Art meets Rhythm

Art has its own pace. Living a green life helps me appreciate the role of time. There is no rushing the way raw input gets composted down into the richer soil of my own images. Sometimes this means years before I address a certain subject, other times there is a more immediate translation. Our current culture does not recognize long intervals wherein something germinates in darkness for an undetermined period until converging factors call it forth. Underestimating this deep mystery we can miss an awful lot. Artists are often told to go look at others work, and feeling guilty, I knew I had to avoid this. I did not know why, I just knew my art worked better for me when I didn't overload with others' imagery. Now I know I was busy composting and didn't want all that heat dissipated.

I know of nothing so close to nature as this strange inherent thrum wherein deep calls to deep. At the Zumwalt Prairie in eastern Oregon several species were nearly eradicated until they designated the area as sanctuary. After just a few years left alone, the species had mysteriously restored themselves. Letting be is sometimes the greenest of all practices. Leave undisturbed. Buddha put it "Muddy water let stand becomes clear".

I somehow learned to count on the slow drip method of letting my own images emerge from experiences 20 or 30 years ago. Then I was only soaking in the sensory and trying to find my part in all that three-dimensional music of interaction. Now is when the highlights sort themselves out. I count on that now, relax into it, where I never could before. I am not concerned with where the next image will come from. I only wonder how things will look when my body translates them, surprised by what it wants to recall or recapture in another form. This is the essence of what the green movement does; allows us to recognize and appreciate how one thing, then another impacts life and how it is returned, restored, or reused to serve a larger cycle.

(Strait in the San Juans) refers to cherished time in the San Juan Islands of Washington. As a teen, I worked in art and dance at a camp run by Karlyn Kaiser, the granddaughter of industrialist, Henry Kaiser, where the graceful schooner, "The Martha", built in 1906 by Stone, took children from established families around the straits and harbors of Orcas and other islands. It was another world to me. What I connected with most was the motion of water, the current and thrust of waves which were translated into my feet as the huge boat beat its way through the Straits of Georgia at sunset. That's when sailing got into me, when water assumed its stature, becoming the force in my life that a piece of land becomes to most people and their families. I believe it is when the rhythm of my feet met winds of spirit in a new way, and I no longer felt like an island alone. When it became possible to trust the current, to see beyond controlling to navigating with the forces as they come. Water has its own ways. This element largely governs my art. Such a gentle and powerful force, it even penetrates stone, which is why I trust it to seep through and come out despite all the sediment of life. How it works is a trustworthy mystery. This is where I learned to accept and count on the next wave.