I used to burn a lot of sage. In fact, there was a period of time when I was burning sage every night before I went to bed. I would walk through my apartment with my ritual bowl, smudging all the areas where I had experienced pain or sadness. Hoping that the smudge would clear out all the negativity that I had experienced (or, perhaps more accurately, perpetuated) and create a clean slate for a better day come morning.
I don’t burn nearly as much sage as I used to. Indeed, I reserve it for rare occasions. In a contemplative mood this afternoon, as I was smudging my studio, I started to think about the purpose of my smudging and the intentions I would set for it in the past.
Read MoreIn 2019, I looked forward to 2020 as the year of clear vision. The phrase “Hindsight is always 20/20” resonated with me, and I anticipated that 2020 would give me the opportunity to look backwards, examine my past actions more closely, and grant me the clarity to move forward with strengthened purpose and a clearer path.
Read MoreIt's been a creatively fruitful summer, perhaps even more so because of the inward-looking nature of my personal journey during these unusual times.
May, June, and July provoked an awareness of the need for greater introspection, marking self-examination as key during a time of vast societal upheaval. August has continued the push toward living more mindfully.
Read MoreJust like other human beings, artists change a lot as time passes. We have lives that flow through the ordinary channels. We begin and end relationships, change apartments or jobs, and make discoveries about life and humanity. We’re a constant river, always becoming someone new, our presence in the world unfolding and unfolding.
For those of us who specifically express through a creative channel, change in our lives manifests in what we create. As a visual artist, I’ve watched my art evolve over the years. The tools I use to make my art have changed little, but what I create has grown in leaps and bounds. I love that I’ve organized my virtual portfolio by year. I like to go back and see who I was in past years by looking at what I created during that time. Each piece symbolizes something that I was working on internally. Often, I was struggling with something very dark and difficult. My emergence from a difficult state tends to be paralleled by the completion of a work of art.
Read MoreAs I grow, I find myself increasingly disenchanted with humanity’s valuation of the mind as the pinnacle of human achievement. We are convinced that our thinking-intelligence is that which has enabled us to achieve our greatest ends. Our triumphs include discovering life-saving medicines and surgical techniques that save lives; contriving ever more complex technology which permits us endless variations on the things we desire physically, emotionally, and mentally; and developing methods of manipulating nature to our advantage, which thus far have bestowed upon us a variety of resources beyond comprehension.
We have become a people who value the power of the mind above all else for its ability to seemingly exist beyond the physical, while simultaneously possessing the ability to analyze and rationalize how best to manipulate the physical. By contrast, our ability to love and commune with each other and the natural world upon which we are ultimately dependent is a secondary value. We see life through the lofty vantage point of the head, and neglect the heart which pulses unceasingly, which in its innate intelligence brings the life-blood to nourish every fiber of us, from the largest and most potent of organs to the tiniest outliers of cells that reside in our fingertips, our toes.
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