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

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

Susan. Mother, Artist, Educator, Organizer, etc.
But It's what I cannot put to words that really matters.

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.


Susan Shaftan Perrin: Mother, Artist, Educator, Organizer for Our Whole Protogrove, ADF
UrthArts Center of Nature, Creativity and Spirit

Susan Shaftan Perrin is a multi-media artist working primarily in ceramics, making functional art pottery. She also writes, paints canvases and murals, photographs and creates mixed media sculpture. Susan earned her BA in Creative Expression from Empire State College and studied traditional pottery in Japan.

Susan has a special fondness for using a low-fired porcelain clay. With this, she hand builds her ceramic creations, decorating them with a watercolor and crayon technique and finishing them with metallic glaze on the exterior. Inspired by nature, her work is beautiful to look at, hold and use.

Susan founded and directed the O Roe Electric Art Space in Hoboken, NJ (described by the New York Times as a “unique cultural institution”). In cooperation with her husband she established UrthArts Center, a nature and arts school in Samsonville, NY, which has provided 10 years of small classes and intergenerational art workshops. She has taught art to children of all ages for more than 25 years and believes in the simple joys of color.

Artbowls by Susan Perrin.

Susan is also Director of Balanced Consulting, a financial consulting firm in New York where she directs positive growth by supporting the needs and abilities of small businesses, schools, non-profits, and other organizations.
Susan is currently Grove Organizer for Our Whole Protogrove in Samsonville, New York. As sacred storyteller, she maintains the grove’s website, our Whole Grove. In this very intimate, deeply spiritual virtual journal, Susan has chronicled seven years of rituals and memories, as well as the sadness and hilarity of life, family and worship.

To learn more about UrthArts Center, please visit: http://www.urtharts.com 

To see more of Susan Perrin’s ceramic creations, visit her Artbowls Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/Artbowls

“Passion for flowers, summer of love” a/k/a “flowers and hands and sky”
by Susan Perrin.

Multi-Media: Wood, raw pigments mixed with linseed oil and copal varnish, shellac 

About this piece:

Painting about passion and painting as passion. Art as gifts, sacred bowls for sharing.

I love colors and flowers most of all.

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.

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

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

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Passion for flowers, Summer of love, Susan Shaftan Perrin

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

 

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Bowly, Bryan Perrin.

Wood, Gold & Silver leaf & Shellac and Acrylic.

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

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Rapture, Moma Fauna.

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

✻✻✻✻✻

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

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Animas Ceremony: Offering Art Bowls

Art makes everything better.

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.

For OWG. When The Dots Continue to Connect...

...I become less & less convinced that coincidence is a common occurrence.

I arrived home from an early morning appointment with Dr. Specialist (Funny how one moment the sky is falling, then next, not so much.). I was thinking about these people, so I stole a moment to scroll through my reading list to see what I will be missing today. I stop short when I see this guy:

Bryan Perrin of Our Whole Grove.

My dear friend, I didn't know you were such a rockstar.*

I must recommend the article that accompanies this image (especially to the Druids in my neighborhood). Heather Awen's words today actually got me to pin down The Changeling long enough to read the entire thing. Most of her sentiments have been stated before in her blog, but today she puts it all together very succinctly, condensing & clarifying her thoughts -- many of which I share. Ha, now I understand why.

Adventures in Animism: How to Make Ancestral & Bioregional Religions ReUnite

Now, pin down your distractions & go read... the whole thing.


*Not that I am surprised.