Pacific region of Colombia, the Afro Colombian population continues to endure violence, killings and displacement. Just last month the leaders Manuel Moya, Graciano Blandon and his son were assassinated by the paramilitary. Over 4 million Colombians have been displaced by this type of violence created by the guerrillas, the military and right-wing paramilitaries, who have strong ties to the Alvaro Uribe government.

The same tragedy is occurring all over the continent. According to information posted by John Schertow of the Indigenous news website “Intercontinental Cry”, these are some of the most violent attacks faced by Native peoples in Central and South America in 2009:

In central Brazil, the Yanomami community of Paapiu began calling for the immediate expulsion of illegal gold miners occupying their land. Survival International reported, “[the Yanomami] say they are prepared to use bows and arrows to expel the invaders themselves if the authorities do not take immediate action.”

The Guarani Kaiowa community of Apyka´y in Brazil was attacked by ten gunmen, who fired shots in to their camp, wounding one person. The gunmen also beat up and injured others with knives and then set fire to their village. This was the second village torched in less than a week.

As many as 300 troops from Panama’s National Police demolished a Naso village in Bocas del Toro–for the second time. No injuries were reported, however, some 150 adults and 65 children were left with no shelter and limited access to food and water.

Following an overturned eviction, an Ava Guarani indigenous community in Paraguay’s Itakyry district was sprayed with toxic chemicals, most likely pesticide, resulting in nearly the entire village needing medical treatment.

In Guatemala, a group of Maya Mam villagers set fire to a pickup truck and an exploration drill rig, after the Canadian company Goldcorp repeatedly failed to remove the equipment off the community’s land.

In Chile, several Mapuche communities began to reclaim their lands in Araucania, a region located in the center of the country, which they say were stolen in the XVI century during the Hispanic invasion. At least five people have been killed by the Chilean government, which has passed strong anti-terrorism legislation to imprison and trial Mapuche indigenous leaders.

In Ecuador, Indigenous peoples are suing U.S. oil corporations for damages to their Amazonian forest land and water pollution. Meanwhile the leftist government of Rafael Correa has tried to betray its electoral promises, by selling extensive lands to oil and mining corporations. The response was a strong national strike and social protests.

The panorama is different in Bolivia, where Indigenous people are moving towards self-government under their own cultural traditions, after the December 6 presidential and legislative elections. In those elections 12 of the 327 municipalities of the country voted in favor of Indigenous collective self-government, giving them control over the natural resources and their land. The same model, but at a smaller scale is being applied in Venezuela by the government of president Hugo Chavez, which is giving its Indigenous populations the right to own their ancestral lands.

Unfortunately, justice for Indigenous peoples seem to be wrong for the Obama administration, already controlled by the same corporate interests of its predecessors. A biased U.S. media often attacks the governments of Bolivia and Venezuela, while it remains silent in the massacres of Indigenous peoples in Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and the violent repression in Chile and Ecuador, or the violence promoted by the coup regime of Honduras where death squads trained in the U.S. are killing the opposition including Garifuna, Miskito and other Indigenous groups.

The future of Central and South America -and Africa- depends directly of how much power is retained by rich countries and their multinational corporations, in those regions. In the last decades, Wall Street and London have told poor nations that small governments are the key for progress and development. The less control, the more democracy, more human rights and especially more foreign investment. This model has failed.

We see what is happening right now in Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, etc. where weak governments can’t stop internal wars financed by rich countries and private corporations. Only in Congo this type of violence has caused over 6 million people killed and 500 thousands men and women being raped. This is a painful proof that governments need to be strong, that people must take control of their destinies, not corporations.

Growing up in South America, we were told that our Indigenous people were exterminated, disseminated, gone. Therefore they taught us in schools that nothing was left to reverse the colonization process, that our peoples could never dare to stop it. We were told we weren’t Indigenous anymore.

In reality, there is so much all we people -of every race- can do in order to stop the imperialist oppression of Indigenous peoples, and the destruction of our planet. Everyone can do something, because in the end this is about the survival of the whole human race and our home, our mother land.

We need to stand against rich countries oppressing poorer nations with direct military invasions or with provoked internal conflicts. It’s happening today in Congo, Uganda, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Mexico, Colombia, Yemen, Burma, Pakistan, Nigeria, Peru, etc.

Like in Avatar, this Pandora-like violence against Indigenous communities all over the world is promoted by a racist, selfish sector of United States government and corporate involvement in military invasions, coups, paramilitary groups, training of torturers and repressive forces, and financing of anti-Indigenous governments.

For instance, during the Bush administration, the strategy to take over the natural resources of Latin America was domitated by free-trade agreements (FTA) and the funding of violent conflicts in Colombia, Haiti, and Mexico. Thousands of civilians have been killed, many of whom were Indigenous and Afro descendants.

In 2009 with Barack Obama in power, the U.S. government has slowed down on its FTA policies but the Pentagon has confirmed the opening of seven military bases in Colombia, while it has possibly increased its presence in Peru with three military stations. The Pentagon’s Southern Command has also increased military exercise programs conducted with Peru, Panama, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, while Chile received approval from U.S. Congress to obtain high technology war missiles.

In Avatar, the main destructive leaders were the military chief and the corporate boss. The relation between U.S. military intervention and corporate interests is never more obvious than in Colombia. As the second biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world -after Israel- Colombia is an important source of oil, minerals, cocaine and agro business which are crucial for the U.S. economy. Its neighbor Venezuela is not taking these close ties too lightly, and recently the Chavez government has bought armament from Russia, China and possibly Iran.

In the James Cameron’s film Avatar, the US military became a sophisticated army of private mercenaries, working in behalf of extractive industries and its huge profits. No matter what they needed to destroy or who they had to kill, they had to get the job done. The “Sky people” had already destroyed their home, “and no green was left”.

Despite the white-supremacist tone of the end of the film with a white male saving the Indigenous population, the script had an interesting approach to race. While a mostly-white leadership were leading destructive enterprises, the saviors were a young and multi-racial group of thinkers and dreamers.

The movie presents Pandora’s Indigenous peoples as blueish half animals, not humans. In reality that is the way how some people see our Indigenous peoples in the Americas, almost as sub humans, with no rights to live, to survive. Our peoples are the victims of the permanent greediness of the so called developed nations.

As a result of extraordinary experiments, some of the humans become laboratory-mixed Natives. The Avatars were like a new race, mixed, mestizo individuals who are physically similar to the Indigenous, but mentally more aware of certain things. They learn the spirituality and sciences of nature from the “savages” and with time, they learn that mining is not worth the price of such destruction. Then they become the protectors of Natives, who using a mixture of knowledge, both human and Na’vi, eventually kick the invaders out of their land by actually killing most of them.

Sorry I just told you the rest of movie, but at least I didn’t reveal the romantic part. No worries, you will still enjoy this film.

Avatar represents a new step in the filming industry, not just because of its high technology animation [amazing!] and the way its mixed with real actors, but also because it’s showing us the most likely future of this planet, if we allow it to happen.

In the film, the attacking thugs were a bunch of insensitive corporate and military individuals, working for hidden interests. They would invest money in science, researching and cultural programs in order to win the hearts and minds of Indigenous peoples living in sacred, untouched, pristine forests of a balanced but fragile environment. Those places are the final destinations for destructive mining machinery, ready to extract the insides of the mother land.

Sebastian Machineri told me that Indigenous peoples in the Amazon forests are angry at many non-profits that come to their communities, video record their ways of live, take photos and teach them “modern” skills. Later on, corporations and ranchers move in.

The possible military conflicts to take place in Central and especially in South America in the next years, are related to corporate greediness and special capitalist interests. This is the scary future that awaits to the future generations.

Unless of course, the United States, Europe and other rich countries end their colonialist, imperialistic policies which are designed and dominated by corporate and military machines, true mafias. Like in Avatar, the future of our Pandora is in the hands of “the People” in order to regain the control of our lands, to guarantee a true democracy, to respect our Indigenous peoples with equality, where our planet is preserved and life is sacred again.

Carlos A. Quiroz is a free lance writer and independent journalist , video blogger, activist and artist painter based in Washington, DC. An Indigenous man of Quechua and Muchik heritage from Peru, he writes three blogs: Carlos in DC, Peruanista and Double Spirited. His articles have been published by The Huffington Post, Ground Report and websites in the U.S. Peru and Venezuela. His Twitter is CarlosQC.

The images in Ann McCoy’s works come from dreams, a process known as incubation in the Greek world. Incubation, a “sleeping in”, was used to record dreams for therapeutic and prophetic ends. For McCoy, dreams represent a philogenetically older mode of thought linked to nature and very much needed as a counterbalance in our “rational”, scientific world. The unconscious is no mere repository of the past, but contains the seeds of future healing. Dreams are letters from the gods and the animal spirits. For McCoy, dreams are linked to an inner transformation process described in alchemical symbolism. The Alchemical Great Work, and the personal dream life fuse, as part of the path to the realization of the Self.

My mother had spent the last fifteen years of her life in an institution near Pasadena. She was considered a very difficult case, insulting nurses, asking for bourbon. She weighed eighty-five pounds the last three years of her life and was bed ridden. Her mind had clouded over with something called ”wet brain” ; she had never recovered from her last attack of the D.T’s. During my childhood she spent every afternoon in her room drinking, her will of iron and taught frame keeping the house in rigid order.

My brother, a kinder person than myself, had asked me to drive up to see her. It had been three years. The drive on the freeway was long. When we arrived, she was in a coma-like state. The nurse shook her and told her we had arrived. Her eyes shot open. “Go home”, were her last words to us. She died soon after at ninety-one. When the call came about her death, I went into shock. She was my adopted mother, my tormentor: we had a terrible relationship. I expected to feel relief, instead I found myself sinking into a deep depression that lasted several months.

The idea of a period of darkness being followed by a period of illumination or regeneration is found throughout literature. The fifteenth century alchemists referred to the darkness as the nigredo, and the lighter whitening process as the albedo. “The Dark Night of the Soul” by Saint John of the Cross, a Catholic mystic, describes this inner process. In psychoanalysis a period of depression means that one has to go to the depths of the unconscious before a breakthrough can occur; in this way depression can have a positive role in the life of the individual. Esther Harding, a member of Jung’s inner circle, wrote a wonderful article entitled, “The Meaning and Value of Depression”. After reading it I no longer feared depression, even though I had a ten -year clinical depression.

Years of analysis in the United Sates and Zurich, hours had been spent discussing my mother. I knew the Miller Fantasies, the Imagio Mater, the “battle for deliverance for the mother.” Ruthanna had filled pages of my dream notebooks. What could I possibly be left to say or feel about her? I thought of the duel mother, Melanie Klein, the two sides of my mother’s face. One side was radically different from the other, one totally mad and malevolent, and the opposite side more normal. My memories of this split as a small child made me appreciate Melanie Klein’s work as well as Jung’s.

I had a dream shortly after my mother’s death. I was in a bloody underworld not unlike the chamber of horrors described in “The Visions of Zosimos” of Panopolis from a third century AD alchemical text. I saw my mother as a huge spider with her face reflected in the eyes. I am on a slab being sacrificed. The dream was a wake-up call that parts of myself needed to be sacrificed and transformed. I was very much caught in a negative mother complex like the spider’s web. The “Mad Mother Series” came out of this dream.
 
My mother suffered from alcoholism, depression, and later dementia.  In my own life I have had to come to terms with those parts of the mother that had become parts of my own personality. We take on the parent as an internal figure, the imago mater.  I quit drinking at 24 but that was just the beginning. The rest of my mother’s personality was very rooted in my conscious and unconscious life. I suffered long periods of depression, paralysis, and isolation.

The breakthrough for me came when I had a dream that my mother and I were swimming in a river with the bodies of lepers.  I am in the water with my mother; we are in the same soup, the same complex. The work “Washing the Leprous Mother in the Jordan” came from this dream.

In the Bible, bathing in the Jordan cures Neumann, the leper.  In alchemy “the leprous of the metals” refers to problems in the process.  My mother had always kept a stone from the Jordan River in her ivory reliquary box, so the Jordan River had a personal association relating to my mother and the idea of religious pilgrimage.  In India there is the Kumba Mele, a huge festival where millions bath in the Ganges.  I have seen smaller examples of ritual river bathing in Nepal and India.  There is also a wonderful fresco, in a closed Roman convent, which shows Constantine bathing in a tub to be cured of the pox or some other disease. The bathing in the river is not only healing but represents a kind of baptism. 

For me the dream led to a rebirth of sorts and a path out of the negative mother complex and the depression. In the dream the water started to sparkle with bits of light, and changed in a wonderful way. This “solutio” began to dissolve the complex, put it into solution. I was able to dump a lot of the negative traits I had inherited and a new attitude could come forth.  The river was a kind of baptism, an entry into a new life. Even if our personality is a reaction against the negative mother, we are caught in one side of an opposite. I had been swinging on a spider’s thread between the opposites. In alchemy the opposites are brought together and a new third middle ground may be found.

 “Lunar Birth” shows a devastated landscape. I dreamed of such a place like a primordial swamp. You see this devastated landscape before the sun rises in plate 22 of the “Splendor Solis.” In my dream a glimmer of light began to appear over a blackened landscape. A group of crows flew from the area as a boat sailed in. One of the crows had my face as a child. The crow is a symbol par excellence of the Nigredo, the dark state in alchemy. For me this had to do with a dawn after a depression.

The child represents new possibilities in dreams and visions.  In a symbolic way Christ as a child represents spiritual renewal in the individual as well as the collective.  Erich Neumann has written a wonderful book on the meaning of the child in dreams. In the dream I saw a little girl child glowing like a lamp, illuminating the landscape. This was an “inner child” I had never been allowed to experience. The numinosity of the figure gives her another dimension; she has a link to the transpersonal. In another way the girl child represents the divine feminine so repressed in our culture. I drew the child, modeled on a Christ child, wearing a dress. The child represents feminine divinity.

Sanctuary comes from an experience I had in the temple at Ranachpur in India, one of the great Jain temples in the world.  The Jains are one of the oldest religions in India.  They believe in forgiveness and incorporate it in a confessional festival called Perysiana where all Jains spend nine days contemplating forgiveness as well as in a daily ritual.  The experience in the temple was what a religious writer would call a “peak experience”.  I felt that my inner sanctuary had become mirrored in this outer sanctuary. More amazing still is that the plan for the Ranakpur temple came from one man’s dream.  In the Catholic world the closest example I can think of is Santa Maria Magore in Rome which was built from a vision about snow falling in the shape of the cathedral.  Snow fell on the 5 August, 358 AD in the shape of the cathedral, this is called “the miracle of the snows”.   The temenos, or sacred precinct often exists first as a vision, or dream, and then materializes in the outer world.

As I was finishing “Sanctuary” a baby deer walked out of the woods into my garden. I saw it nose to nose with my dog. The deer followed us around for sever hours. I became concerned and said,”you must go back to your mother.” The deer followed us like a puppy back into the forest, and then stayed there as we returned home. In Ireland the fairies ride on the backs of deer. The deer goes from forest to city garden and is an animal of the liminal realm. I put the deer into the drawing. It had come to tell me I was on the right track.   

For me dreams are letters from the gods.  This is nothing new, Artemidoris of Daldis wrote The Interpretation of Dreams in the second century AD. Century A. D.  The Bible is full of dream prophecy.  Every major world religion contains examples of dreams as prophecy. If anything dreams were considered a philogenitically older mode of thought.  In Jainism, each Jina or saints birth is announced by certain dreams.  The Age of Enlightenment and the Reformations relegated dream prophecy to “superstition and fortune telling” even in the Catholic Church.  Once heralded as windows on enlightenment and revelation, dreams were tossed into the dustbin until the birth of modern psychoanalysis.  In the Jewish world dreamers like Reb Hile Weshsler (1881) who told of a forthcoming catastrophe “ a dark cloud descending over Germany” were ignored.  Freud interpreted dreams from the standpoint of repressed memories, instinct and sexuality.  Only Jung viewed dreams as windows to the soul.

For me the dream is a treasure, something of great value.  First I record them, then research part off their content and meditate on it.  If a dream resonates in a certain way or is part of a series, or is linked to synchronistic events in my life, I pay particular attention to it.  In the dreams I “see “sections of the drawings.  Usually one big dream gives me the core idea of each work.  The process is organic.  As I work I have new dreams which alter the outcome of the work.  No beginning sketch exists except a general idea in my idea.  As I work I rearrange the drawings, the final product is always a surprise to me.

A later dream was of 12 babies in a landscape. “White Birth” came out of these dreams. I was reminded of an alchemical drawing with 12 babies in alchemist’s glassware. I also thought of a drawing by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher where small wax figures are floating in glass globes. The babies were new possibilities; the unconscious was giving birth.

The white horse in the original dream was with the babies. In a most general way the horse represents horsepower, energy. An Irish museum guard told me about a white horse in Irish mythology. Perhaps this horse was in my genes; I come from a family of Irish horse trainers and was a rider.

Visit Ann McCoy’s website at www.annmccoy.com

www.techgnosis.com

In paradoxical and altogether predictable terms, James Cameron’s ravishing Avatar sets a blue man group of mystically attuned forest dwellers against the aggressive and heartless exploitation that characterizes the military-industrial-media complex, with its virtual interfaces, biotech chimeras, and cyborg war machines. The paradox, of course, is that a version of this latter complex is responsible for delivering Camaron’s visions to us in the first place. To wit: before a recent screening of the film at the Metreon IMAX theater in San Francisco, we hapless begoggled ones were barraged with military ads, not to mention a triumphant techno-fetishist breakdown on the Imax technology that would soon transport us to the planet Pandora almost as thoroughly (and resonantly) as the handicapped jarhead Jake jacks into his computer-generated avatar body.

But those are behind the scenes ironies. With its floating Roger Deanscapes and hallucinogenic flora, the manifest world of Avatar instead spoke another truth: that the jungle pantheism that now pervades the psychoactive counterculture has gone thoroughly mainstream. Of course, noble savage narratives of ecological balance and shamanic wisdom have been haunting the Rousseau-mapped outback of the western mind for centuries. That said, Avatar represents some important twists in that basic tale. The most important of these is that the Na’vi’s nearly telepathic understanding of their environment is grounded not only in ritual, plant-lore, and that earnest seriousness that now afflicts PC Hollywood Indians, but in an organic communications network: the fibrous, animated, and vaguely repulsive pony-tail tentacles that not only allow the Na’vi to form direct control links with animals but also, through the optical filaments of the “Tree of Souls,” to commune with both ancestors and the Eywa, the biological spirit of the planet whose name resonates with Erda, our own Earth.

Call it ayahuasca lite. For while Avatar features nothing like the South American shaman lore and stupendous aya visuals that litter the otherwise very bad 2004 Western released here as Renegade, the film does suggest that the bitter jungle brew, and ideas of ecological wisdom now attached to it, is having a trickle-down effect. The banisteriopsis caapi vine that gives ayahuasca its name (though not its most hallucinogenic alkaloids) is also known as the “Vine of Souls,” which echoes the Na’vi’s Tree of Souls. And when Sigourney Weaver attempts to establish the efficacy of the Trees through a neurological discourse of electrical connection, the corporate tool Parker asks what she’s been smoking—a backhanded way of acknowledging how much Avatar’s visionary take on ecological consciousness is grounded in psychoactive consciousness.

After all, beyond a thriving and in many ways damaging ayahuasca tourist market in Brazil and Peru, clandestine aya circles manned by South American shamans and all manner of Euro-American facilitators are are now well established throughout the west. Among the professional creative classes who make up a sizable portion of West Coast seekers—for spirit and/or thrills—ayahuasca could almost be said to be mainstream. So it no longer matters whether Cameron or his animators have themselves drunk the tea; its active compounds are already swimming in the cultural water supply. Eco-futuristic dreams are now indistinguishable from the visionary potential of media technology itself. Indeed, whether you are talking form (ground-breaking 3D animation) or content (cyber-hippie wetdream decor), Cameron’s visual and technological rhetoric is impossible to disentangle from hallucinogenic experience.

OK, maybe I am the one smoking something. But if there is an aya-Avatar connection, it would explain one crucial way in which the film differs from conventional “noble savage” mysticism. Rather than ground the Na’vi’s grooviness in their folklore or spiritual purity, the film instead presents the vision of a direct and material communications link with the plant mind. Which means that Eywa (aka Aya) does not have to be believed—she can be experienced. After the temporary fusion with the Tree of Souls that fails to prevent her death, Weaver’s chain-smoking left-brain doctor happily confirms Ewya’s existence. Like the Vine of Souls now wending its way through the developed world, the Tree of Souls becomes a kind of bio-mystical media, a visionary communications matrix that uplinks the souls of the dead and the network mind of the ecosphere itself.

“Visionary art seeks to return us, in our visions, to the primordial world that preceded history: like hieroglyphs etched on the walls of a long-lost civilization, leading us to a paradise of lost imagery or forgotten dream-symbols.”
Laurence Caruana, A Manifesto of Visionary Art

Maura Holden, born in Pennsylvania in 1967, is emerging as one of the most powerful and interesting visionary or sacred artists of the present time. Combining both excellent draftsmanship with a lucid sense of colour, Maura depicts the secret vistas of the collective psyche, the sunken, honeycombed ruins of mysterious ancient civilisations (see Travellers Moon), the paradisiacal and primordial bliss of our ancestors living within a shamanic dreamtime (see work in development), and, in one of her paintings, Thanatos Wave, (below) what looks like the sudden, mass-onset of transpersonal awareness or surfacing of deep unconscious material (represented by deep sea fish and ocean) overthrowing old and stagnant orders of being.

As I have familiarized myself with Maura Holden’s oeuvre, my sense of awe and wonder has deepened. What I observed on-screen could not prepare me for the impact of seeing her work full-size. Like a fractal, entire new levels of detail and intricacy are evident, invisible online. Each painting is a holographic gestalt, representing with minute detail the macro-microcosm of various archetypal realms and aspects of Consciousness.

The overall compositional and color harmonics, combined with this obsessive and miraculous level of detail, directed by a sincere, experiential, phenomenological spirituality, has convinced me that Maura Holden’s work can be considered equal to the finest sacred art of any world age.

- Daniel Mirante (updated Jan 2008)

Thanatos Wave by Maura Holden
1999-2000 / 38″X38″ / oil on panel / collection of the artist

Daniel :
Maura, since encountering your work I am revived and refreshed in my enthusiasm for the art of painting. I want to express my gratitude for the images you are evoking through this discipline. Your work carries a profundity that comes from direct experience, and resonates with the shamanic, mystical spirit in humanity.

Maura :
Thank you, Daniel. I am very happy to hear that your enthusiasm for painting is refreshed. (Too often this art – along with “god” — has been wrongly pronounced dead!) I find painting to be an ideal devotional art, as endlessly versatile as the mind, and as good a bridge between matter and spirit as I can conceive.

Daniel :
These paintings appear like representations of first-hand journeys into spiritual realms. Does your artistic practice integrate with some kind of shamanic practice ?

Maura :
Yes, the paintings are often representations of journeys, and I have various methods of unlocking gates, and of drawing aside worldly veils. Most of the practice is just concentration and meditation while painting, but I have used prolonged retreat in the forest, as well as plants which shamans use to take journeys. In conjunction with good planning, and a day of meditation and preparation beforehand, I have found the plants extremely helpful in translating multidimensional spiritual experiences into fixed visions.

Daniel :
It is very exciting that there is a new wave of artists who seem to be creating from a different frequency band. It makes me recall what the psychologist Charles Tart called state-specific knowledge, that fully coherent forms of vision, knowledge and wisdom can originate from multiple assemblage points of consciousness, not just the quotidian or everyday state of being.

Maura :
This state-specific knowledge you refer to is one of my pet preoccupations. I am particularly fascinated by the aspect of knowledge called “being at one with the whole” in which, in a transcendent state of meditation, I am vividly aware of the interconnectedness of all creation – something most humans dont consider while cooking an egg or tying a shoe. Reconciling the fact that “I am at one with the whole” with the more generally accepted fact, “I am an individual”, is a little bit like reconciling the square and the circle. It is tricky, and there is a secret to it — but geometrically, mathematically, the circle and the square can be reconciled, and so can the individual and the whole. One of the many things I love about imaginative art is that it reconciles another dichotomy: the rift between reality and dreams. In imaginative art the two worlds are harmoniously married in one form, and this is very exciting for those of us who love both worlds and experience them together. I am extremely encouraged by the new wave of talented artists who understand this.

[Show as slideshow]

Daniel :
How did your amazing painting technique come about and are your paintings recieved in a complete gestalt or built up through spontaneity and exploration ?

Maura :
That is a good question. My painting technique is always changing. I started out drawing visions in pencil, but a desire for color, transparency and luminosity led me to try oils. At first I used oil paint with turpentine only. After I had done a few paintings that way, I tried other mixtures: alkyd medium, stand-oil based medium, egg tempera, egg and oil mixtures and so on.

Since I was my own teacher, I experimented freely, by intuition, but I also read books about pigments and media, and began to formulate my own theories and methods. I wanted to make paintings that were lightfast and durable, and I also wanted otherworldly effects. Striking a balance between effects and eternity remains my fixed goal, but all other variables in my technique are subject to change. Generally, I let a painting grow like a plant, training it and pruning it as needed. I begin with a multiplex chaotic vision — the proverbial mustard seed.

Next I devise a structural framework, such as a geometric form, intended to serve as a support, or trellis, for the vision to grow around. The rest is just training the figurative elements of the vision around the structure. Key points in the structural skeleton correspond to important junctures in the pictorial composition. In the past, my compositional structures were more loose and intuitive. In recent years, though, numbers, proportions and geometry have become increasingly important to me.

Daniel :
Your attention to detail, luminosity and way with colour is beautiful, and it is all the more wondrous that it is mainly self-taught. The Vienna school of Fantastic Realism seems to be emerging as quite a strong technical and philosophical catalyst upon contemporary visionary painters. What artists do you consider important today ? And do you believe the traditional gallery context provides an adequate vessel for visionary paintings ?

Maura :
The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, and specifically Ernst Fuchs, was one of my personal icons of artistic excellence. When I was first learning, I spent countless hours studying a book of Fuchs? paintings and drawings. My other main icon, Oliver Benson, is an extraordinarily gifted artist of my own age, who at present keeps a low profile by choice. When you compare the very famous Fuchs with the more obscure Benson, it is obvious who most people today will consider important. Yet, Benson has the greater influence on my own art and train of thought, because, not only is he as talented as Fuchs, but we are friends and we paint together. These private connections are as important to the intricate web of art as the public ones…

Enlightenment of the Dominators by Maura Holden
Oil on panel / collection of the artist

Today there are more talented fantastic and visionary artists than I ever thought I would see. It is a truly fabulous time to be here. For one thing, the movement is global, largely thanks to the internet. Artists with e-mail can communicate and send pictures around the world easily and instantly. Now, regardless of country and connections, we are all on a more level playing ground, and art lovers have a better chance of seeing the work of great artists who are unrecognized and/or of modest means. Of course, some of us are very enthusiastic about using the web tool, and some of us would rather just paint. Just painting was always my preference? Only in the past six months have I learned to use a computer and cobble together a simple website — and from most accounts people believe I have suddenly fallen from the sky! Out of the blue, my work is accessible to many more people; instantly I am able to communicate with other artists, art lovers and people in the industry; the results have exceeded my every expectation.

I am excited about the future of an art world free of dictations from on high, where no authority need intercede between artists and art lover. That said, however, I still see a place for traditional galleries and museums. While I understand and feel the limitations of galleries and museums, there really is no better way to experience the mind-blowing presence of some of this artwork without planting your feet solidly in front of it, and gazing at its physical substance – millions of times more powerful than what we glean from a digital image on a screen. And the professional expertise involved in respectfully preserving and displaying artworks to their best advantage is a gift to the artist from the better galleries and museums. I think the key to showing art today is diversity. Galleries are good; museums are good; showing art in your truck is good; festivals; open studios; coffee shops; artist-run collectives; the internet; books, magazines, cards, prints and posters; and whatever else people think up next.

My personal dream is quite “outsider” : to own my own home, and to craft it into a fantastic-sculptural-environment/little-museum-of-visionary-art – a place that is out-of-this-world, but makes people feel relaxed enough to spend lots of time looking, and enjoying themselves.

Many thanks to Maura Holden for giving her energies to this interview and for allowing her fantastic work to be presented on Lila.

To see more amazing paintings by Maura Holden go to http://www.mauraholdenartworks.com

By Oleg Korolev

The style of Romanticism: ‘Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog’, by Caspar David Friedrich (1818). Within 100 years, it would be followed by the ‘modern art’.

In 1925, the Spanish liberal philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) had written and published his essay “The Dehumanization of Art”. In spite of the work , it represents a sort of a tendentious reflection on the current developments of the art process; it has actually become the program for the next generations of modern artists, all the way up to our times.

In this work, Ortega y Gasset explained how the perceptions of some of the elite members of art society have become tired of the “melodramas” of the traditional “old art”. At the same time, how this traditional “old art” was “dishonestly” provoking the viewer to cry and laugh, or to feel some semi-utilitarian pleasures, because the ordinary viewer’s “aesthetic enjoyment doesn’t make a difference, in principle, from the emotional experiences that they have in the everyday life”. He, without any hesitation, has appointed himself and those who will appreciate the new trends in art as clever and intellectually greatly advanced, but those who would stay loyal to the old, classical traditions in art–which contain a human emotionality–as just stupid, narrow-minded “masses”.

At the same time, he greeted the “new art”, which somehow acted in the context of the ideas expressed by one of the European classics in the phrase “Human, All Too Human”, and has refused all that which is “human” in art. The “new art” of Modernism has exterminated all the living forms in art, and has hermetically closed up the art process within the boundaries of a simple-minded dialectics, never giving a chance to penetrate inside to anything that is connected with the emotional or spiritual experience of the human being. It was going even further and has become, actually, a totally dead mechanical mental construction for a nihilistic game of the straying in the aberration, human mind, which insensibly for itself has rejected the human soul as an unnecessary old fashioned feature of the slow-witted, narrow-minded “masses”. It went on to totally forbid even the mentioning of the “transcendence” as the ultimate point of the human soul itself.

The ‘new art’ in the early 20th century: ‘The Black Square’, by Kazimir Malevitch (1915).

So, the philosopher Ortega y Gasset concluded: a “non-transcendence”, a “dehumanization”, a “striving to understand art as a game, no more”, an “avoiding of the natural forms depiction” and a “deep irony”, have become the main premises of this “new art”. And he also stated: “As a symbol of the new art now becomes the magic flute of Pan, which forces the kids to dance at the edge of a forest”. Here we have to notice that the last statement has obviously become a hidden joy of the servant of “Pan”, which was happy to involve the art world in his darkness, barring the path to the transcendence, magic, at the same time pointing out some of the pagan images which had appeared in the art of the Renaissance period, thus attempting to attach the “new art” to something great. I must admit that Ortega y Gasset was a really sophisticated manipulator, and this trick of his has become quite effective.

Since the “new art”, he wrote, was neither “popular”, nor recognized by “folk”, the philosopher made a conclusion that a society from now on will have to be forever separated between those who will understand such “new art”, and on the other hand, those who will never be able to do this. Proceeding from the fact that already in his time the “European Enlightenment” postulate of the “equality of people” was recognized as an outdated concept, the author announced the existence of the two newly established classes of society, divided by the sign of understanding or non-understanding of this “new art”: “Two orders, or ranks – an order of the prominent people and an order of the unexceptional people”. Additionally, offering a quote from the Bible: “Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not keep with you”, he pointed to the so-called “unexceptional people” as being the “mules”.

It is really amazing to see how the Biblical quote which applied to those people who cannot realize the spiritual, transcendental things as being the “mules, without understanding” was used against the spiritually adjusted and emotionally receptive, instead of to the opposite part–the spiritually aberrated, nihilistic “new art” representatives of the Modernism. They are the real “mules, without understanding” of the Holy Scripture. So, he tried to support the anti-spiritual statement by a spiritual one! This is a verbal trick with a purpose to sacralize the desacralized! The phrase has become a simple substitution of the notions, made by the proud, but spiritually ignorant man who confused not only himself, but a great many artists and art lovers who followed. If we wish to find a great example of obscuration by the perverted, but devious human mind, we have to recall this case.

Also, he proclaimed that from now on, the less the portrayed human being looks as a man or a woman, the more free is this new art from the “vile and utilitarian icon emotionality”. He called the “new art” as a new “iconoclasm”, a fight against the sacralization of the “image”.

The Gothic Style: Madonna ‘Belle Verriérre’ from the window in the south side of the choir at the Chartres Cathedral (13th century).

Ortega y Gasset gave some historical examples of alleged similar cases in the world art history, where the contemporary Cubism “period of the art geometrism” and “iconoclasm”, to when other ancient barbaric “geometric” and “”iconoclastic” styles were changed by some “searches for the new living natural shape” and then the trend changed itself to the opposite, etc. The same happened also during the Renaissance, after the times of the Gothic style.

Of course, he wished to say about the simple pendulum of mind principle, which was reflected in the influences on the development of the art history, swinging between the polarities, similar to the movements of a snake. However, he has only confused that art Modernism is striving to get rid of the “living shapes” in the same way that “the Renaissance art tried to escape the “nightmare the Gothic geometric canon”. All is vice versa! Modernism is against the living and human, but Renaissance is for it!

Modernism and Renaissance are two opposing things: the first is a way toward “dehumanization” and “geometrization”, while the other is a search for the living human shape, a humanization and a refusal of the geometrism of the Gothic style.

His attempt to attach the anti-spiritual and nihilistic “new art” of Modernism to the spiritual and religious art of Renaissance, as to a symbol of the new greatest art, is understandable (the same tricks are practiced by the present adepts of this already quite old “new art”!). It is even significant that they look so hard for the authorities of the past to prove their own weak art-historical positions, that they cling to the prestigious time-proved things like religion and great art , but it doesn’t prevent them from the obviously illogical and plainly dishonest look of the manipulators. Of course, it is possible to imagine that Ortega y Gasset had hoped to present a similarity between Modernism and the Renaissance art movements in a certain loss or a refusal of the spiritual. That is typical for all the adepts of the “new art”! He, like all of them wished to see that Renaissance would have a lesser connection to the Transcendence than the Gothic, and that it is almost like their “new”, dehumanized “art”, but he again made an easy mistake. The point is that in spite of the fact that the Renaissance movement had a sort of an addition to the mainstream Catholic Christian teaching of certain patterns of Greek-Roman pre-Christian, as well as Hermetic doctrines, it still had the brightest transcendentalist’s features; it still said about the divine in man, but already in the perfect living human body! So Renaissance brought more of human emotionality, passion, sensuality and sexuality to art–precisely those factors that were unacceptable for Modernism.

The Renaissance style: Madonna Litta by Leonardo da Vinci (1490)

So, there is no legitimate way to connect Modernism to Renaissance, based only on Modernity’s own proclamations that both styles could be viewed as revolutionary. Those art revolutions had different, and completely opposing directions!

The era of the Modern in the history, as well as Modernism in art is a totally new situation, which cannot be compared to any previous periods. For the first time in the world history, the common man of the “masses” of the great “Archaic” period of the Pre-Modern, got a chance to become more educated than a priest, a bishop or a King. Of course, it has become a result of the work of the European educational institutes. So, a talented and cultural man, even being a representative of a low social status could get a right for own opinion and own answers to the existantional questions. And if in the 15th century it was possible only for the unique geniuses like Leonardo, from now on, the way is opened for the social majority. So, the “modern man” got own will to act and his own, non-tribal or confessional intellect.

It has never happened before in the history of mankind, even if one goes back to the shamans of the Paleolithic era. But the lonely “modern” mind without the “archaic” religious system and control has very soon become too proud and “objectified”. The Modern state of society brought about a great progress in science, and in this sense it has become a very positive phenomenon; but at the same time in many cases it has become a total aberration, and cut off of the human soul from the Transcendent, which is an impasse for the spiritual evolution of the person. This is what we can see in the Modernism. Modernism is a spiritual dead end!

The ‘new art’ in 1960s: ‘Pink Lady’ by Willem de Kooning (1965).

On reflection, Ortega y Gasset obviously jumped to our times, when Post-Surrealistic styles (Mystical Realism, Visionary Art, Fantastic Realism) are fighting for survival not only with the “nightmare” of today old fashioned Cubistic “geometrism”, but with the all derivations of art, which as own source has a “dark night of the soul”, a separation from the Transcendence. The new spiritual Visionary Art is trying to remain alive under a heavy pressure of the heritage of the Dehumanization&emdash;which is today represented by the “Contemporary art”–to keep the new spiritual in the “living shapes” of the total anthropology. Of course, it is not the same, but still looks somewhat as it was in the time of the Renaissance!

To avoid confusion due to similarly sounding words, I must recall that “Modern” is a period of philosophical and social consciousness, but “Modernism” is a movement in art. (“Art Modern” is an art style, also called “Art Nouveau” or “Jugendstil”, etc).

Similarly,”Post-modern” is a philosophical and social system of views, but “Post-modernism” is a period in art. (“Contemporary art” is an art style).

So, today, not a Modernism with its initial dehumanization, but already a Post-Modernism with its total refusal of any plot and sense, has become an obsolete, almost a medieval totalitarian canon, more moody and jealous in defence of it’s postulates, than Gothic to its own.

“Contemporary art” of Post-Modernism has been randomly “citating” some elements of the art inventions and discoveries of the great art styles of the past. It itself produces nothing, except of the naked irony, as well as “citating” of own “art citations” in progression up to the number of Pi.

Post-Modernism today recalls the ever ironic “Pan”, which “deep humor” has exhausted in Modernism and in the stage of Post-Modernism has come to an complete marasmus.

Returning to José Ortega y Gasset, who had found a very good quotation from the Holy Bible, “Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not keep with you”, we already clearly see a totally opposite sense of that one which he wished to illustrate and corroborate! So, a “non-transcendence”, a “dehumanization”, a “striving to understand an art as a game, no more”, an “avoiding of the natural forms depiction” and a “deep irony” have become the main premises to be the “mule, without understanding “of the spiritual and the divine. These are the premises of the aberrant mechanical consciousness of the most vile and stupid animal, mentioned in the Bible’s Psalm .

I also believe that the idea of Ortega y Gasset’s to divide the society into “two classes, or ranks–a class of prominent people and a class of unexceptional people”–is great, but it has to be applied completely the other way around!

The real art aristocracy–the “prominent people” are those who understand and accept the transcendence of the divine in the human soul and the immanence in the “natural living forms”, reflected in true art. The art plebeians–the “unexceptional people” are the “mules” who have no such gift of the divine.

It is good to mention that not all artists in the recent art history worship the Baal of the Dehumanzation, de-spiritualization and exclusion of the Transcendence in art. God always keeps those ten righteous men, who will save the town from the ultimate annihilation! About this, in the next installment.

Oleg Korolev is a Russian Mystical, Religious and Visionary artist, painter. His art works have been on display in private and corporate art collections in Russia, Europe, North America and Australia. The official site of Oleg Korolev: www.koro-art.com

www.facebook.com/Korolev.Oleg

www.myspace.com/oleg_korolev

Reprinted with thanks from Prometheus issue 151
MUSEUM OF EUROPEAN ART
10545 Main Street, Clarence, New York 14031 (USA)

Admission is by reservations only: Guided tours start at 10 am, 1 & 3 pm, Monday to Friday, and Saturdays, 10 am & 1 pm. Free admission. Contact MEAUS by E-mail: info@meaus.com , or by phone at 759-6078 for reservations.

Art : ‘Sharing Rays’
Amanda Sage
www.amandasage.com

Opened up by the art, those that attended the show directly found themselves on a journey, a vision quest into the possibilities.

It was a sharp transition from the cold hard streets and through a portal into another kind of gathering place for the human imagination. Walking below the incredible sacred geometries gold leafed by David Heskin and Aloria Weaver of the Dreaming Co:nexus.

The walls were wrought with wonder, telling a story without beginning or end. Here it was easy to lose oneself in a flight of fancy, an adventure of discovery into the never before seen.

Spread out in the glowing heart of this lofty Temple of Visions is an epic mural rendered from the seamless everworld by Xavi with the help of other artists around the artspace.

Celebrating the ecology of new city life, on the rooftopia above the gallery we hung out in gardens beneath the stars.

After the event I felt refreshed by this vitalizing new chorus in the song of the human spirit. At the heart of this expanded art horizon is the exceptionally masterful paintings of Amanda Sage, a true visionary who has helped catalyze the flight of this new transformational vehicle.

Dedicating his energy to organizing the production and curating the show is the inspiring dream catalyst Jimmy Bleyer. The passionate soul of this incredible crew is anchored by the incandescent yogini Cheri-Rae whose raw food and yoga studio PEACE nearby the gallery helps to stabilize this energy with a healthy and mindful consciousness.

Nestled in the New York of the West, a key source of conscious art and media for the world, is a numinous crew bringing art culture to a new level while living life deep.

www.templeofvisions.com

www.peaceyogagallery.com

Photos : Rychard Cooper

The Full Gallery can be seen at Pod Collective

Art :
Adam Scott Miller
Antenna
www.corpuscallosum.cc