REVERB13 (Day 7): Infinity and the Selfie--that-in-us-which-never-dies, drawing and photography

INFINITE SELFIE (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for the infinite SELFIE--that-in-us-which-never-dies! Hallelujah for deep thinking and the SYMBOLS that help us contemplate INFINITY.

Kat McNally's Reverb13 (Day 7) prompt is this:

Please post your favourite picture of yourself from 2013, self-portrait or otherwise!

This past year, I had wonderful photos taken of me by my Chiboogamoo (Thank you honey!) that I treasure and have made excellent use of in this blog, Coffee with Hallelujah. What was amazingly special for me was when a fellow artist asked--no persisted--in having me pose for her at the Oakland Cemetery here in Atlanta. And, the results, well were stunningly successful (see this blog)!

Thank you Lisa Alexander Streib for capturing INFINITY in the portraits you created from my profile! Then having the brilliance to merge a piece of my art with the portrait! Below is the image Lisa took that succeeded in creating the SELFIE that is INFINITE that is HALLELUJAH TRUTH!

STUDY OF INFINITY THROUGH AUSTRALIAN ART. I studied this particular piece of Australian indigenous art after my 2009 trip to northwestern Australia. It engaged me because it was the first female Wandjina I had seen. Wandjina is a CREATION GOD. The "halo array" symbolizes lightening bolts. We don't see a mouth because it is concealed by elemental clouds. What can one make of the breasts with eyes?  (Art copy done by Hallelujah Truth)

SELFIE, INFINITY, HALLELUJAH TRUTH. Lisa Streib succeeded in merging me and beloved profile with my work! The halo array of lightening bolts crowning my Hallelujah head! Now that is awesome when a photographer can succeed in creating a timeless portrait of a human, capturing "that-in-us-which-never-dies."  (Portrait by Lisa Alexander Streib)

That's Coffee with Hallelujah. SOUL BLOG with me and tell me about your infinite SELFIE--that-in-us-which-never-dies!

#REVERB12 (Day 26): How will you make time in 2013? 15 Minutes of Creativity Every Day!

STAR INFINITY SPIRAL. The spirals in my work symbolize infinity and repetition of that infinity throughout time. I think of spirals in 3-dimensions. A spiral is not flat as you see it here but has height and depth. As we move forward in our lives, we repeat behaviors and feel similar emotions (this is the circular part of the spiral), but we have gained experience and cultivated knowledge (this is the height and depth part) which help us process who we are at any particular stage of our lives. (art by Hallelujah)

#REVERB12 (Day 26) PROMPT: How do you intend to carve out more time for the things that are the most important to you in 2013?

TIME! I continue to play with TIME in order to allocate some of this precious resource to making ART. I began this blog, Coffee with Hallelujah, three years ago to honor TIME + CREATIVITY. 

I proclaimed that if you have 15 minutes to drink coffee in the morning, you have 15 minutes to be CREATIVE, to honor your SPIRIT. 

 COFFEE TIME = SOUL TIME (CREATIVITY)

ELABORATING THE SOUL: YAYOI KUSAMA’S LIFE’S BODY OF ART WORK AT THE TATE IN LONDON, ENGLAND

HALLELUJAH TRUTH CELEBRATES THE RED DOTS OF YAYOI KUSAMA. As an artist who has delighted in the use of dots in her work, I have been so exuberant about discovering the life's body of work by Yayoi Kusama!(art by Hallelujah Truth, Georgia Visionary Artist)

ENTRANCE TO THE TATE'S EXIBIT OF YAYOI KUSAMA

Hallelujah for Yayoi Kusama! Hallelujah for fellow SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIMS who do their SOUL WORK. Long live Kusama! On her JOURNEY, she has succeeded in becoming the CENTER of her CREATIONS and in creating a “KUSAMA-WORLD.” Hallelujah Truth approves of this artist who made herself not the focus of her own ART.

YAYOI BECOMES PART OF HER WORK! How splendid is the blogging world! At the Tate Modern (2012) is an expansive life retrospective of Yayoi Kasuma's work. In mid-May, I had the opportunity to see this exhibit, including this fantastic swirling snake-like Kasuma painting from the 1990's. It was displayed with other paintings from the era of her paintings of biological or cosmological imagery. However, it wasn't until I googled Yayoi Kusama and found this photo on Amber's blog that I saw Yayoi Kusama costumed in the design from this particular painting, which the Tate exhibit didn't include.  (image from Amber's Mouthwash blog)

WE ARE ALL DOTS. Yayoi Kusama started using dots in her art work as a child.  The dots, she explains, represent all of us and infinity too.  (I was not allowed to take photos in the exhibit, so this photo and others are my photographs of the posters hanging out in the cafe at the conclusion of the exhibit. Google Yayoi Kusama--the work she has produced is vast and uncountable and so much of it is available on the web.

INFINITY. Yayoi Kusama creates environments. Here is one of her infinity environments made with mirrors and lights. I had the good fortune of being able to walk through one of these at the Tate Modern exhibit.

MORE RECENT WORK.  Starting in 2009, Yayoi Kusama has been creating a body of work by painting on a monochromatic background and then filling its surface with different symbols and patterns. I was particularly moved by the titles of these paintings and wish that I had written them down. The language was focused on human relationships to one another and to the earth. One has to wonder if this focus comes with age, since Kusama was born in 1929 and is now 83.

A ROOM FULL OF RECENT WORKS. Hallelujah adores the way Yayoi Kusama places herself in relation to her work! At the Tate Modern, one entire room was filled with these evocative pieces. (photo from The Juvenilia)

Something to GET EXCITED ABOUT...

A feature documentary, Kusama: Princess of Polka Dots, is in post production. A short excerpt from this documentary was prepared for the Tate Modern 2012 exhibition. You can find out more about this documentary at this site, and you can friend the filmmakers on Facebook right here. Meanwhile enjoy:

To experience a wee bit more of the magnificence that is Yayoi Kusama, watch this short video:




ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS...

I will certainly be interested in reading a copy of Yayoi Kusama's autobiography, "Infinity Net," only recently translated from Japanese into English. I want to know more about how this SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM lived her life successfully elaborating her SOUL.


I am so thankful for having my friend Denise, who lives in London and invited me and my Chiboogamoo to spend time with her and to go to Yayoi Kusama's exhibit at the Tate Modern. I also love and appreciate my Chiboogamoo, who shares this adventurous and wondrous JOURNEY with me. Kisses to you both! I acknowledge the brochure handed out at the exhibit for providing me with excellent information and the quotation from "Infinity Net" below.

Hallelujah (right) with friend Denise taken outside the Tate exhibit  in the cafe area.

My faithful companion Chiboogamoo, a man who does both science and art!

INFINITY AND AFFINITY.  I feel a deep connection with Yayoi Kusama.  I understand something about her work at a visceral level that is too difficult to express. (art by Hallelujah Truth, watercolor pencils on paper and photoshopped)

FROM HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Yayoi Kusama wrote in her autobiography, Infinity Net, the following: "For art like mine--art that does battle at the border of life and death, questioning what we are and what it means to live and die--[Japan] was too small, too servile, too feudalistic and too scornful of women. My art needed a more unlimited freedom and a wider world." 

What do you think PILGRIMS? What does your art need? Do you have unlimited freedom to create? Describe it to me? Hallelujah Truth wants to know!

REVERB10: CONTEMPLATING our EXUBERANT INFINITY--PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

Hallelujah for the Winter Solstice! For full moon lunar eclipses signifying everything and nothing. On this darkest day of the year, we experience a “death” and prepare for a “re-birth.” CELEBRATIONS place us in TIME—HERE and NOW. In response to today’s REVERB10 Challenge, I briefly glimpse myself through INFINITY….

THE FUTURE: Five years from now I envision myself existing as an EXUBERANT GALAXY glittering giddily with gladness. All of my communities rotate with me, around me, or close by radiantly realizing their cherished ideals!

THE PRESENT: Glowing now, today, I joyously toast BEING and ACTION! I explode and collide with YOU in the ever-expanding universe of ME. WE are those binary stars rotating around one another. WE are constellations clustering with one another. WE are black holes swirling in our own GREAT MYSTERY!

THE PAST: Long ago in DEEP TIME, there was a singularity of BEING…all of me that mattered was condensed into ONE point.

oh.

Oh,

OH!

Here I am.

When I was born time began.

When I die the universe will end.

And I am dancing too fast to see

I stretch to the end of everything

You cannot see all of me.

Alice Teeter (extracted from “String Theory,” When It Happens to You)

Thank you REVERB10 for allowing me to reflect on who I am throughout TIME. I feel empowered when I use my imagination. This morning, I invited Alice Teeter’s poems to join me in my contemplation. I absolutely devoured her book of poems, When It Happens to You, when it came out in 2009. I have been absorbing her poem, “String Theory,” over the years (pre-publication) as she appeared around the Atlanta area reading and giving performances of this poem meditating on particle physics. Please watch this amazing video if you want to see how “String Theory” can be danced out.

Pilgrims, if you care to reflect on TIME for yourself, here is December 21^st’s REVERB10 PROMPT: FUTURE SELF. Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?) Prompt Writer Jenny Blake, author of “Life After College, The Complete Guide.”

I bid you Pilgrims farewell on this shortest day of the year with more of Alice Teeter’s “String Theory”:

oh oh oh and to be the one who can see it all.

How we connect.

The lightning strikes.

END OF THE JOURNEY: FINITE OR INFINITE?

From where do we PILGRIMS come? To where do we go? We are born. We die. The JOURNEY seems FOREVER. Perhaps LIFE is INFINITE.

When my friend Luis died, his mother Juanita was open to the possibility that he might have become a cardinal—that brilliantly red, black-faced bird that frequents our yards here in Georgia. Why not? She had made connections between a cardinal she saw after learning of her son’s death, and then saw one again as she went inside to view his body at the funeral parlor.

Without questioning the particulars of Juanita’s hypothesis, I dedicated myself meaningfully to the task of envisioning Luis as a cardinal, flying to his next destination. A red-bodied angel emerged on the sheet of white paper in front of me. In addition to wings, Luis was now equipped with a large orange-yellow beak and a bird’s eye view of the world. 

Let me speak of my artistic process in honoring Luis and his mother with this cardinal-Luis image. I drew and painted what was “easy” for me. As a visual artist, I treasure PROCESS before PRODUCT. “To keep your process flowing, to feel the enjoyment of creation, you first need to go where it is easy,” writes Michele Cassou in her 1995 book, “Life, Paint and Passion.” (If you are thinking this approach to visual art is similar to Natalie Goldberg’s towards writing, you are correct. Natalie Goldberg wrote the forward to Cassou’s book.)

Whenever I begin to draw, I start with what is familiar. Michele Cassou uses the following simile, “Your painting is like an apple tree. If you want to eat its fruit, look for a ripe one, one that drops into your hand when you touch it….Do not pick green apples….Remember: Every apple will be ripe in its time; do not rush it.”

So I started with the familiarity of drawing an avian head, crafted a human bird neck with shoulders that extended into arms and wings, finished by human legs and feet—triumphantly creating a blended species. Easy! Because I had been working with similar imagery to express changes in my own life’s journey (see “Trust in the Imaginative Process, April 19, 2010).

As I moved close to completing the image, I stepped outside to my courtyard to show it to my condo neighbor, Kiona. It was a sunny Saturday morning, and it was pleasant to be outside after huddling over my art table. As we leaned towards one another in conversation about DEATH and BIRTH transitions, a cardinal flew close to us and landed in a nearby tree. I addressed the bird, “Hello Luis, I painted this image for your mother. Thank you so much for coming and visiting us.” As long as we chatted, the cardinal lingered. Perhaps, he was waiting to get the birdfeeder for sunflower seeds. We don’t know for certain, do we?

When we emerge from our mother’s wombs, we are STRANGERS to ourselves and to each other. Our lives are JOURNEYS and we are PILGRIMS. Each step moves us towards a GREATER KNOWING of our own SOUL and the physical world that we inhabit.

Does the JOURNEY ever END? Write Hallelujah and tell her about your PILGRIMAGE. Is it INFINITE? Or are we FINITE? Can we become a bird, an apple tree, a firefly?