Tuesday, November 10, 2009

snow in a silver bowl

It sounds like it was fun to be de Vries.
I appreciate his wide range of subject matter and explorations from the Upanishads and Zen rather than objects. To get to the experience itself. I frequently wonder how to let my ego step out of the way ...enough to help something emerge?
I was just reading about some of Kenga Kuma’s work on organic architecture. Similar sentiment in some ways.
“I want to escape from the abstract and aspire to the organic.
A thing that is organic is different from a thing that is simply natural or made of natural materials. A thing that is organic must possess the generative dynamism characteristic of living things”
“We do not care what the whole is like, but things that are organic, taking as they do different forms, surprise us each time. In fact, they do more than surprise us. Organic things are so unique and endearing that they inspire in us feelings of affection and a desire to caress them.
www.toto.co.jp/gallerma/ex091015/index_e.htm

It is interesting to pair de Vries and Wendy Johnson. I am not sure why they are?
I have lived at Green Gulch Farm. Briefly and beautifully. The drawing of the center garden brought me to tears. It is a dear space and I think it is made dear by the memory to slow down, to pay attention. There is a tradition there that everyone goes out into the fields in the beginning of the spring to plant the garden. So we rise and sit the dawn service then make our way to the fog arising fields. All are there. The Roshi, the cook, the priests, the farmies, and the elders. The experience is quiet and simple. And yet it is a very strict discipline.
Snow in a silver bowl
Beauty is enough. But this requires a wild patience. Is this what De Vries is getting at when he says “art is a discipline that contributes to becoming consciousness. Art is a free domain.

2 comments:

  1. Carolina,

    Thank you for this weaving. You do it yourself, weave the two together, even as you make it a questioned territory. I love Green Gulch, though from the visitor's perspective. I spent a night there as part of a walk from our apartment in San Francisco to Point Reyes, where my husband and I spent our prophetically pre-marriage, pre-children, pre- lapsarian honeymoon. The refuge of green gulch after our twenty miles through the city, over the bridge and through the Headlands was exquisite. We slept so well and ate in complete gratitude.

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  2. you are both so fortunate to have experienced this place. i am glad to have taken this class prior to having the chance to experience it. if i get the opportunity to do so myself, it will be with a different mind set and a different pair of eyes. thank you for that.

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