Void and Separation/Emergence

Before the heavens and the earth came into existence, all was chaos, unimaginably limitless and without definte shape or form. Eon followed eon: then, lo!

Out of this boundless, shapeless mass something light and transparent rose up and formed the heaven.

-- Japanese Creation Myth/From Kenji Shibukata: Tales from the Kojiki

Before the creation process begins, I feel as if I am floating in a void, in a complete darkness where there is nothing to grasp. I see no light. My body is filled with an implacable, unexplainable agitation. It longs to take action. It wants to expand beyond its physical container and reach for the source.

Then something light and transparent arises. We call it inspiration.

To me, inspiration comes from all living things like sunflowers, birds, butterflies and particularly the motion of our human bodies.

As soon as I identify with the urge to create the emergence of an image, “I” am separated from “the other”, like the earth and the heaven are separated.

Initiation

Drawing

My vision of the image is given a form as a life-size drawing based on a moving human body. Once the figure is projected onto the external, it becomes the symbol that recalls the archetypal force. “An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it has flowed in this channel the more likely it is that sooner or later the water returns to its old bed.” (Carl G. Jung) By giving form to the archetype, the form lifts the spirit into the sphere of infinite, psychic kinship. The symbol is not about the trace of the form but the trace of the spirit. The spirit cannot be seen save by means of the form.

Dyeing Silk

As I brush, drip, splash and spray dye onto silk, it penetrates into the silk fiber, moving along and bleeding into it. Colors blend into each other as though the dye has its own life. Observing these “happenings,” it feels as though something beyond my control is penetrating into the core of my being. My body trembles with ecstasy.

Backing Silk

The translucency of silk and paper evokes a childhood memory -- the expectation of the arrival of snow viewed from behind a shoji screen. As a child when I awoke on cold winter mornings I was excited to see “the other side.” The unseen world was implied by the color and the light coming through the paper. Is the translucent veil a doorway to the realm of mystery that underlies all forms? The following quote by Joseph Campbell eloquently describes the mystery of the veil:

The first stage, the veil, manifests from the fact that you don’t see the white light. This is what is called the Maya veil. The image that’s given is of white light broken into the colors of the rainbow by a prism. This prism is the Goddess. With the veiling power, the obscuring power, the white light can’t get through. With the projecting power, the forms of the world come through. The prism is the veil, but it is also the projector; what stops the white light and what projects the color of rainbow. In this second stage, the white light shows through the forms of the world. (Joseph Campbell Companion/ Reflection on the Art of Living, selected and edited by Diane K. Osbon)

Backing silk requires intense focus and concentration. Brushing paste on the paper, putting down the paper carefully on the stretched silk, brushing out wrinkles and bobbles with a fine brush--these actions create the flow of movement. In this great tension, my body becomes alert and moves automatically without thinking. I am completely in the present moment in this flow.

Burning Blocks

I burn the surface of the wood block with a torch. What is in front of me is not a tree. In fact, the formation of the tree once planted in the earth, no longer exists. The tree is now this wooden board (construction plywood). As I move with the torch along the grain my mind enters into the timeless history of the tree. In serenity, I feel the transformation of the old substance into a new shape. A new life of the tree arises before my eyes as my block.

Descent

Carving and Printing

The physicality of my art process is most prominent in the carving of the block. There is the touch of the chisel on the block, the rhythm and sound of cutting, the movements I make (I literary sit on the block while carving), the weight of the roller, the tackiness of the ink, and the pressure of rubbing the block with a spoon. This physicality is an integral part of the process. Carving, inking and printing seem to replicate the universal cycle of Life/Death/Life. Every movement of cutting is neutral, inherently creative and destructive, neither is avoidable. My whole body becomes sensitive to what must die (what must be cut out) and what shall live (what is left on the block). I find that my hands make rapid decisions about where to cut more, even to the point of overruling the rational mind. It is as though the movements have become internalized in my muscular reflexes. The rhythm of cutting has become sensation in my stomach; it evokes feelings of movement and a symphony of excitements. It is a meditation practice. On the block, I move with rather than against the inhalations and the exhalations of the greater wild nature. Through this meditation, I acknowledge that the Life/Death/Life cycle is a natural one. In this process, I become like the cyclical wild. I have the ability to infuse energy and strengthen life and also to stand out of the way of what must die. Through carving, I accept the rhythm of this Life/Death/ Life cycle instead of becoming martyred by it. The rhythm already exists. I sway back and forth until I am copying the rhythm. In this rhythm, the image dances with the movement of the grain pattern. Carving is my dance.

After this progressive carving process, called the reduction process, the block is destroyed. Chips and fragments cover the floor of my studio. The "body" (of the image) on the block is scattered on the ground. Even though its outer vitality has been taken away and life has essentially been wroung out of it, it has not been completely. It can come back to life as the print. The more chips I have around the carved block, the more intense the blackness becomes on the silk. I consider this process the “descent” because it involves the sacrifice of life in order to carve out more of what has been held unconscious by the Self in the underworld.

As I stand on the block while carving, I wonder what my relationship to the block symbolizes? Kali dancing on Shiva? The image of Kali is commonly depicted as the dancing aspect of Shiva. She does her dance on the passive, ultimate reality of Shiva (the all pervading eternal primeval consciousness of the universe). She causes the constant cycle of creation, life and death of all things. In Hinduism, Kali is a particularly important deity. By understanding Her, we come to terms with the utter impermanence of our body and of the true existence which lies beyond. The universal cycle Creation/Life/Death, which most people believe but wish to experience directly, causes fate, relationships, love, creativity and all else to move in large and wild patterns. This is Kali’s dance -- creation, power, dissolution, death, incubation, creation, and so on. I must be unconsciously fusing into Kali’s energy through the carving dance.

Union / Return

Dancing of the Image

I dance the image. In this stage, the body and psyche work together. Gabrielle Roth, self-proclaimed urban shaman, calls the ecstatic level of consciousness “an inner state of healing and purity - an egoless, timeless state of being in which we are completely electric, completely turned on. It is a state of being which, in fact, we are divinity – divinity dancing.”

In offering myself fully to the spirit, to the sacred movement of life, the spirit enters and moves me, transforms me, awakens my soul’s passion, enlivening every cell of my body. Becoming the essence of spirit in motion, the divine cosmic dancer, is the union with divinity residing in myself.

This final stage is both union and separation. This is the beginning for the next phase of the creation process that does not seem to have an ending.

Whether I intend to or not, the process of creating art teaches me about my own life. It has a great deal to do with the stages of life and the initiation ceremonies I undergo as I move from one stage of life to the next. The process teaches me what I am capable of knowing and experiencing within. I begin to receive the message of the symbols in the images I create. The creative process takes me to the inner journey by enabling me to descend deep inside the body to the realm of pure matter. In order to go there, I need to surrender my ego-self. Then I am able to discover once again my own meaning. My own meaning is that I am here. In the state of no time, no space, I reclaim the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive. Joseph Campbell wrote:

We are looking for a way of experiencing the world that will open to us the transcendent that informs it, and at the same time forms ourselves within it. That’s what people want. That is what the soul asks for.

(The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell)

Creative process is about recalling my body memory, the sense of knowing, being in touch with the transcendent. It might be the providence of soul or what Carl Jung termed "the psychoid." Consciousness also ascends into the world of spirit. It has aspects of both the transpersonal and the collective, which commune with the gods, with the powers and energies of the cosmos. For me, understanding (or becoming aware of) the cycle of the creative process deepens my capacity to make conscious choices as to which of life’s many paths I wish to follow. This choice adds meaning to every action I make. Consciousness allows for efficiency in the search through space. This efficiency helps us to converge on the creative areas of possibility and leave aside the dead ends.