I listen to Pico Iyer speak of The Pilgrim’s Way on Waking Up. One section, The Chapels of Contemplation, brings me to Naoshima and the Chichu Art Museum. In his immersion in the art and life there, Iyer writes: “In truth the soul’s joy and liberation lie on every side of us, if only we can come to our senses.”
Come to our senses.
Pause, and if you’re intrigued, venture into the museum and integrate into a way of living in community on an island in the Seto Inland Sea in Japan. Is Naoshima Utopia? Read the article and see what you think. Certainly it invites a look into how to integrate old and young, nature and art, and new ways of perceiving and being in the connecting liveliness that brings stillness to our world.
Thursday evening, my grandson and I were at Filoli Gardens visiting Rose Wonders, the troll created from nature by Thomas Dambo. It was quiet, just us.
Haruki Murakami:
Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.
I wonder ….What a view!Touch while held aloft on arms and handsLooking into her eyes as she looks back.A place to shelter and restLooking out from inside a Cone Home!
Yesterday I explored the lower part of Filoli Gardens, intrigued by the many sculptures along the trail. Then I met Rose Wonders, a Thomas Danbo Troll. Thomas is a Danish sculpture artistwho builds giant trolls from recycled materials.
First artwork to see and enter along the trail. Then I met a bench.Then I come to Roots and WingsSupportReaching upward while grounded. And then, Wind, Water, and TimeRhythms of the natural worldDainty UpliftRefugeRespiteRose WondersHeldUpcycle!
My friend Mirka Knaster,a member of Fiber Dimensions, a group of highly talented fiber artists in the Bay Area has a blog focused on art, specifically fiber. In this post she writes about theChiharu Shiota exhibitcurrently at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.
Mirka writes:Yarn installations are Shiota’s way of “painting” three-dimensionally, outside of a canvas.The thread functions the way a line does in a painting. Strands of red yarn are connective webs that resemble blood vessels or neurons in the brain.InDiary, papers and photographs are embedded in the web. Shiota says: “When the body is gone, the objects which surrounded them [sic] remain behind….As I wander the stalls of the markets in Berlin, I find especially personal items like photographs, old passports and… diaries. Once, I found a diary from 1946, which was an intimate insight into the person’s life and experiences. While [I am] looking at those [handwritten] pages, their inner self is revealed, and I can feel their presence.” This installation reflects on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II through lingering traces of history in the objects Shiota finds and in the absence of the humans who once had them.
On Friday I was at Cornerstone gardens in Sonoma and Saturday at the Las Gallinas Reclamation ponds in San Rafael. I offer a taste through photos.
Dipping into and expanding with RosesLaced HeartsAgave FlowerBall of RocksMetal Goddess in the GardenReflecting PondThank you Hispanic workers for our foodWider View of the GardensMr. and Mrs. Duck in the marsh pondSwan Landing Swan in a gentle float
Today, I’m again overwhelmed with a president who, on an ever-changing whim, goes against the constitution to levy tariffs that affect each one of us and everyone in the world, and that is just one thing he does daily. Therefore, I opened Stay Inspired, Shelter in Place, 2020. It’s an expensive book but 100% of the profits are donated to NO KID HUNGRY.
This book is the inspiration of Lisa Dolby Chadwick, who is the founder of the Dolby Chadwick Gallery. You can order the book through the gallery. It’s a collection of poetry and art. Open to any page and find beauty and comfort, perhaps even laughter.
In Dean Young’s poem “Whale Watch”, I smile and recognize these words:
… I have seen books with pink slips
marking vital passages
but this i do not recommend
as it makes the book appear foolish
like a dog in a sweater.
Here’s the last line of Rilke’s poem “Sunset” translated by Robert Bly.
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.
Again, I recommend Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “So Much Happiness”which can be found at poets.org.
Ken Wilber:
Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future: we enter with it into the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open the riches and glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by its content, but what what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere. And thus it undoes the agitated grasping in the heart of the suffering self, and releases us – maybe for a second, maybe for a minute, maybe for all eternity – releases us from the coil of ourselves.
This book is great art and releases us from the coil of ourselves.
Look through the trunks of treesOpen Fairy DoorsGreet the morning with a swim in Angel Lake
An arrangement of camellias and fruitFresh scentsA place to sit, rest, and reflect Forget-me-notsYou Rock among the treesAnd rootsAnd circle, centered and dance
Each day my inbox contains a covey of inspiring quotes. I’m hoisted, flown, and carried on words to open and release. Today something different comes, a quote by Francis Picabia, a French painter:
Our heads are round so thoughts can change direction.
I think of trees, open 360 degrees.
Sculpture Bench in Old Mill Park Big Wave Bench by Artist and Arborist Chuck Oakander
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