Tiffany Chantel Studios

The 'Still Moments' of Art and Nature

Driving through the American SW last week, I was reminded of our deep, intrinsic, soul-stirring connection with nature. How is it and why is it, in the city, in our busy lives, we get so easily removed, psychically, from the greatest masterpieces on Earth, natural wonder? Just go for a drive, and oh yeah, leave behind your iphone, and you could enjoy beauty as haunting as any Youtube video -- perhaps even more so. Seriously.

If you've been to the SW, you know what I'm talking about. Deep veins of salmon orange clay layered in ancient gray ash and white earth dwarf you in mile-high canyons. This mystery, and the eternal pueblos hovering like cathedrals atop towering mesas that stretch for miles, is enough to inspire any masterpiece. I remember that this feeling, this observation of nature as the original muse, is what first drove me to paint and to write. As I hike through an old native ruin, climb into caves along cliffsides, remnants of old villages, and snap photos of 1000-year-old petroglyphs, my urge to create re-surfaces. Just like our ancestors, I want to create a shrine of art to honor the gods of earthly power.

In observing mother nature's works-of-art, perhaps we are invited to express our own unique, natural way of seeing and being in the world.   

Art is your personal healing machine

It's been "proven" by science that the vibrational frequency experienced during peak moments enhances your health. Fairly obvious, maybe. But let's do the math. If I am half-empty and dark most of the day, odds are high that my health will notice. My immune system suppresses,  I attract negative clouds (like attracts like), and generally things just feel crappy. If this goes on for too long, incremental, compounding affects stack the deck against me. Perhaps I'll be fine. But perhaps my life force will drain itself of all vital resistance to the great horror that awaits.

That brings me to art. Peak experiences come in many shapes and sizes. When you are in the groove, in the flow of creating, when mind is suspended and judgment and ego shut off, everything is as it should be. You are walking on water. Rainbows flow through your persistent, rushing veins, channels of chi kneading new life into hungry cells. There is a nirvanna-like no-thought, no-worry, blissful surrender. It's similar to sex, let's be honest. But we can't be having sex all the time. There are too many other interesting things in ADDITION to sex. So we create something, carve out the power of ourselves into some external expression and we are reborn, even if just for a moment.

Imagine how diseased we would all be if art never existed. That's not even worth thinking about actually. Cave painters rummaged their psyches for iconic memes and stories to express what was before inexpressible. How is one to convey the beauty of the hunt or the transferable power of the spear if cave painting and fire dances are a non-option? Okay, let's say you have this feeling, a haunted gut thing but you don't know what it is or what it wants from you. What to do. You want to talk about it, get it out. Maybe it shrieks out in a new grunge tune. Or spills its waggy essence on the dance floor. Or, maybe you paint your body then roll on a giant sheet of white butcher paper and pound your fists against the floor? Feels better.

Or perhaps, you just keep it locked inside you, push it deeper, deeper into the dark fathoms of your being. Forget about it. Kind of like a wart you never have to look at.

Then, one day in your mid 40's somebody says just the right thing at the right time, maybe a stranger in the store or the bus driver or your boss. And... you fall to pieces. What to do with all those pieces?

Make some art, baby.

Last day of May 2007

In the Northern Hemisphere spring gently invites the sun forward. Tomorrow a full moon casts abundance on our shifting seasons, harbinger of circularity, richness and blossom.

It seems that in our rotating reality, things constantly change yet everything stays the same. People age, trees get bigger, sidewalks crack. Everything’s different, yet nothing is new. Somehow, somewhere ephemera linger in the ethers of our psyche, constant. Perhaps the one thing that we can blame on linearity is the idea of growth. We grow old and we have the option of expanding our thoughts into wisdom.

As we change and shift, and remain grounded by constancy, energy flows in and flows out. Color attached to energy swirls around us like flying dreams. There is a duality in our rhythm, struggle bound to bliss. Nietzsche wrote nothing new comes from comfort but only from rough, aching pain. In Revelations – the end of time, chaos unleashed, destruction all lead to a new consciousness in which God and human become one. Now that’s a new world order.

Perhaps we are heading for a time in which opposites unite. When I paint, I explore the space outside of space, where form is yet emerging. I play with tensions of light and dark, color and space. The richness of a piece is often denoted by how its sense of movement springs from color and the felt interplay of symphonic forces. Music intones a work because color imbues frequency and frequency suggests sound.

The next piece I paint will be written as a score. I’m going to translate each color to a note then create my symphony. Just wait… it’s coming, kind of like the end of time as we know it.

Emergence

Art erupts from the caustic soul, a grimy kitchen, a falling down garage. I see it like this: nothing beautiful, raw and profound emerges from the stalemate of perfect harmony. Life, creativity comes from the fiercest of acts, clammy, twisted, panting take downs fused by want and struggle and perseverance. When all is calm, breezes gentle, eyes lit with insight, the pain of birth sheds like a million miles of hunger satisfied. Then, the timbre of grace.

Psychedelics, Pharma and Fantasy

I know enough about light to be dangerous. I play with it, lower it, brighten and diffuse it. Add color when color leaps from my waist, throat or third eye. Dreams suggest an existence I fight during waking hours. Light illumines this and goes out.

Epiphany, the light bulb of thought, paints my mental jungle, and like you perhaps, I swing on its concentric rings then fall to the ground exhausted. It’s kinda like a trip, although I wouldn’t really know since I don’t do trips.

But it feels like a trip of the biorhythmic sort, a sweaty pilgrimage through adrenal glands, hormones and partial psychosis. I don’t need the Amazon for this kind of trip.

Unlike Terrence McKenna who used botany for hallucinogenic voyages, and like so many shamanic traditions do, I haven’t seen the drug-dipped side of fantasy. The mind and all its power seems to possess passports that don’t require help form the outside.

Pharma could be a hoax. Ever think of this? All those pills, all those sad, sick souls who want to pop the pain out of their psyche. How powerful is the mind really? Is the drug Gestalt simply a seduction into deeper and darker rabbit holes?

Little white discs of mystery will take you there, faster and easier than a meditative trance. We drink coffee, tea, whiskey because we want to get there quick. There are so many things I can do to wander the halls of trance. Chocolate works wonders. Brandy. Sobered thoughts of reality.

Then there are multifarious elixirs, onions, herbs and fermentations. Alchemical fantasies. Stirs to the stars. When the lights come on brightly, I chase them. Epiphanies unravel my brainstorm. Colors play my aura like a cello. I am on fire with ideas.

Light bleeds the blinds like gilded lashes. A glass of wine would be great now. Tea first, it’s still morning.

Darkside, Shadow, Daimon

Inspired by a recent lecture by Jungian analyst James Hollis, Ph.D., and from some reading of the book, 2012: The Return of Quetzacoatal, here are a few impulsive thoughts on shadow/daimon:

The playground for the psyche, Shadow, the ego’s moon, howls our dark night like a demon. We wear earplugs to drown the noise. Layers of blankets and locked windows preserve the illusion of separation. Still sneaker waves of fear and perversion soak our dreams.

Of course this never happens to me. Or you, I’m sure. The vast distance of disconnect between rational life and our psyche is like the Grand Canyon or the Great Barrier Reef. It’s so conveniently deep and impenetrable that we don’t really need to worry about literally crossing it. But now and then a great Condor-like clue sweeps across a vein of conscious memory. I’m thinking, this is eerie and familiar, familial yet foreign. Extinction never really happened. How can this be?

The in-between world known by some as Ferryland or Oz, daimon lurks in the haze filtered by our blinking eyes. Daimon connotes something dark, demonic, thrilling. Perhaps it’s the word’s easy link to the demons of horror stories that conjures this association. Maybe it’s more about how our own dark side can haunt us and how hard we try to avoid it, to repress its creepy grip. We paint the word nasty. We seek therapy. Darkness = fear.

And fear = avoidance.

Those willing to exhume our shadows and ghosts might seek therapy. Confronting our shit alone is no easy task. In fact, fear of being alone is part of our shit. So we push it, stuff it, bury it down, down, down six feet under ground. But don’t forget -- anxious souls with unresolved business who die too soon do not sleep. They torment. Maybe just an off-handed admission will do.

May 2007 – Ashland, city of Shakespeare and art, welcomes you home to yourself

Another art show behind me, the third this year, and its time again for travel. A trip to Ashland, Oregon last week reinforced my need for sun. Shakespeare sleeps on Monday, yes, but luckily he sunbathes and eats quiche and homemade biscuits. The Inn we slept at provided a brunch only insiders get to try: Arden Forest Inn. Go there. Be filled. Mid 80s F.

In town, art pouring from San Francisco-sheik galleries burned richness into my pores – I am infused with chaotic colors, whimsy and creativity bursting from even the sidewalks. Pounding down each step was sun. Lifting up every stride was heat. Inducing every insight was energy. Red and black from the Bard sprinkled the streets. Chihuly neon shone like jewels through shop windows and gallery cases.

A lovely mix of early 20th-Century Panamanian-Naturalist earth tones told of Ashland’s golden years, fueled by being a stop along the Southern Pacific Railroad line until 1927, and formerly a stop along the California-Oregon Stage Company's route in the mid-1800s. After 1927, when SPR rerouted the line through Klamath Falls, Ashland lost momentum. Later, roots of art, culture and progress -- "Welcome to Oregon - Industry, Education, Temperance - Ashland honors those who foster these” – gave rise to the new Ashland, Shakespeare’s second home.

Today, I want to live there. It is sunny, Mediterranean-inspired, art gastronomy. It is bathed in minerals, earth, mountains and soliloquies. Painters haunt the alleys. Provincials open their bellies to post-modern influx. I drive home, leaving Siskiyou forests for Cascade Evergreens, stirring up dreams.

Some insights: When you write, you are art birthing yourself out loud, on paper or screen. It is taking form, the streams of energy gathering like mercury into puddles of reason. Even if your words make no sense to the rational mind, they are the outpour of what you know in your body, expressing with the tools consciousness grants you.

Remember: color is the visual manifestation of light… and insight.

March 2007 -- Trip to Tulum, Mexico… where water and sky and spirit coalesce in perfect, healing harmony

March 2007 initiated a period of pivotal shifting for me… and maybe for more than just me. I finished installing and holding a reception for my second art show of the year in Portland, Ore… then quickly turned on my heals and flew to Mexico. The Yucatan peninsula, Tulum, Mexico.

It was my first trip south of the border and I was ready for some serious sun. I was also overdue for deep relaxation and energetic renewal. If you’re wondering, yes, the Yucatan is the perfect place for such a transformation of physical and psychic consciousness. It is another world, satisfyingly ripe and on fire compared to the hollow gray damp of a Portland winter.

Caribbean turquoise transmits magic. I sat beneath a thatch-roof cabana on the beach sipping margaritas, nibbling empanadas and peanut butter banana sandwiches and just stared at the sea. Color as you may know is filled with energy. In fact it is energy. When you live in a gray and wet biosphere long enough, your energetic power starts to shut down. It’s like the electrical juice feeding you dims and quivers from lack of movement. Since color and energy are about movement, I needed to fuel up. I needed some deep blue.

Luckily the tropical rain forest I found myself in also included rich hues of yellow, pink, crimson and green. Not only that, it is steeped in ancient Mayan history and ruins. Our bicycle ride down an old crusty road to the Walled City, formerly called Zamas, Mayan for “to dawn,” was hot and wind-swept. Sandy spaces scattered between jungle and new rustic resorts tempted us in to their oases of tequila and foot baths and platform bungalows. We kept riding. The ancient ones were calling.

Aside from a touristy entrance line, short enough on a Monday, and heat so intense it licked the hairs on my neck dry, the ruins took my breath away. Crumbly stone edifices told stories of a civilization wed to land and sea, circumscribed by ceremonies, politics, sacrifice and rough survival. What’s left is nearly 1,500 years old.

But what got to me was how the sun bathed the ruins in gold then blew out as wind full of darkness, thunder and rain invaded the eastern flank.

Ominous is a word for the power of the dead. I felt it there, sheltered inside a dried up cenote – a cave carved out by the sea – as the Mayan rain God descended his wrath. My friend and I watched hail the size of quarters cut through plantation leaves. We waited with 3 young French guys, harboring our shared amazement, watching the downpour of gifts delivered by el Dios del Viento, God of the Wind. Just as quickly as the storm blew in, it flew out, painting the sky back to blue. We climbed out of our protective cenote like knights returned from battle… or better, like mystics bathed in epiphany. The walk back to our bikes was quiet and haunted.

Since returning from the giant palms and turquoise waters, my energy burns hotter. I have visceral memories of not just seeing but feeling the deep teals and greens and touching the velvety hot sand. Iguanas sat like buddhas weighing their balance of shadow and sun. I wanted nothing but to gaze at them and ask them what it is they know. Healing begins with letting go.

Time's Person of the Year is YOU

TIME magazine's recent Person of the Year issue announcing that "you" are this year's winner struck me as oddly timely so to speak, accurate, but perhaps a little belated. After all, the Web and new media is saturated with evidence of this fact already in action. Could TIME be, as it were, behind the times...?

I mean, take MySpace and Youtube, which have been around for a few years. These social networking tools are all about "me" and "you." So, what's TIME's issue really about? Are they afraid of falling behind the proverbial bandwagon of what's hot, what's news, and how information really gets delivered in today's 21st century media environs? Hmmm. Below is an excerpt from a comment I posted on Mark Glaser's blog on PBS.org. Let me know what you think.

MY COMMENT on MARK GLASER's pbs.org BLOG "MediaShift":

I see TIME's "Person of the Year: You" as a bit of a tactic to link itself with the democratization and community vernacular surging through new media channels. Since TIME is an old-school media player, it risks losing cache in an era of 21st blog-o-bytes and social, niche, networking news. With the "You" issue, they may demonstrate their knowledge of this fact – of falling behind the "cool" of modern news – but admitting this doesn’t insert them into the race as a top player. Like you suggest, Mark, TIME needs to make some active, conscientious changes in how it interacts with the social networking of news if it intends to be taken seriously.

The fact is, most media savvy people today already know they are their own "Person of the Year" so to speak – that’s just how things have changed over the last few years. I don’t see it as narcissistic, as in "I am the only important being," but more about being aware that I (as in the "my" and "you" reflected in the names MySpace and Youtube) matter, and because I know that I matter, I’m going to engage with society, be active, be heard and listen. This seems to be the trend of new media – engaging on the world stage of idea sharing. If TIME really gets this, then they need to prove it.

Art, Blasphemy, and Business

Okay, what is it with everyone wants to be an artist? I personally feel that we are all artistic... it's part of our birthright as human, co-creative beings.

However, I sense that art and marketing are intertwining in such a way that art is the cool new business strategy. The fallout is that our creative impulses are being driven by a business plan and business objective rather than a passion for creating beauty and commentary on the human condition.

There is an intrinsic connection between business, "art" and money, because to be financially successful, to eat, and pay bills, art must get sold. But it seems that art as a business concept has gotten out of hand. Andy Warhol was brilliant and very lucky. The avant-garde artist today, however, seems to just as likely have an MBA as an MFA, and sees art as a brilliant commodity rather than an angst-driven need. Perhaps its evidence that the artist is simply getting more savvy and independent, taking the business reigns into her own hands rather than paying for agent to help with such busy work.

Or is it because we are in America and here we expect to realize the great American dream of making millions, so we'll do it by whatever means seems market-friendly or predictive at the time? Perhaps we are channeling our creativity into conceiving of ways to make money rather than writing the next big opera... because, for some, making money is its own art form. Is this true? Is it enough? Will there ever be enough?