THE HERO'S PATH
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"... As far as Joe (Campbell) was concerned, we all had the potential to
live out the hero's journey, if only we would take the
first step and enter the dark wood of self-knowledge." ~ Mickey Hart in Drumming
at the Edge of Magic
"... the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the
thread
of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an
abomination, we
shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay
ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the
center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will
be with all the world." ~ Joseph Campbell on The Hero's Adventure in The
Power of Myth
ON CREATIVITY
"Many times I've heard words to this effect: Before I took your class, I
was completely separate from my creativity..." ~
Julie Cameron in The
Artist's Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity,
A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self
ON DRAWING
"The magical mystery of drawing ability seems to be, in part at least, an
ability to make a shift in brain state to a different mode of
seeing/perceiving." ~ Betty Edwards in
Drawing
on the Right Side of the Brain,
A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence
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ON WRITING
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Three members of my writers' group wrote five
minute stories about "habit."
"We ... write to heighten our own awareness of life ... We write to taste
life twice, in the moment and in retrospection ... we write to be able to
transcend our life, to reach beyond it ... to teach ourselves to speak
with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth ... to expand our
world, when we feel strangled, constricted, lonely ... When I don't write,
I feel I lose my fire, my color." The Diary of Anais Nin
Pay Attention to Your Feelings and Energy
"The more you write the more you will learn to trust what you feel. In the
beginning, whether or not your decisions improve the story is secondary.
What is most important is that you make decisions even though you are
unsure." ~ Roberta Allen in Fast Fiction: Creating Fiction in Five Minutes
The Writer's Journey: Mythic
Structure for Writers
Myth and the Movies: Discovering
the Mythic Structure of 50 Unforgettable Films
Writing
the Natural Way Using Right Brain Techniques to Release Your
Expressive Powers, a Course to Enhancing Creativity and Writing Confidence by Gabriele Rico
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ON DRUMMING
"... I watched the drum dwindle in importance as a Western musical
instrument, at one point even disappearing, even from the military. Was
this near extinction due to the fact that the drum had been part of a
possession trance culture that had been suppressed by its conquerors (the
notorious Indo-Europeans), who came in successive waves out of the Central
Asian steppes and who worshipped the male sky gods we find in place as
written history begins? ... Was the drum a casualty of this collision?
Certainly the Neolithic religion of the Goddess was. It literally
disappears from our history, ... withdraws into the West African
forest..." ~ Mickey Hart in Drumming
at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion
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c
u
l
T
i
v
a
T
e
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 Be
creative in life.
"Come into the garden with me.
Don't worry about not
knowing the way: Your heart remembers, even if your
head has forgotten. When you were small and first had
time to create your dreams, you were at one with the
earth you played in and with each leaf, bird and cloud
you saw. This is the garden to which I invite you to return."
COPYRIGHT © 1992 MARILYN BARRETT
garden ...
or labyrinth?
"...as flowers and leaves stirred and rustled in the gentle, sun-warmed
breeze and as lemon blossoms from the small tree I'd planted in autumn
scented the air, I saw that I, too, had completed a cycle of growth."
Come into the garden with me...
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ON PERCEPTION
Seeing
is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees.
Robert Irwin gave me the nerve to accept the distinction "artist", sheerly
by the title of this book. I value the quality of seeing that drawing
gives me. Now, I believe that 20th century art
chronicles our collective discovery of the act of perception. Freedom with
self expression can be had by throwing traditional definitions of "art"
into the air.
ON ROBERT IRWIN
I'm stuck on Robert Irwin.
Discovering his works in Seeing
is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
made me
wild to visit the Getty Center in LA
where Irwin designed the gardens and the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
where he has credits. I've collected some thoughts and excerpts about Robert Irwin, the artist whose works cause one to question
perception. Rather, to perceive perception. At least to acknowledge one's
perception; or, perhaps, the act of perceiving ... the moment of
perception?
excerpt from Adventures in Art: 40 Years at Pace in Portrait of a Gallery by Talk Magazine October 2001:
Robert Irwin's "soft-wall" exhibition marked the
quietest month, with the least attendance in the Gallery's history. It
wasn't so much that no one came - it was that nearly no one stayed.
Elevator after elevator would open, people would peer in and then,
deciding that there was no exhibition, leave. However, awaiting the brave
souls who ventured into the exhibition was an extraordinary,
perception-extending experience. With the investment of a little time, the
viewer sensed that something was wrong, out of kilter, with the space.
Eighteen inches in front of the back wall of the gallery a theatrical
scrim was stretched, causing the wall to blur or seem out of focus, while
the three other walls were sharp. The space itself became palpable. It
remains one of Irwin's best works. (1974)
After reading the play called ART in a French class, the
controversial objet d'art being "an entirely white canvas with lines that
vibrate in the light of noon", the phenomena of white art again brought
Robert Irwin and this story to mind:
In Sao Paulo, it's reported that people attending an
exhibit, faced with Irwin's huge apparently-white canvas painted in
self-cancelling red and green dots that suddenly and eventually evoked a
shiver or a blush in a person who looked at the canvas for a few minutes,
shredded his work on the spot as a mob.
My first Robert Irwin-esq art experience after reading Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees:
This evening in early May the sun was gone at about
7:30pm. The ground was dark brown and the grey stones reflected the very
last light. I started to walk down the slope by the side of the house, and
I felt my body lift and swoop left then right down the uneven path
prescribed by the terrain. The guided movement gave a sense of beauty.
Quotes by Robert Irwin on being an artist Dia:Beacon
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