On Monday, September 30, I gingerly push the door handle of Spartanburg's Chapman Cultural Center; inside the monks of Drepung Loseling Monastery are creating a mandala sand painting. Expecting a rush of silence, I am instead greeted by the grating of metal. Rounding the corner, my focus reaches the center of attraction and I pause. The mandala is mapped out in white on a square table where color is being applied from the center outward. With foreheads almost and sometimes actually touching, three robed monks lean in, pulsing scrapers over the ridged surfaces of metal tubes, dispensing one color of sand at a time. Incredibly intimate is this collaboration; incredibly ritualistic.
This intimacy is unlike any I have witnessed in artistic collaborations. Perhaps it is a cultural comfort zone common in Tibet. Perhaps it is the absence of ego as each serves a larger purpose. A monk pauses to refill his tube - from a separate tabletop brimming with white bowls of brightly hued sand - and glances back at the mandala, as if to remind himself, "What next?". I recognize the question, "What next?", as I too have stood in my studio, tool in hand, caught in the interval between thinking and doing. The sand mandala experience is what I dub as the "sound of color."
On Sunday, November 3, I rest against my studio desk while listening to a petite elderly visitor describe her reaction to one of my artworks, "Golden Rain 6." Collaged onto the surface of a 12x12-inch cradled wood substrate, the piece is subtle. Perhaps too subtle to be noticed. Not so. "Golden Rain" is an unexpected series evolving from my experiments with the required parameters of the All Squared Away exhibition. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Arts Council, the exhibition's 12x12-inch format allows 124 Open Studios artists an opportunity to feature their work in a smorgasbord presentation at Council headquarters in the West End of Greenville, SC. Even if you couldn't take in all of the actual studios during the November 1-3 self-guided tour, All Squared Away lets you "taste" the art.
Back in my studio, I am listening to this stranger craft words of eloquence about "Golden Rain 6" while goosebumps travel my arms. In this series I attempt to strike a balance between imagery - the kimonoed silhouette carrying an umbrella, and abstraction - a vertical curtain of rain. To this end I assemble super thin strips of paper in a value range of greys with only hints of color. Interpretation belongs to each individual viewer. She calls it "the sound of silence."
Thank you, monks. Thank you, stranger. I am speechless.
This intimacy is unlike any I have witnessed in artistic collaborations. Perhaps it is a cultural comfort zone common in Tibet. Perhaps it is the absence of ego as each serves a larger purpose. A monk pauses to refill his tube - from a separate tabletop brimming with white bowls of brightly hued sand - and glances back at the mandala, as if to remind himself, "What next?". I recognize the question, "What next?", as I too have stood in my studio, tool in hand, caught in the interval between thinking and doing. The sand mandala experience is what I dub as the "sound of color."
On Sunday, November 3, I rest against my studio desk while listening to a petite elderly visitor describe her reaction to one of my artworks, "Golden Rain 6." Collaged onto the surface of a 12x12-inch cradled wood substrate, the piece is subtle. Perhaps too subtle to be noticed. Not so. "Golden Rain" is an unexpected series evolving from my experiments with the required parameters of the All Squared Away exhibition. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Arts Council, the exhibition's 12x12-inch format allows 124 Open Studios artists an opportunity to feature their work in a smorgasbord presentation at Council headquarters in the West End of Greenville, SC. Even if you couldn't take in all of the actual studios during the November 1-3 self-guided tour, All Squared Away lets you "taste" the art.
Back in my studio, I am listening to this stranger craft words of eloquence about "Golden Rain 6" while goosebumps travel my arms. In this series I attempt to strike a balance between imagery - the kimonoed silhouette carrying an umbrella, and abstraction - a vertical curtain of rain. To this end I assemble super thin strips of paper in a value range of greys with only hints of color. Interpretation belongs to each individual viewer. She calls it "the sound of silence."
Thank you, monks. Thank you, stranger. I am speechless.