India *9 -Reflective traveling with Kori (1)

We began our art pilgrimage with intention over 2 years ago, but it took till now that we could finally meet in person again...what unfolded over the next 5 weeks was for both of us a reawakening where art practice was the transforming vehicle... our journey took us from the Arabian sea on the south west coast, all the way to Madhubani in Bihar in the North East with stops in the middle at two of the most amazing caves Ive been in in my life...many exhausting 30+ hour travel stints, but we had our art supplies and everywhere was our mobile studio...using found photos, ripped street posters, antique photo mounts we found, henna, incense burns, gouache, pens, pencils... There was a special quality to our coming together and collaborating... sharing so much interests and intentions it seemed like the work was just making itself through us in a very seamless way... The Ellora and Ajanta caves blew me away....cut directly into cliff sides of stone...an act of revelation...subtraction as the artistic process instead of addition.... remarkable craftsmanship...exquisite design of form... the stone danced...pushed and pulled into space...cave after cave just humbled by the intention and dedication of man to create these living shrines from inert matter...definitely been reassessing the hype of the renaissance and Michelangelo when India was such a center of artistic fertillity hundreds of years earlier...at Ajanta there were amazing flakes of frescos 15 hundred years before Picasso where buddhas were sitting in cubist landscapes....and mural size scenes that looked like Bosch's garden of earthly delights on steroids....I felt injected for sure, directly into my heart this needle of the psat pumped inspiration into my system...every spare moment we worked on art...hotel rooms, waiting for meals, train stations, beaches, damp bat filled caves, fields, hills.....anywhere and everywhere...Both feeling so gratefull for the journey we were on together, that took us all the was up to the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal....

India *8 petitte P

Learning to surrender to needing to surrender....independant desires manifesting as depedancy lessons....and then healing in joy and in nature...sharing love and allowing creativity to kindle...It was and adventure traveling with my friend P....many lessons as always...much beauty as always....the ups and downs of life are here to stay...how else could it be?

India*? hunh???????...uh..... BLACK RASPBERRY!

Friends,
life in India unfolding its beauty, captured on memory and memory cards...wish i could upload my brain and spirit to share with u all what has been passing through my experience....someday soon i hope to find a fast interned connection and free time to post some pix from the insane beauty i've been exposed to.... in brief I spent a month traveling with my friend P, from ocean to mountains and back down again...a time full of lessons and creativity and playing in the healing arabian sea, now i am with my friend Kori, a brother cut from the same cloth...artistically collaborating our way to Madhubani Bihar to work with some village artists there...a long held dream about to fully manifest after 40 hrs of travel starting tomorrow at 6:00 am...In the past few days I have been blown away and humbled by the ellora caves and the ajanta caves...will go into detail and share images later...but my two new favorite spaces in the world are Ellora cave 15 and Ajanta cave 19...truly magnificant creation/revelations...
love to you all,
O

India *7 what the folk?!

Dancing.
Drumming.
Costumes.
Face paint.
Channeling.

All things I'm in affinity with...so when I had a few days to play with in Kerala before meeting a friend I decided to track down some Theyyam performances...an ancient folk tradition specific to this area of Kannur in northern Kerala. The landscape here is lush, and the people seem to have a high standard of living, with an unscrolling view of gated middle class homes tucked into palm trees on bus rides to jungle temples. The performance was like witnessing a childhood favorite Metropolitan Museum of Art ethnographic instillation come to life...The dancers and musicians come from a specific caste and have been practicing for thousands of years embodying snake and other such deities...while the squad of drummers were unleashing some amazing tribal vibrations which you could feel cleaning your energy, I was skeptical at times that there was actual channeling going on, but I caught the mind at work and silenced it will a game ending: "surrender to what is with out judgment." and literally right after that one of the Theyyam dancers came over to me and planted a rice filled blessing on my head with his red hand....so it goes...Performances can last up to 24 hours and unfortunately (or fortunately) I was napping during the part where the chicken got its head bitten off...Theyyam season lasts from November to March, with performers traveling from Kavu (like a temple) to Kavu. These are modest spiritual structures compared to the sprawling metropolitan temples of Tamil Nadu, but here the whole community comes out to watch the divine come to life instead of strictly accessing it through stone...