School of Life

Lucy in the Sky

2010-10-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

A Camping Trip to Racoon Creek State Park

2010-10-17T18:35:00.001-07:00

We strolled down the road - Off to see the wizard!

We dozed off in a field of poppies . . . and the sky was whispering through the trees.

We discussed the eternal veins of art that run through the living earth. At the mineral spring water was seeping though the massive rocks. In some places it was gushing.

Baptized by the holy water. Thankyou so very much great mother, dark body!

Got in some of those good old campside jokes.

An artist at work.

video theyyam

2010-07-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

look

New Works - Late Summer

2009-08-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

Finishing up at STO ROX

2009-04-16T17:55:00.000-07:00

Spring Cleaning

2009-03-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

Uninterrupted emptiness
smooth and clean as Ocean's edge
nothing remains
all objects are lifted and turned
spun into dance
vast power reorients and sweeps
combs and smoothes
the refreshed and sparkling surface
the tidy tide receeds
robes gathered in dignity
jingling bracelets making music
the ocean is here not in its shells
but in its essence and principles
the wilderness is here in its silence
its charming openness
sublte and inconspicuous
the blossoms on the branches
are continuous
with the body of bark

Sto-Rox Progress : Nightclub and Rocketship

2009-03-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

We are two weeks into the residency now. The students, while at times struggling with unfamiliar processes and the ambiguous circumstances of creativity, have done some amazing things. I am very excited by this project because it is being built on such an explorative and experimental foundation. It possesses the possibility of becoming "WOW-ART"

Sto-Rox: first day

2009-03-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

We had gethered broken electronics and after a short discussion of the scanning process and previous work I had done we got to work. Here are pictures of the breakdown process.

Blythe's Bust

2009-03-01T14:34:00.001-08:00

This is a tinted plaster casting that i made from a rubber mold. I did the art work in clay during the year 2006 gradually all summer long. I'm quite happy with its life-like presence.

Sto-Rox Residency

2009-03-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

Here we are at the start of a new residency at Sto-Rox High School in Mckees Rocks.
We have begun by gathering broken appliances and electronics and taking them all apart down to the smallest parts. Now we are reorienting those parts to become sculptures and also to use in scanning projects to make more magnified digital prints.

Here is a scientist at work in his laboratory:

Tallie Marino 1993-2008

2009-02-25T18:32:00.001-08:00

These are the last pictures taken of Tallie as she took a walk in my parents yard on November 1. She died a week or so later.

Prayers and blessings for her walking spirit.

Residency for Children's Hospital

2009-02-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

During the last month of 2008 I was working with Highschool students at The Neighborhood Academy on a set of digital images for the newly errected Children's Hospital. It is a massive and modern new hospital looking to incorporate art that makes a strong impression. So far I have printed and delivered 5 of the 10 images we made (size: 36X50).

Landscape Painting at North Park

2008-10-13T06:34:00.000-07:00

During September Troy Blum and I spent many mornings painting the North Park Lake

Illuminations - digital prints from the 2007 show

2008-10-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

These images were created throughout the 2006 year and function as a visual-poetic journal of my dialogue with nature during the year. These are poems and the "words" are precisely the parts of the body of Mother Earth . . . her body, her meaningful dance.

I love horses

2008-09-14T20:28:00.001-07:00

Olympic Muses - oil sketch

2008-09-13T20:03:00.000-07:00

Don't Forget to Beee God!

2008-09-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

HYPNOTIC PATTERN
INSECT SONG VARIOUS CRICKETS MY HOUSEIS MY SHELL

Visionary Artworks

2008-09-11T17:52:00.000-07:00

Over the past month TroyBlum and I have been working on artworks that could be classified as visionary or "imaginary". They pertain to memories, dreams, the realm of the senses, abstract ideas, and imagined worlds. Here are some stages of a painting I'm doing about the ocean at night and its pungent mystical spell.

And this is one about children and their nocturnal games

Painting Troy's Portrait

2008-08-23T17:26:00.000-07:00

Troy and I traded off sitting and painting. We timed each session for 10 min. Here are 4 of the 15 or so stages.

Coffee House Drawings

2008-08-22T17:16:00.000-07:00

Troy and I spent several days in early August sketching at coffee houses. I worked on a scroll format. One long roll of paper for continuous elongate drawing. Sometimes I want the process of drawing to be unbroken and unframed - just recording.

Shadow

2008-07-24T19:43:00.001-07:00

Medicinart

2008-07-23T06:25:00.001-07:00

Final days and coming home

2008-07-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

Patricia left on Monday to dance in the Sun Dance in South Dakota. Joan, Jeff and I spent our last days waking at 3 am for Sadhana at the kundalini yoga ashram of Yogi Bhajan. Afterwards we happy yoga makers would walk home through the desert with the sun rising on the horizon.

Espanola - reflections and celebrations

2008-07-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

We arrived at Esponola on July 10 and reflected on the journey with old Pittsburgh friends Jeff and Joan who live and teach in New Mexico now. A ceremony was held in honor of the final stage of the Peace and Dignity Journey and to celebrate Joan's pregnancy.

Patty and me in our Hollywood car. After ceremony we drove for hours through the powerful landscape around Los Alamos. Breathtaking the hills were singing to us.

A final farewell to the journey - on July 13 we walked into Taos and presented the staff to another couple who would be carrying it further towards Panama.

Deepening Journey - New Mexico

2008-07-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

The journey gained profound depth as we crossed the great plains. The wind blew strong and hot at first but a storm was swelling up on the horizon in deep blue. At a roadside table we contemplated the dry barren land for the better part of an hour, silently sitting and observing beetles crawl throughout the dry sand and dying grasses. This land had been experiencing drought but we watched lighting striking down in the distance. A pickup truck pulled up next to us at this lonely rest stop and within 5 min. there was action. 5 or 6 Mexicans were jumping into the back of the truck and situating themselves low in the bed and we were rushing to our own car to get out of there. We waved and passed a jug of water to those thankful people in the pickup and both vehicles took off. It was fascinating how they remained hidden from our sight as we gazed out over that barren field. And the timing of this event was vivid, as the storm was coming and our mission purpose and intention: to unite the people of the Americas as one people - borderless across the whole land - came echoing back.From this time forward the medicines began to speak more clearly. We stayed at Clayton Lake State Park and experienced a feeling of sanctuary. The natural rock garden was aromatic with cedars and pines and sage woody herbs. The land had been drenched by the storm running rivers in the streets of Clayton. We prayed with chanupa (tobacco pipe) in the park and Patricia sang with her drum. We saw Hawk medicine on the road and Coyotes pawed and sniffed around our tent through the night I practice yoga in the early dawn and we left Clayton. A new coffee shop that was being established in an old feed store was one of the friendlier faces we found in Clayton - "Crossroads Coffee". Patty on the road and those indispensable windmills that allowed these bad lands to be farmed.
We struggled some to find this out of the way park called Mills Canyon and Antelope medicine was speaking, running along side our car as it bumped along long dirt roads which cut through vast oceanic fields. Antelope spoke of gentle perseverance, its delicate step participating in the great mystery, and the hawk medicine appeared again. I missed the opportunity for a photo of Antelope. Mills Canyon in the Kiowa National Grassland had more aromatic rock gardens to offer with remarkable rock formations. The flat desert land of New Mexico led into mountains and we climbed to the Eagle's Nest State Park, a high altitude calm and pristine grassy lake, ringed by blue mountains of volcanic deposition.

Evansville to Little Rock, AK and Oklahoma

2008-07-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

We will be driving today and moving toward the runners who are in Talequah, Oklahoma. We spent the night of July 4 at the home of some new friends in Little Rock, AK. A friend of Patricia had a sister here who generously shared a meal and her home with us, and we shared the inspirations of our journey with them. Patty worked in her way for the healing of this good family.

Everything is Meditation

At Talequah, OK we walked with some staff carriers to a native heritage center and picked up a staff they carried to continue following the Trail of Tears out west on our way to Taos.

From there on it was just the two of us. We stopped at various towns like Cushing, Guthrie, Mooreland, Woodward, Slapout, Guymon, Clayton, Springer and Cimarron to pray and offer Tobacco. This route was the same one Patricia's uncle took 40 years ago. Nowadays each town has Wallmart.

$$$ The Price of Gas $$$

Peace and Dignity - on the Road

2008-07-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

Leaving for Evansville, Indiana.

I met up with Patricia and we stayed with some of her friends as we prepared to set out on a road trip to Taos New Mexico. This is called the Peace and Dignity Journey to unite the people of the American continents as one people. We were walking as one of 3 arrows coming from New York, Alaska, and Argentina. From these extremities of the lands the arrows would finally be converging in Panama. Our part was to carry sacred staffs part of this way and to deliver them to other runners who would take them further on their way to Panama.

Preparing to leave

2008-07-02T07:25:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day before I leave on a trip that will lead from Evansville, Indiana, through Oklahoma City, out to near Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The morning is peaceful, my feeling transformed by the morning yoga practice. When I first got up I felt cloudy - nebulous, unsteady and groggy. Only a few of my eyes were open.
Now there are waves of eyes open - multitudes - generations - vast processions - countless nations of eyes - civilizations.
And the morning breeze feels cool and comfortable on my skin, exceedingly gentle, alert and hopeful.

I listen with my eyes because sometimes I look but do not see.
And I watch with my nose because on the wind are many pictures.

I want to come to the new day like a classroom.
and learn the lessons of shapes and colors
partaking of patterns, knowing numbers
Although you get knocked around a lot
the lunches are good
and the sweetness of tears expands the heart
like an accordion and the drinking straw paper dropped on water.

Lilah with a piece of pie

2008-07-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I found some old school chalkboards at a junkyard and had the idea to remodel my kitchen using this special slate. Finally, it is getting its first significant chalking by my house guest of the past week Miss Lilah.

Lilah in the Garden

2008-06-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

After Breakfast

2008-06-25T19:44:00.000-07:00

Eating mulberry bread. You might think all we do is eat mulberries

Fading Chlorophyll, Turning Rose

2008-06-24T19:47:00.001-07:00

Today Christy, Lilah, and I set up this blog and spent time in the yard collecting samples to make "scanned images" like this. It is my first work of this sort so far this year. I love the warm colored tints emerging from the greenness of Chlorophyll.

Making mulberry tarts.