Mustard or Relish?

Q: What did Buddha say when he walked up to the hot dog vendor?

A: Make me one with everything.


This is our final post for a while. Enjoy!
Storm & Aaron

Photo Credit: Christian Kitazume

Ashes and Snow

Ashes and Snow is an ongoing project by Gregory Colbert, who, over the course of fifteen years, has made more than forty expeditions to India, Egypt, Myanmar, Tonga, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Kenya, Antarctica, the Azores, Borneo, Belize, and many other locations, to photograph interactions between people and animals--who he calls “nature’s living masterpieces”.

His twenty-first century bestiary includes totemic species from around the world. The project includes 50 large-scale photographic artworks, a 60-minute feature film, two 9-minute film “haikus”, and an engaging online website that can serve as a portal into Colbert’s world, if you cannot attend in person.

When I first discovered Gregory Colbert’s work, I felt as if I had fallen into an unparalleled parallel universe. It was a peaceful landscape, bathed in rich sepia tones, with extraordinarily beautiful and unusual visions of animals and humans in relationship. These creatures co-exist and create what feels like powerful music. The animals are respected and revered, photographed in their natural environment in all their wildness, as the men, women, and children connect with them in a dreamy, sometimes ecstatic, meditative state. The result is awe inspiring work.

Ashes and Snow first opened at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy in 2002, to critical acclaim. It moved on to New York City in 2005, Santa Monica in 2006 and Tokyo, Japan in 2007. The next stop on the migration path of this continually unfolding project is Mexico City in early 2008.


“The whales do not sing because they have an answer, they sing because they have a song.”

Much more at www.ashesandsnow.org

-Storm Maxwell

It’s Just Your Imagination

In childhood, I learned that imagination is not real, but rather that the physical world perceived through our senses is real. I remember hearing the phrase, "that's just your imagination". I was taught that reality is reliable, and imagination is secondary in value.

Now, I am sitting in a chair at my desk, with other objects in the room -- using my senses, I see and feel these real objects. However, on further reflection, I see that all of these objects originated from the imagination of someone. They appeared first as dreamlike images, floating through the mind.

The imaginary object held in the mind of the designer precedes the physical object. The imaginary is the genesis, just as the physical object is the creation of the imagination. Imagination precedes and gives life to the physical objects of this world. Our physical world is a mere reflection or illusion -- a manifestation of the inner world. This concept is so compelling when explored to its depth, that Henry Corbin had to introduce a new word into the English-language, "imaginal." The imaginal is the road to your rich inner life.

-Aaron Gaul

Photo Credit: Benjamin Pop

Wordless StoriesThe Art of Mark Bennion

I attended a packed opening at the O7O Gallery on Vashon Island, Washington last year. People were there to see the work of local artist, Mark Bennion. His work just knocked me out! The more time I spent with his painting, the more time I wanted to spend. It takes time to get to know paintings that have heart.

Mark applies layers of color and texture that end up reminding me of the idea of “deep time” that natural historians, archeologists, and anthropologists talk about. It is a sense of time that is beyond what we can imagine in our short lives but one that can bring us a deep sense of awe. It is rough and polished and holds deep meaning.

Michael Meade has written a lovely essay describing the work of Mark Bennion and I include an excerpt here…

"A journey that keeps beginning in silence and the stirring of shapes arising from the innermost self as in a silence that shifts to sound, at first quietly, then rising to hold light and shadow for a long time.

Meditative shapes seeking mineral memories and bone-grown images. Galvanic textures with intimate curves that keep announcing the breaking edges of silence. A staunch song of shapes that offer themselves, familiar like trees and mountains able to mark each day and withstand the night.

Painting that cycle back and transit forth through a ground of existence that includes both the future and the past. Wordless stories that invite reverie, that lean and stretch the imagination and angle towards meaning.

Paint and plaster that fix little moments on paper, like moments that the inner mind knows in solitude, that allow meanings to enter or escape. Parts of cyclical wheels that appear as if the cover of Nature was worn away to reveal shapes of the world behind the world. Puzzle-like arrangements of towers and circles on fields of cracked ground that invite us to find our own history amongst them."

To read more of this essay and see the artwork of Mark Bennion - MarkBennion.com

All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadow and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new watermark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.

Hafiz – 14th century Sufi mystic and poet

Photo Credit – Night Blooming Cereus, Kam Lee

An InvitationThe Art of Susan Bennerstrom

It is easy to fall in love with the work of Susan Bennerstrom. Her paintings, rendered in oil pastel, layer after layer, create a completely new world. These rich, luminous paintings of stairwells, hallways, beds, a lone chair in a room, strike me as gentle invitations – to come in, sit down, and revel in the mood of a space. I want to enter with a hushed voice, and wide-eyed, as if going into a sacred temple, church or cathedral of trees.

However, it is the light that is sacred here, and what it does to furniture, floors and corners of homes, architecture, and the outdoors. It is revelatory and satisfying to take in that glow.

And the color! So rich and deep and of the earth – seeming to pay homage to the colors of the Renaissance. This adds to the reverence that I feel when looking at these paintings – like a leak in time that brings the old world into the modern one.

- Storm Maxwell

Painting Titled: Waiting for News
To learn more about Susan Bennerstrom and her work www.susanbennerstrom.com

It Never Ends, Of Course

I recently attended a talk by Michael Meade, mythologist, author, and storyteller. I keep hearing his words in my head and I want to share them with you, dear reader. At the core of his talk is his willingness to look at the world, see the darkness as well as the light, and weave together stories that join the two.

The talk on that rainy Northwest night was called “Why the World Doesn’t End”. He spoke of us living in a time when “the End” seems near. That everything these days has apocalyptic overtones. Apocalyptic does not mean destruction, it actually means, “a lifting of the veil”. This is a more poetic and imaginal way to envision things. We are beginning to see what has been hidden: The raping of the earth, the behavior of priests in the Catholic Church, of executives at Enron, of government officials after Katrina and in the war in Iraq – the ugly list goes on.

Michael Meade tells us that what matters most in times like these is to remember that the world is “more than a simple literal place, the world has an eternal drama, a story told from beginning to end, and end to beginning, again and again.” What matters is that we engage our imagination in ways that allow the fire of our own unique nature. This can bring about a badly needed reconnection with Nature and involve us in the meaningful work of living an authentic life.

- Storm Maxwell

To learn more about Michael Meade and his work www.mosaicvoices.org