Art has a story

Jerome Bruner has written that we make meaning of our world through story. We are constantly storying ourselves (and others, and the world around us).

Making art is no different. As the art pieces for 37days started flowing in, so did the back-stories of how they were made, why they were significant for the artist, what they meant to them. I’ve asked each artist, if they are interested, to provide the story of their artwork because it so enhances my understanding of the art itself. I’m struck, too, by the serendipitous way in which some artists were assigned what seem to be the perfect essays for them… While I can’t post them all, unfortunately, perhaps you’d like hear a few of these stories, too, over the coming weeks.

Here’s an Artist’s Statement from Adele Wayman who created an artwork for "Polish your mudballs."

"Creating the artist card for ‘Polish Your Mudballs’ began with my immediate recognition and response to the quote at the top of the essay. It was written by Dogen Zenji who was born in Japan in the 12th century and was the founder of Soto Zen, the Buddhist practice I follow at Great Tree Zen Temple near Asheville.

Here is my very brief and personal interpretation of what still to me is a very mysterious quote. When you first begin to see reality trees are trees (or mountains are mountains). When you meditate further, you understand that the nature of the universe is empty of any fixed concepts so trees are no longer trees. But as you live your life in the world while understanding the emptiness of self and all phenomena, trees are still trees. I wanted my image to visually repeat in the same circular way as the quote.  The dorodango appear at the top and again at the bottom. The landscape image of trees, a black and white reproduction of one of my own paintings, "Winter Trees", also repeats. Against the top tree image is a photo of Teijo Munnich, my zen teacher. Below is an image of Frida Kahlo.  I wanted to show the two women as connected, both practitioners of compassion, one through commitment to spiritual life and the other to art. The leaves swirl down leaving the trees bare, nothing remains.  The flow of the leaves arose for me from the wonderful description and discussion in your essay of the experience of flow in the creative process. In my experience meditation and the flow of making art are parallel practices.

I should really rewrite my paragraph to say that my process and materials were really the starting point and the spiritual and philosophical musings emerged from them. My current art practice is to make ephemeral constructions out of natural materials and/or flea market treasures of lace and old stuff as a way to create sacred settings for my paintings. The images are really wall-sized collages or wall altars ("wallters!" from my friend Anne). I began playing with all the small leaf paintings in my studio and finally this one of the central falling maple leaves was the right feeling, color and texture. The real red and yellow leaves on the black from the red maple outside my Forest Light studio kept moving around. For awhile there were also golden beech leaves. The dorodango are computer prints from Bruce Gardner’s beautiful examples on his website and they were everywhere in the image until they found a balance. 

The practice of making mudballs, taking dirt and making it shine is like following each breath in meditation, making art, or polishing your life each day, one image and one breath at a time.

Of course another way to talk about the image was a poem I wrote this week for my mindfulness class.  It’s also about the image I’m working on for your book, so I thought you might enjoy it.

Meditation on Katagiri Roshi’s teaching on A Painting of A Rice Cake

A painted rice cake doesn’t satisfy hunger.

Wanting food, I continually search for answers.

Struggling to make sense of the dharma, I paint rice cakes.

Paper, colors, paint, brushes – what to do with them.

Paint to find enlightenment, the perfect image.

Unable to satisfy the hunger, not wanting to starve,

Amazed at the intensity and beauty of yellows and reds, leaves falling, the paintings flow.

Seeing directly – no separation between painting, life, a Buddha, emptiness.

These words are nothing but a painted rice cake.

[you can click the artwork to enlarge it for viewing]