It’s Not Always Pretty: Wabi Sabi, Shadows and Creative empowerment

If the intention in our art is authenticity, then nothing gets spared or glossed over. Shadows are engaged and reckoned with as much as sunshine. What is ugly or repulsive to us may be compelling to others, worthy of as much attention, acceptance and praise as our more conventionally “lovely” creations. What scares us most may be our most resonant, emotionally  powerful art. There are finished pieces from which I have recoiled in horror, like a mother who has birthed a monster, only to be shocked by the positive reception it receives when I reluctantly present it to the world. Why are we drawn to messy, layered visual journals with cracked, worn bindings, the bold primitive marks and scrafitti of a child’s drawing, the frayed golden dandelions peeking through sidewalk cracks, distressed, worm-eaten, antique wooden tables? Why do we take photos of an old rusted truck in a field covered with weeds and wildflowers, our grandmother’s gnarled, blue-veined wrinkled hands, or graffiti layered walls in urban alleys? Why was my  own (self-rejected) wild, messy art piece—the first of its kind in my repertoire—appealing to its eager buyer? Wabi Sabi offers a clue. A Japanese term which defies clear definition, Wabi Sabi might best be understood as the beauty of transience, imperfection, simplicity.  While Wabi Sabi defies definition, we recognize its organic qualities of rustic authenticity: wrinkled faces, distressed  furniture, cracked walls with peeling paint. Wabi Sabi widens our aesthetic lens beyond a narrow, conventional Western ideal of beauty based on harmonious, classical proportions.

Prior to learning about Wabi Sabi, I loathed the muddy, quirky, disheveled intruders who kept showing up on my neat white pages and canvases. They arrived in tangled, layered slashes of energetic lines and marks, or brooding, primitive figures which thwarted my attempts to create neat,”well-behaved”  lovely and  “agreeable” calligraphic art pieces. Curious about what compelled me to express these visually (for me) challenging pieces and why people responded to them, I turned to C.G. Jung and his work on the  Shadow.

According to Jung, We all possess a well-spring of unconscious, unknown or rejected aspects which comprise our  personal shadow.  These hidden parts not only have power and resonance, but can wreak havoc in our lives unless we bring them to light. Our acceptance and integration of our shadow is necessary for personal growth and wholeness. The personal art pieces which I had deemed ugly—which felt alien, shadowy unfamiliar—illuminated hidden aspects of myself, including a daring, assertive, disruptive feminist voice who could not be expressed in the language of conventional beauty.  Embracing my “shadow” was catalyst for creative empowerment and a Wabi Sabi epiphany: Our “rough and tumble” rustic creations and our conventional, classically, harmonious “bright stars” can co-exist in equal measure of beauty, emotional resonance and impact. Regarding the not so pretty bits,  I think of Lettering master Yves Leterme who suggests that to avoid preciousness in our art we may have to “kill our little darlings.” Conversely, I believe we are wise to accept some of the ugly ducklings or “Shreks” who arrive bidden or unbidden on pages and canvases. Perhaps like Shrek, who was filled with “rabid self-esteem” when he first saw his hideous visage in the mirror, we too can embrace the power of our shadow, welcoming what shows up in our work, warts and all. 

 

 

 

 

What folly it is to try to capture something that feels like a slippery fish: you’ve got it—and then it flies off the line or out of your hand, flipping and gyrating back into the water: splash!  You can describe its keen muscled energy: slithery, pulsating, wet, for that split second before it leaves your grasp; the rainbow sparkle of sunlight reflected in its silver blue scales as it leaps its way towards home in a flip-flopped downward spiral; the concentric circles formed in the water as it plunges in and swims off and away. But the fish itself? Gone. What remains are wet, smelly hands and droplets of water. The fish is  history, a spin of memory; a tale told to one’s self and others; an approximation; a backward glance through a rear view mirror. Are the droplets of remaining water enough to reflect a nugget of truth about the fish itself?

Writing about my life, art and teaching art is like catching a fish: a fluid, slippery thing just out of reach–beyond catching or containment.  It begins as one thing then becomes another, flipping this way and that in its contorted effort to escape. The best I can offer are fragments or droplets, the whole experience reflected through its memorable parts, woven together with a golden thread or through-line of seeking and championing voice and creative self expression. Whether viewed through a lens of adventure, tragedy, comedy, didactic instruction &  inspiration (you pick!), the story I share has both dark and bright beginnings, middles, and dead ends—and illuminating magic. There are paper, pens, pianos, poetry, tears, psychology and child’s day-dreamed imaginations;  sullen, heavy slogs through  small town mountain days; peripatetic wanderings and wonderings through larger urban spaces, including the hallowed halls of academia. There are soul-crushing breakdowns, far-flung adventures, lucky breaks and miraculous synchronicities that punctuate a life lived in the quest of meaning and deep creative engagement, all centered around the  BIG dream of calligraphy and art. The dream that stretched beyond the borders of my early lived or imagined experience: out of reach, impossible, no compass to chart its direction, my face pressed up against glass looking out towards its horizon.

 

The Long Pause

 

I miss the quiet, empty spaces,

ears re-tuned to birdsong;

making bread and growing things;

sitting on front porches waving to passersby,

the neighbors we never met before;

idle walks and talks and noticing

the bend and sway of tree branches shedding pecans;

the hawk’s nest high above, with teetering babies poised to fly;

how fast hair and nails grow;

how small things really matter.

As death felled our numbers we ceded to finality:

a humble reckoning,

a full on look at dusk,

a reverence for breath.

Stripped to bone and memory,

we emerge to remember or forget

that THIS moment

THIS day

THIS  time

is it.

Daily wonderings

As i walk through my neighborhood each morning, I am struck by a random thought.  However absurd it seems, I follow the thread and a story emerges in the form of a poem. Today it was “meeting one’s end,” or “making ends meet.”  Which led me to ponder: How do I want to meet my end? Can I fathom it? Of course not.  Even as I face down the Maw of the corona virus, denial saves me from my worst fear. Or is death what I fear the most?  It seems odd to entertain “dark” thoughts on May day, where Spring’s full bloom is optimism incarnate, the fierce sun burning through fear or foreboding with it’s welcome heat.

What end to meet,

where path falls into sea,

or mountain becomes sky—

tumbling down or gently rising—

stone polished waterfall,

mist over lake;

submerged or wide open,

butterfly or snail,

eyes open, closed, dreaming

or still?

What end becomes me,

one with dirt and star—

blinding light, trampled earth,

mulched leaves,

flowerbed

garden path

cloud spilling rain;

or thoughts strung together

woven through memories

held closely, laid down,

quiet comfort, waiting.

What hero’s journey is this, undertaken in solitude, the portal a canvas or blank page?

The artist’s life is largely interior, the company we keep living “rent free” in our heads. Any demons battled take form as doubt, fear, self- criticism; the holy grail a hard won finished piece. Our pilgrimage begins again and again, each time we pick up pen, brush, pencil, chalk and engage with a blank space, mark followed by mark.

Whatever our purpose as artists, how do we bear the necessary demands of inner work? 

We can reach out and commune with other travelers,  fellow pilgrims progressing towards authentic expression, spiraling through new inner and outer landscapes. A well worn path in Northern Spain is one such landscape offering artists a unique way to commune with self and others, connecting inner with outer—sacred with mundane—experience.

For centuries The Camino de Santiago de Compestella has borne witness to pilgrims and seekers in search of healing, adventure, physical, mental, spiritual challenges. Whatever one’s purpose, the path has a compelling aura of mystique–an ancient and living history.  The daily stream of travelers are a cosmopolitan, multi-national  group of all ages and genders, and their stories of catastrophic loss, sorrow, joyful partnership, hope, dreams, life-altering events step by step are pounded in the camino dirt.

The red Camino dirt is now part of my art. Last Fall I spent a week among fellow artists in a lovely compound called Flores del Camino in the village of Castrillo de los Polvazares, considered one of the most beautiful villages in Spain. Janice Mason Steves and Rebecca Crowell led the September 2018 workshop hosted by the space’s gracious proprietors, Basia and Bertrand.  This young couple, who met in the UK and share a love of the Camino, are timeless and ageless in their deep commitment to hospitality and art. Embodying the spirit of the arts and crafts ethos, they use pigments from the land around them to create iconographic sacred and modern art works for commission or sale. Their beautiful space is available for workshops and retreats, and provides daily sanctuary for camino pilgrims. As part of the retreat/workshop experience, Basia and Bertrand offer participants (and pilgrims) delicious, home-prepared meals, an intimate work space, and more often than not evening fireside ritual gatherings. Workshop participants are also treated to lessons in the history of sacred symbols—including drawing labyrinths and the flower of life— while learning about sacred geometry, the language and architecture of nature and the universe. Foray’s into the nearby landscape are opportunities for gathering rocks for making pigment, and for seeing ancient petroglyphs.

I knew when I arrived at Flores del Camino I would return and thus am  thrilled by the invitation to co-facilitate a workshop there with Basia and Bertrand. Planned with care for the end of September 2020, our workshop will include lessons in sacred geometry, gathering and preparing pigments from the landscape, and creating a “pilgrim’s passport” Book of Ours in response to our experience of this particular place along the Camino.

There are spaces for 8 participants. Please consider joining us for this intimate retreat that offers: 

precious time away from the cacophony of the outer world,;

the delightful company of fellow artists and pilgrims, 

nourishing and delicious food; 

spaciousness to experiment with combining text and image using natural pigments; 

a unique opportunity to respond to the landscape and history of Northern Spain–and the Camino–while learning how to integrate sacred geometry into our art work.

A Book of Ours: Pilgrim’s Passport

Flores Del Camino

Castrillo de los Polvazares, Spain

27 September-4 October 2020

For Registration Information:

www.floresdelcamino.com

sharonzeugin@yahoo.com

www.sharonzeugin.net