Public Animas Ceremony Part 5b(4): Art. Let It In. (And Celebrate the Artists: Bryan Perrin)

Continued lessons from the Public Animas Ceremony: An Invitation to Passion.

Bryan Perrin. Artist, inspiration, friend.
Image courtesy Our Whole Grove.

If The Vision is true, it will find the right people. Celebrate them.

With great regularity I come across fundraisers, auctions, art shows, etc. featuring varied artworks where there is no mention of the artist contributor as a person. A name, yes. Maybe it is the animist in me, but when I experience art, it usually makes me want to know more about the artist. I think the humans behind the art should be celebrated as much as their work. So, in an effort to do so, we created laminated biographies to accompany each of the bowls that were created for this ceremony. Since the bowls were auctioned off as part of the don't-let-your-ceremony-bankrupt-you strategy, each person who took home a bowl also took home something to help them "know" the artist better. It's all about relationship.

For the next few entries, I will be including the biographies of our artists in an effort to further celebrate them & express our gratitude. Also included are the statements they provided (if provided) about their piece for the Animas Ceremony: An Invitation to Passion.

Bryan Perrin Studio

ART of Nature, Place and Spirit – Samsonville, New York

Bryan Perrin: Environmental Teaching Artist, ADF Priest

Bryan uses art as a tool for learning, teaching about and understanding the environment. His lifelong study of aquatic and land eco-systems is fueled by a profound passion for nature and creative expression.

Bryan has created environmental and arts projects for a wide range of educational institutions, environmental agencies and organizations. His design and development of interior environments, crafted natural landscapes and structures, and traditional exhibitions, lectures and presentations all help to cultivate in children and adults, the reverence, awe and passion that our miraculous environment deserves and the care and respect it’s habitability requires.

Fairy Mound, by Bryan Perrin
Image courtesy Bryan Perrin Studio.

Bryan is currently Master Ceremonialist for Our Whole Protogrove in Samsonville, New York. He was one of the six individuals chosen to be Àr nDraíocht Féin’s first group of formally ordained Druid Priests and was inducted a the ADF Wellspring Gathering in 2002. He is also the Founder & former Senior Druid of Green Man Grove of New York (now Grove of the Other Gods).

Much of Bryan’s current illustration work is for local and environmental groups, but he has also worked for a diverse group of publications from Enchanté and Green Egg to Playgirl. Combining his artistic skills with his devotional work, Bryan also creates objects and spaces for ritual worship. He lives on a mountainside with his family and has enjoyed moving in the inner circles of the art world's outer fringe of Toledo Ohio, Cocoa Beach Florida, Jersey City New Jersey, & Woodstock New York.

Bryan Perrin is Co-Director of UrthArts Center of Samsonville and a volunteer at the Hudson River Maritime Museum.

To browse Bryan’s online studio, visit http://bryanperrinstudio.com

"Bowly" by Bryan Perrin

“Bowly”

Multi-Media: Wood, Gold & Silver leaf & Shellac and Acrylic Paint

About this piece:

Adhesion or Holding. 

Togetherness & Bonding 

The interconnectivity and

Mixing it up 

It’s a bowl, it’s a container

If The Vision is true, it will find the right people. Celebrate them.

Public Animas Ceremony Part 5a: Art. Let It In. (And make it an offering.)

Continued lessons from the Public Animas Ceremony: An Invitation to Passion.

Rapture.
Offering Art Bowl by Moma Fauna.

Art makes everything better.

I cannot express how much I value the presence & utility of art in ceremony as an expression of devotion, gratitude & spirituality as well as a magickal tool. I also feel that art, whatever the form, is the quintessential offering.

Art also enhances ceremonial "energy" (I actually dislike that terminology, but what is the alternative?) by bringing with it the collective emotions, effort & expressions of the artist(s). Each art piece acts as both an energetic amplifier & battery. 

I suspect I already mentioned this somewhere previously, but I have always found the most potent & moving ceremonies to be those that include an element of surprise -- something unexpected that breaks the participants out of their hum drum & presses at their imaginations. I know for certain that I already mentioned the importance of aesthetic in ceremony. This is where the Offering Art Bowls came in; to bring another layer (in concert with costuming, music & dance) of wonder & beauty to the ceremony, as well as to channel the energies of the artists who created them.

We asked eight different artist friends (professional, amateur & students) from various ends of the Earth to participate in this event through their own personal rendering of Passion. Eight wooden bowls cast off into creative, caring hands. Eight wooden bowls to return in their own time, but yet still in time for the Summer Solstice. 

In a phone conversation, one of the artists, also something of an animist, mentioned that he felt that these bowls being together for this final time, each complete in itself & yet also being part of a collective was the ultimate Offering. Because this was their final gathering, never to be together again as a Whole, the Offering was even more potent, perhaps even more of a sacrifice. 

And it is true, the Bowls gathered together again, only for this ceremony & were then auctioned off to support another ceremony someday in the future when someone else has a Vision -- a sacrifice. I have to concur, it was difficult to see them part ways, they were a beautiful Whole:

Animas Ceremony: Offering Art Bowls

What pleased us as much as seeing all these Bowls return & show their diverse images of Passion was the comments from the artists who all unanimously expressed a gratitude for being asked to participate in the process. Some said they were grateful for an inspiration or motivation to get back to to making art. Some, more often the professional artists, expressed a gratitude for the process of considering the nature of Passion & the ideas, discussions & internal dialogue that this provoked. Gratitude for Offering, a cyclical reciprocity -- this is what really works.

I could go on & on about the various parallels & divergences of the Bowls, or about what I expected & what actually was, but that, I think, is best left for each individual observer. So, instead, I will simply present the Bowls, (in no particular order) as individuals & a Whole. (The artists, including their artist's statements, will be discussed at length in part 5b.)

Untitled, Joanne Harnagel.
Decoupage, acrylic, wood.

✻✻✻✻✻

Manifesting, by Alica Wolter-Hausser.
Wood, watercolour.

✻✻✻✻✻

Passion for Life, HPS CC
Wood, gesso, acrylic.

✻✻✻✻✻

Passion for flowers, Summer of love, Susan Shaftan Perrin

Wood, raw pigments mixed with linseed oil and copal varnish, shellac.

 

 ✻✻✻✻✻

Bowly, Bryan Perrin.

Wood, Gold & Silver leaf & Shellac and Acrylic.

✻✻✻✻✻

Within the Green, Lee Harrington
Wood, gesso, acrylic.

✻✻✻✻✻

Rapture, Moma Fauna.

Wood, gesso, paper & etc. decoupage, acrylic.

✻✻✻✻✻

Poppy, Anna Nelson.
Wood, acrylic, laquer, dreams.

✻✻✻✻✻

Animas Ceremony: Offering Art Bowls

Art makes everything better.

What He Said. (About Magic.)

"The experiences of youth are more relevant, more supportive of the Magic that We share today than Ancient Belief, Popular Occult Fantasy, or Fragmentary Post pagan Secularists and Social Media." -- Bryan Perrin

*Swoon.*

Yes! Keep speaking our truth my brother.

I Aways Come Back to You & Your Woo...

June 24th, afternoon.

I am wandering with the wee folk, collecting wild rose (Rosa aciculariso or R. nutkanapetals) for a rose petal vinaigrette. 
Maybe some dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) leaves for a dandelion mustard.
I stop in a clearing between some birch (Betula neoalaskana) and black spruce (Picea mariana) because both boys want to pee.

And then I feel it.
I look about. There must be something, someone here...  But I don't find the source of this energy, this dizzying woo, this psycho-spiritual play on the body which cannot be described but only experienced.

I see nothing of note. Where are you?

Then I abandon the search when the Changeling begins to get radical with his clothing removal, figuring I might have been having a false alarm. After all, it is quite early in the season & it has been very dry...

As I am tackling the wee one in the duff, attempting to save his naked flesh from the flocks of mosquitos clamouring to get at his tiny bottom, I hear our eldest gasp & shout from behind me:

O...
M...
G...

OMG!

We both turn & scramble to him. The spot where the Little Lad is now hovering, clutching his camera, is the precise spot where I had been standing.

Two tiny, precious little slimes, hidden in the shadows of the strong, slanted sunlight popped into view with the gesture of his finger. 

Wolf's Milk Slime (Lycogala epidendrum)

I was standing on that log. Had I not been so still, I might have trampled them. In all that scanning the micro-landscape, I hadn't thought to look down at my feet.

Wolf's Milk Slime (Lycogala epidendrum)

And this might seem inconsequential to most humans, probably nearly all humans... but for the humans who find themselves entangled with me & this slime, this encounter speaks volumes about connections complex & inexplicable.

Living Animism: Teeny Tiny Artist & Muse

Mosaic by Teeny, Tiny Artist "Unknown."

Who are the persons in your neighborhood?

I have little interest in continuing the argument with my overly stubborn, temperamental, po-dunk modem & the hiatus from the digital world feels particularly nice right now. Besides, it gives me more time outside & the High Desert seems to have a great deal more to share/teach me than all those strands of data & disembodied voices in the ether...

Many teachers & muses linger about out there in the heat. Whenever I crawl out of my climate controlled cave & face the oven outside, I am rewarded for my initiative. Or something. Sometimes, they are inside too... but I will address that dubious dynamic in the near future. Over all, indoors or outdoors, this time 'round, the majority of the other-than-human persona I meet seem to be quite small. 

Here I begin what I hope will become a series of brief anecdotes about the persons in my neighborhood. I shall start with that of an exceptionally talented & enigmatic creature -- a mystery mini-muse.

Days ago, while hanging laundry on the line, I spied the micro-mosaic work of a really Wee One which led to some creative ideas about crafting, landscaping & also prompted (in part) a lengthy & very pleasant conversation with a clever & talented human person whom I also consider something of a personal muse. What a breathtaking assemblage! What meticulous placement! I do not know the identity of the Wee One who so thoughtfully, skillfully & carefully created this diminutive work of art (though I could toss a guess in the direction of the Mud Dauber clan). The scientists in my life are quite excited about it, as they have never seen anything quite like it -- particularly, something so small. Of course,  I love the smalls, the denizens of the macro world, the Wee Ones & this was a joyful gift of inspiration. Also a mystery. I do love a mystery... Who lies within? 

Could it be that part of the lesson, the mystery & awe of it resides in the not knowing?