Change Happens

Just when I thought things were going to slow down, they pick up more steam.  It seems to be like that for everyone these days.  Trying to control it is crazy.  We simply don't move as fast as our fast paced world.  Just ignoring it, as mother used to say, doesn't quite cut it either, when being consciously engaged in life is something I would like to keep on the front burner.  So what then?  The sage advice, Just let go...and enjoy the ride, seems to capture both sides and wrap them into a fun time.  So here's what's up as a result:

• Enlightenmeant has a new look (it's about time I added a little color to the banner).  And there are new tabs at the top which cover the full offerings of my other creative interests as well.  Lucid Change is my favorite new addition. With short lively updates Lucid Change supports transformation through awareness and intent. Check it out and sign up to get email updates.
• You might enjoy my Process updates about my art and projects.  I will definitely be processing the art and philosophy behind my solo exhibit in Columbus this coming August, Not As Seen on Television, all 3-D wire and paper works.
• On Friday, June 1, 6pm-12am, is the opening reception of  SOS Art 2012, a community art show and event of creative expressions for Peace and Justice. This is a potluck reception with artist talks.  Two of my wire sculptures, Hoodie and Somalia, will be in the show which includes hundreds of artists of all ages and backgrounds.  Running through June 10th, the exhibit is hosted by The Art Academy of Cincinnati, 1212 Jackson Street, OTR.
• On Saturday, June 2, 6-9pm, I will be drawing Intuitive Renderings at the Center for Spiritual Living's Prosperity Potpourri fundraiser, 5701 Murray Avenue 45227.
• Also in June, New weeknight art practices will explore getting comfortable with not knowing so we can discover, explore and make some really cool drawings paintings and more.  I am also starting an artist support group for those who would like to live their art more.  If you feel drawn to either of these two opportunities, just email or call 513-549-4607.

I hope to see you around!
Pic;)

Working Overtime

 

Well, Mother Nature didn't give it much of a rest last winter and the rest of us have also been working like crazy.  A couple years ago a visiting Mayan Elder explained that time seems to be going so much faster, even though the days are still 24 hours long, because the whole solar system is presently zipping around the galactic center at a faster pace.  I asked how long this would go on.  He estimated a couple thousand years. I guess I'll just have to trust that.

10 classes/week for the past 4 months has kept me zipping right along making masks and completing an abstract art exhibit with teenage girls in residential treatment, now showing in University Heights.  I'm currently completing a mural with teens in the Upper School at The Children's Home of Cincinnati while starting a fresh stream of surrealist drawings of what goes on inside the minds of teenage boys in residential recovery after a winter of working in watercolors.  Shifting gears to get with 8-10 year-olds, this week we explored the positive consequences of sharing by borrowing from primary colors to create secondary colors in watercolor.  In addition to adult classes and a wire sculpture commission of a couple dancing (to be given as a wedding gift from his mom); I've also (somehow) been working on Not As Seen On TV for a show in Columbus that will feature solely 3-D wire and paper sculptures.  So, (big breath) I just wanted to take a moment to catch up a little and send out Happy Spring wishes that all is well in your world and hope you're finding ways to challenge yourself creatively.  If I can help, let me know!  Summer is on the way and I look forward to exploring new/unusual creative endeavors.

Nineteen Out of One Hundred

I don't have the time to draw it right now, but I'm imagining this cartoon where a confused character is scratching his head whilst looking at a picture of President Obama and muttering, "But I thought Jimmy Carter was president."  What's behind this cartoon?

Thirty six years ago things were so much like they are today (with the exception of who was president) that one of the most often quoted lines in movie history (ranking 19 out of 100) was first heard in the 1976 film Network.  In it, news anchor Howard Beale states:

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! We know things are bad - worse than bad, They're crazy!" 

At the end of his tirade, Beale tells his television viewing audience he isn't going to recommend they riot, or call their congressman, and he admits he doesn't know how to fix any of the problems.  Instead, he tells them they have to value their life and get mad as hell.  He tells them to get up out of their chairs, go to their windows, open them and shout: 

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"   

Believe it or not, that's not what started the idea for the cartoon, but it works. The point is nothing ever changes except us.  In truth, nothing really exists except the ability to perceive.  How we look at things determines if the world is hopelessly dismal or as Howard Beale offers the only hope we have to effect real change in the world.

In addition to the presidential primaries and race this year, there are plenty of ways our attention may be hooked out of the power of the present moment, and diverted to fuel the planetary dream of loss, lack and limitation.

Like the vote, it may seem like a right or a responsibility to get hooked up in the world.  There are many who would say it's as "mad as hell" (read: insane) to consider doing otherwise, but that's what I'm suggesting based on my own long, long history of not being able to make anything better by focusing on how bad it is.

Lets all get mad as hell: smile inside, keep our outlook open, and to all that is dark and negative, happily shout out, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"  Forget what 'everybody knows', let's choose instead to create heaven in as many moments as we can.

links:   A great clip from the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ELleCQvew  full text at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Network_(film) (Two good reasons SOPA shouldn't go through as written.)

With gratitude to mom and dad for helping me see what's really important. 

Celebrating New Cycle's Eve

Got plans for next Christmas? Some folks think you might want to move your holiday celebrations up to December 19 or sooner to beat the end of the Mayan calendar.  It's been almost 5,125 years since the count went into effect and there are plenty of ideas about what this means to those of us who have shown up for the finale.

There are some who point to various natural, man-made, and unseen changes in the world and say it portends the end of the world...a better world...or nothing new in the world. Since what happens in the world is subject to perception, at the end of the year there will be a lot of people claiming their predictions were right -- whatever they were.

This year more than any other year since Y2K, people are asking what to expect so they can be prepared, a strategy I hope will end with this cycle. For thousands of years this cycle has been filled with fearful anticipation. Expectations are the tools which have been leveraged to ensure personal safety, financial solvency and spiritual salvation, with rather poor results one of which is making life a matter of prevention. In this new cycle (and yes, there will be another cycle) we have the opportunity to live with intention as our way of life. This is the message shouted by so many from the wilderness to the modern times of the closing cycle -- wake up!

Unfortunately, those who are attached to any doomsday or nay-say 2012 story may well be missing the whole point of having a cycle that has an ending.  Closing cycles provide the opportunity (daily, monthly, annually or every 5000 years or so) to see how things are going, determine what works and what needs to change. The old cycle promoted an intention of inattentiveness which is being thrown off and overthrown around the globe.  Much of humanity is no longer willing to trade in freedom for fear.

The trick now is to release attachment to the past so the new cycle of intention may unfold.  Unlike the old cycle, the new cycle will not be about the bottom-line. The mastery of Intention is to live effortlessly, free of expectations and fear. The closing cycle would say that's irresponsible, even dangerous.  In the new cycle it will be recognized as unconditional -- like love, liberation and our true potential.

Instead of dwelling on the end of the old cycle, wondering what, if anything, will happen on December 21, Let's treat 2012 as one big giant New Cycle's Eve. Celebrating for a year is a far smaller fraction of the more than 1.8 million days in the ending cycle than one of our holiday weekends is to our 365 day year. So this is not overdoing it.  Forget shopping, we should have started celebrating decades ago!
 
Happy New Cycle's Eve!

Intuitive Renderings

  What works?  With so much to do what guides do you use to help determine what you really want, and what to watch out for as you strive to achieve your goals?  Maybe it's time to try some new ways to access your inner wisdom and remove the illusion of outer limits.  What is yet to come requires only our presence in the moment to find actualization.

  Next weekend I'm going to try something I've always done in a new way. I have always been able to draw from the verbal descriptions of others. I see what they say and put it on paper. That has turned into many beautiful paintings, illustrations and cartoons. I am also frequently consulted about dreams -- both waking and sleeping.  November 19-20 I am introducing a way anyone can get an intuitive drawing from me using The Deck of Prompts at the Victory of Light Expo, then again at a fundraiser for MUSE, Cincinnati's Women's Chorus on December 19.
  The Deck of Prompts contains more than 100 classic mystical dream, shamanic and tarot symbols in written form.  When you shuffle the deck with the intention of receiving inspiration, the word symbols align in a spread telling a story that can be interpreted like a dream.

    Your word prompts serve as the inspiration for a continuous-line drawing which illustrates the meaning behind your spread.  Your hand-colored Intuitive Rendering is yours to take home and keep. Come to Victory of Light and visit my booth, number 229, to get your Intuitive Rendering.  I will also have some inspiring posters, Numerology-inspired greeting cards, cartoon prints, and books that make great gifts.  Hope to see you soon!

When the Moment is Not the Present

 Watercolor Meditation Sampler     

simple art practices to express, reduce stress, engage peace

Monday, November 7, 7-9pm  $20

513-549-4607

email

Recently a student described by-passing judgement and criticism of her work as when something "just clicks".  In my art classes students practice oscillating between the present and the moment more than any other technique. This is the invisible step in the creative process.

The moment is not the same thing as the present. The present is filled, wrapped up and decorated, waiting to be opened in the light of contrast and comparison. That's what happens on paper and in our daily lives when we check and balance what is transpiring. The moment is empty, neither incomplete or whole, beyond comparison, the moment is not the present, unrelated to past and future.  

The limits of one's creative talent or belief system does not factor into the moment.  The moment is not a level to be attained, it is not a challenging process, a skill to be developed, nor does it make any of these possible. It is what is left when we let go of these notions.  It simply is the remainder of nothing, and the practice of art is a beautiful way to know it. 

The Remainder of Nothing

It is not necessary to suffer hardship and disappointment.
Life is not good only when there is joy. 

The end of suffering is to have no means to experience it,

no attachment to what has been or ever may be, 

grounded in that which has not been and never will be.

This cannot be attained only after years or lifetimes of cumulative effort.

There is nothing you can do to deserve it.

If you need it you cannot have it.

Only when you no longer want can it ever be

Enlightenment is the remainder of not doing anything.

When the end of seeking is no longer sought,

when what is known is not needing to know,
when what is felt is freedom of the desire to feel anything else,
what remains is perfect peace in the moment.

;)

Reds on the Greenway courtesy of Stewart Black's Photostream (no real name given) 

CC license: attribution/share alike

The Remainder of Nothing C. Pic Michel 2011