Freud’s Psychic Aparatus

Freud’s Psychic Aparatus #1

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She who is I- series

Same stream twice  #50 2007

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She who is I #2 2000

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“And even the least attentive fall silent…”  John Ashberry

alembic lessons 2006

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Apology for wonder #1

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Life itself is wonder. As long as you live,

live in awe. And remember, some days are bright,

others are dark, and both are life’s shadow play.

Make no snare for the light; there is no salvation

in holding on. Make no drama of the dark;  there is

no reward for suffering. Rather, embrace each as it is,

knowing that true joy resides in serving each moment in peace.

The Reb

Caverns of Creation 2000

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Return From Hiatus-paintings & aphorisms

Assisi Butterfly Silence#6

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Ah the wars they will

be fought again

The holy dove

She will be caught again

bought and sold and bought again

the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

(Leonard Cohen)

detail Assisi Butterfly Silence

“We do not know the past in chronological sequence. It may be convenient to lay it out anesthetized on the table with dates pasted on here and there, but what we know we know by ripples and spirals eddying out from us and from our own time.”  Ezra Pound

Spiripple #10

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“Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.” Albert Schweitzer

Assisi Butterfly Silence#2

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“Because I am free, unconditioned, whole — not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal — I desire those, who seek to understand me to be free; not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears — from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself. As an artist paints a picture because he takes delight in that painting, because it is his self-expression, his glory, his well-being, so I do this and not because I want anything from anyone.

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I Love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market, it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something — and it is only such love that can know freedom.”  Jiddu Krishnamurti

Assisi Butterfly Silence 1 the pilgrimage

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“Everyone is wise until he speaks.”  Irish Saying

“Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.” ?

butterfly house#1

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“One must care about a world one will not see.”  Bertrand Russell

“It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before… to test your limits… to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”  Anaïs Nin.

Emerald City

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~deconstructing evil is only part of the answer~

“The reality of evil is a well -kept secret, guarded by the dark forces themselves; for they thrive on concealment. In contrast, the forces of light wish always to be known.  The power of light increases as it is brought to  consciousness.  Darkness loses its power when revealed, for we are then able to see it in action, recognize its purpose, and employ it so that it no longer employs us”. PJ, MP

“Evil is not a Power, it is an Experience”

C.G.Jung

“If all the trees were scribes and all the branches pens,

and if all hills were books and all waters ink, they could not

give a sufficient description of the sorrow which Lucifer has

brought into this place.”

Jacob Boehme

Aurora

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied,  real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren,

boring.  Imaginary good is boring;  real good is always new,  marvelous, intoxicating.”

Simone Weil

“Tell the truth and shame the devil”- English

letters to my community

Copyright Karos 2008 all rights reserved

Copyright Karos 2008 all rights reserved

early work of the 90′s joel peter witkin

Las Meninas, New Mexico, From “Twelve Photographs, 1993″

Accession Number: 1994:131.f

Artist: Witkin, Joel-Peter

Date: 1987, book 1993

Medium: Photogravure

Dimensions:

Credit Line: Gift of James J. Brennan, Brennan Steel

April 25 Review: Photography of Siegfried Halus: A Retrospective

(click on pic)

The Body Across Time: an exhibition of Photography by Siegfried Halus

“clearly ritualistic-a word signifying a drama so ancient we no longer recall its narrative, only its form” Frederick Turner

Frederick Turner writes about Siegfried Halus as if this is the “form” of the ancient mysteries. You can try to pull that off for purposes of elevating or inflating what’s at best fair, or in conformity with, though many people do know what those mysteries were about, and this, is not the form or narrative of recollection.

The Body Across Time:  an exhibition of Photography by Sigfried Halus, is the Americana Male interpretation of the Ancient Mysteries, reminiscent of  Neandrathal consciousness, and, a far cry from what is referenced here.  Yes, once in a great while, a blatant example, to pick a bone with, that which with regular absorption, could render Postmodern Feminism obsolete. With interest in preserving critical thought, very much worth a while to write about, and try a hand at interpretation of what is common sensing with a twist.  This is not about male bashing, on the contrary, in certain areas try to console with humor,  while seriously critiquing a show that saw many a confused viewer and called to me for deeper analysis.   Find myself rarely reacting to a show in this manner, so personally it provided an opportunity to find out what was underneath that reaction, and so this is an appraisal that asks for candor.

If this was Halus’ idea, to deconstruct the male gaze, then it was successful. However, where’s the critique?…More importanly, where is the gaze?    More-so, see a participation and lack of awareness about those very ideas of subject,  object, spectacle.  Is it the distinct purpose for all to become red meat in little packages of mystery?!   The idea left with after this show, is participation in the perception of the Ancient Mysteries, of Today, while still not knowing what they are.

When i was able to look beyond the surface, which was rare, said to myself; “where’s the TV, wheres the football game?”   The Ancient Mysteries are not Roman, they are much earlier and much more subtle.  The Mysteries are living Mythologies, and are Greek, all Greek;  and the Romans, turned it into a Colosseum of blood, gore, violence, that we are still grappling with to this day in reality, fantasy, our many entertainments from reality, and Film.  This is a male interpretation of the mysteries from the outside surface, or being locked out, at best, play with external stereotype, not from the inside, or content orientated.  Not an inside-outside dialogue or investigation, but an outside-outside play with superficial forms.  These are the stereotypes that mask themselves with authentic quotation, so few ever mention the apparent contradictions.  Also observed a confused local college crowd trying to get it, and that in itself, worthy of mention.  Titles might have helped guide the audience toward some form of semblance.

There are a few artists that come to mind when trying to grapple with this show, and the fact that i could not/would not enter and participate in the images.  Firstly, the early work (1990′s) of Joel Peter-Witkin, and Secondly, Robert Maplethorpe.

In the show of Siegfried Halus,  don’t see anything original,  I see pastiche. A gathering of popular fragments, well done.  Many things are well done, though in my opinion Halus has not passed the Aesthetic hurdles that would put it into the context of a Work of Art that strikes what end up being personal chords of Aesthetic Truths.  What ultimately write about are my own configurations of Aesthetic Truths sprinkled with theoretical ideas that run the rail of Philosophy and/of Art, and inhabit my own artistic practice as questions.  The shiny buffed bodies, have nothing to do with mystery, they are stylized males ala Maplethorpe.  Shiny surfaces of bodies that are a metaphor for the entire show, the “men are from mars” paradigm, do not touch, do not feel in the guise of touching…only the “me me me” male identity, do not explore, while exploring…many polarities, though quite unresolved, was my immediate reaction.  Took copious notes for a required Contemporary Art Seminar, distancing and even protecting me further from a work that offended me on several levels.  There are polarities here, though, could not quite fill in the gap of my own querry,  the sarcasm, the TV hyperreal juxtaposed with animal hide.  Could not wait to get out of the room, and a feeling of claustrophobia ensued; voices that get set off and say, don’t ask me to look at that, i would rather go sit at my favorite Neandrethal house during football season.  During intermission we can pose for photographs in the back yard~ Thats what this show felt like. At first, thought there were four different photographers, but ended up learning about four different phases of the artists development.

For the most part it is particpartion in the very problem of consciousness, and there is a space there…a space that does not ask questions, just boldly accepts the reality as Fredrich Turner does without questioning it.  Add a few “Mystery” buzz words and there you have the mysteries.  Was taken aback and immediately  leary of these surfaces, is this supposed to be depth?  Is this supposed to be informed?

To look deeply into those artistic concerns;  particpates in distortion and hypocrisy in ways that are just that, hypocritical.  Found the images too literal,  the staging comes off as contrived. The mysteries are so much more subtle, more associative, a step removed in the abstract sense.  This is a bull in a china shop interpretation of the mysteries that make me, the viewer feel ouch, don’t go there, i might get hurt, a looking that makes me hurt.  The mysteries are a guide to spiritual enlightenment and rebirth to seekers on a path to solving their own equations or wholeness matters.  If art is a guide to the sacred significance of life, with particular emphasis upon spiritual realms, would not want this Artist as a guide.  It smacks of the spiritual tourist who is busier snapping his shutter than transforming himself in the process of that snapping.  The Artist who seeks peak to peak mountain experiences like a drug, but does not want to go through the process of scaling the mountain…So, it ends up being a simulation of his own, without any transcendence, only the simulated kind, leaving me the viewer with a disagreeable afterimage– along with insincere and inauthentic ideas about experience.  Its not the real thing, but does it pretend to be?  Space.

This is a simulation of the mysteries, if thats what he was trying to do, then yes, he did a simulation  with lots of room to critique himself, title his works, but did not.  Can only think here that Imagination is not in service to the idea, imagination that does not listen to what his subject has to say, but superimposes his own immaturity, so imagination is in service to a distortion of elemental terms. It is reminiscent of what could be described as a Freudian and Jungian Unconsciousness, loaded with slips and defenses, that have no real capictiy to be anything more than a surface simulation/stimulation.  Such a local inflamation, that goes back and does the same thing again and again, only with different male fantasies that ultimately end in violence;  hyperreal expectations of meaning, leading to the trap door- cave of ignorance….it does no real articulation with the realms it claims to be about, and is in service to unconcious consumer violence and unconscious schizophrenia our very time is riddled with.

The mysteries are mysterious, they are subtle; he turns those sacred things into spectator commodities. He’s got all the buzz images of his era-capturing time, thats what it feels like…Time Captured…it feels Roman, where Joel Peter Witikin feels Greek, subtle alchemy, transformative, and considers all its polarities very carefully guiding the viewer to real epiphonies.   In contrast,  don’t think Halus’ shutter releases are authentic or genuine, and lead the viewer into a gaze which is mired in history as original sin and other hypocrisies.  So is it sarcastic about or participating in, what are the terms of the artist and this work?

As not a single artist who lived during Picassos time could get out from under the shadow of what he was accomplishing in the viewers consciousness, so it goes with the Master of the arranged spectacle of the mysterious and macabre, Joel Peter Witkin.  Arranged spectacles of the mysterious and macabre, yes. If there were no JPW then just might have reacted differently to this show.  There is no artist who can tend to my being as veiewer better, the evanescent folds and layers of consciousness are exercised and flowing dynamically.  Intention, tending my eyes so gently, encountering the bizarre aspects of our own tortured humanity with all the panache, angst, humor, addressing distortion and hypocracy of our own consciousness, unfolding…opposites, so gently taking on the contradicitions, the grotesquly beautiful, than Joel Peter Witikin.  He would be on my top ten list with Andre Seranno on artistic visual and philosophical levels of sublime photography. They have become standards that few photographers ever reach.  A standard for me, aesthetically true in my opinion on  so many of the levels that art can speak, and then some.  It is conscious of itself, self conscious where the viewer is left with thier own purity of conscience by witnessing the apotheosis and becoming an unforgetable part of it.

In vivid contrast, this show, felt a bull in a chinashop with sensitive material…Too many shocking contrasts without resolving them, patterns of tonality that are like chalkboard and fingernail to a viewer, As the Romans turned the Greek into handicraft and shallow surface ornament, So Halus is a Roman version of Joel Peter Witkin, turning the very mysteries into controlled, packaged commodities.

Visually potent material can knock you over, or it can be numbing, agitating, evoking all sorts of feelings if you examine the confusion, and feel the impact of such images in extreme conditions of humanity.  And so i compare- potent visual themes such as orgiastic mystery, gothic tensions and strands that are staged with those very ideas in mind.  However, wherever i entered, felt aggitated visually. If i were to sit in a Jungian chair, i would say that he’s slamming the male Archetype, and on a continuium, he is way over to that side of the matter, and nothing to counter balance those tensions.  To see a retrospective, knowing nothing about the show prior,  felt four different artists.  I did not see what wound through, almost like jumping from one apotheiosis to the next, but not going through the detailed processing and alchemy necessary to reach true apeotheosis which is both male and female, dark and light, abstract, representational…is all such a delicate balance, and  found insincerity in that.

Also felt a hyperrealist spiritual tourist in search of ecstacy and does not want to go through the trouble of its disappointment, and whenever there’s a challenge, skip it and go to the next orchestration of chaotic cacophany.  Wheres the silence in between the leaves?   I felt offended entering the picture.  I felt assailed in my own truths about what is mysterious.  It feels like the K-Mart version of Joel Peter Witikin where you can feel the high degree of respect and love for his subject matter, mixed with objectivity, takes over the pictoral presence for a moment during that shutter release.  This is the real excorcizing of demons where with Siegfried,  felt a contrived taking on of demons.  Where Joel Peter Witkin went far and wide for his subject to the end of the earth if he had to, this guy feels like he used his friends in his own back yard.  There are no tricks to the viewer…it all comes out in the wash, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, water always seeks its level.  It feels like-i would have much rather been in the meat department of the supermarket looking at pictures of Steaks in cellophane.  It is the picture to me of the consumer of mysteries.  So much more surface than deep content.

Out my own arrogance, it is of great importance to learn from my tastes, and equally important to pay attention to what my likes and dislikes are.  That what i do not like is very instructive in so many ways, even more than my preferred tastes,  is a teacher.

Usually go to Retrospectives with anticipation, with artists have known over an entire career.  Because i had to go to this show as a requirement for a Seminar about Contemporary Art in Santa Fe,  think that a retrospective gives a larger view that in this particular instance, would have liked not to see.   If i saw one photograph or even two, i might be able to understand, digest, enter this work, and be able to see all its terms and images.  I couldn’t do that, my eye wanted to turn away and go see anything, a blank starecase, an impatient anything but that.  That which i could not look at squarely because an instinctual fear, something like getting smacked by a contentious male, in this case, energy;  that stereotype which i speak out of my vague shallow knowing of this artist, that projection, is the same he has done with his subject matter…Projection.   In addition, somewhere theres a “why bother”… photos are good, why push the envelope and inform.  Male intuition of this sort easily turns into a Knight with a sword.  I distinctly percieve the swords all over the place next to the soft and fragile human bodies that we are…i feel a Seneca quote coming on…Play with the material “play that you may be serious”  He never goes beyond the play stage and serious is when you actually care about your viewer and your work enough to spend the time on thinking of a title.

karos May 2008

copyright 2008 all rights reserved

butterfly

copyright 2008 karos all rights reserved

Re-Imaging the Ancient Alphabet

copyright 2008 karos

Above:  Blessing # 5

Re-imaging the Hebrew Alphabet, The Scroll of the High Priestess,  are only some of the working titles to the Painted Scrolls and Drawings in images,  have been in pursuit of for several years.

Combining two bodies of knowledge running parallel, that each of the 22 Letters in the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet correspond to the 22 Major Aracana of the Tarot; also an Ancient Divinatory System.  Done first in Black and White and shades of Gray, then Color, Created many variations and forms. For example, above, in a fragment of the first scroll, actually one inch of the first 40 inch scroll, the fifth letter is Vav which in Hebrew means nail or to connect.  In the Tarot, it is the fifth card which is the Hierophant or High Preist, referring to belief system and how we connect to systems and/or authority.

In the Tarot, the 2nd Card, the High Preistess influenced by Moon, holds a scroll, and have often wondered what it would be… what did her scroll say and how did she percieve it?

Perceived that it was not a Torah, as is often a distortion,  it was elemental, and more fluid.  It was the very alphabet and creation itself in the flux that it is. Alphabets, and their various forms and historical evolutions, have always been an area of contemplation. As I began musing about what this Tarot Wise woman was envisioning, holding the scroll on her lap, was most intrigued by her depth of intuition and her ability to look deeply in microcosm and macrocosm, being both simetaneously.

The High Preistess, by holding a blueprint such as the Alphabet,  explains to me how she contemplates within the matrix.  Re-visioning the Creation of the Hebrew Alphabet and how it has many layers of Story, Mythology, Allegory, Metaphor, Allusion, Symbol, corresponding to different forms and shapes, all for particular reasons, seemed to speak on its own accord, as a biproduct of contemplation.  It has been a process of informing my intuiton with such texts as Inner Space, a contemplative text by Areyeh Kaplan about The YHVH-Tetragramaton that the piece below, Fools World congealed.

The Hebrew Alphabet, or in Mysticism, the Aleph-Beit, each letter is a path of the Kabbalah and also an Arcana of the Tarot.  I began with contemplative drawings of the Forms of the Letters, then informed them with ideas about Tarot, Astrology and Numerology which have parallel correlations of meaning systems, and evoke particular images consistently. It was also interesting to note over time how they took on different qualities and ideas.

The scrolls over a long period began to become abstracted into pictures with forms combining their meanings.  The first four Letters in one of the scrolls became Fools World below, and also had Four layers descending and ascending to create a four tiered mountain, and goes along with a significant painting done earlier called Microcosmic Mountain. What I consider to be a livey epic of the four dimensions of YHVH.

Below: Fools World

This seems to be the promotional Poster/Print to the scroll, representing the spirit of the journey in vast territories of visionary experience. This piece actually happened when i was playing with individual letters from the scroll.

In my apprehension about putting the entire scroll on the web, began playing around nervously looking for an answer, a way to represent the gist of it.  In trying to consolidate, the opposite expansion happened.  It started projecting itself into a macrocosm, became larger; forms called out to complete themselves, one face beget another… Even symmetry, longing for its other half cried out. Often symmetry just doesn’t fully work on a dynamic level.  This joined together instantly and no doubt, belonged together. Indulging in all the voices took me to a few hundred offshoots of this piece, a few can be viewed here.  They are individual monoprints mingling hand and computer.

Slide Show http://journeytokairos.org/art.php

Part II

The first Four letters turned into symmetrical tarot mirrors and four levels in a cavernous space that took on a very specific meaning of the four levels of Pardes, the garden of meaning making.   My alphabets do that in singular scroll images, one image connecting to another, in sequence.  This was four letters.  An expression during this time has been, “how far can each image go?…  Push it to the furthest edge”, an enveloping yes…To follow its course and voice, to see what its saying, hindsight is different than forsight.  Images form larger wholes looking back.  Forward, it is small, very small and visually sequencing from black and white into color, with various special effects, and always take note as to how it affects the narrative, and where its going; forward.  To follow what it is saying to me, sometimes feel like a stenographer.  Each picture becomes a solid structure in and of itself that could stand alone, as stopping station on the way to another image.  Poetic yes.

It was Actual transformation into other levels of meaning, into semiotic structures and fields of inquiry that continue a long harangue into the mansions of Philosopy and Art.  At some point in there, and its always different, it becomes Divination and Prophecy. The order and sequencing shift from an area of fixed meaning to an order that is intuitively felt in the process of seing.   So these are my explorations, this is what my work is here to do.  As i realize i have already done it, see that art is very much like science in that if you can’t repeat it, it does not exist…i.e. theoretically.  For several reasons other than theoretical, picture making and all its lives and offshoots, represent an animated universe which needs me in it.  Thats love, thats all.

Imagery:  Ongoing explaination

Giant apples in the path of the back, read right to left.  Here, apples are mountains and conflated in that space is Meru Foundation modeling idea of Apple. Early on, Apple became a symbol for me on my journey, a great inspiration and influence that began with Paul Cezanne’s Apples, seing a mountain in one of his famous Apples, while at The Art Institute of Chicago.  It was really so much earlier, that outside my bedroom window, while growing up, there was an apple tree with little green apples.  On my mothers dresser was a small statuesque tree with 6 pictures, each family member, each of us, dangling in a circular little frame, as Apple.

A point of departure first when seing an apple and its seed to be both macrocosm and microcosm.  The five points of a star at bottom and all the other sacred geometry commentary on apples, became mountains.

In fact for years this work has contained many fragments gathered intuitively that i found crystalized and connected in a similar way to the work of the Meru Foundation.  Train of thought has become symbolized by that Apple because it gave me a great sense of wholeness, a feeling of my own aesthetic truths about Alphabet and Tarot, being realized and echoed somewhere else in a cogent way.  Have some writing to look back on when i was going through his work that will dig up in the near future…TBC.

Essentially this is a commentary on the four letters, about three inches of the scroll that have combined in a variety of ways and several dimensions. It is also the idea of seing the journey from an objective birds-eye place, a whole, as a live cosmic mountain containing little stopping stations of meaning along the way, articulating different areas and distances.  At the time, they were not so little.  New perspectives emerge, and say, onward.

This is a commentary on the four letters, about three to four inches of the scroll that have combined in a variety of ways and several dimensions.  It is also the idea of seing the journey as part of a cosmic mountain, with all sorts of labyrinthian caves as well as the first four letters in different states of creation on a continuium from birth to death.  The first four stations of the Alphabet, as each letter is animated, has a specific purpose, form and function, a life of its own. As we know, the Letters Combined, into words, and sentences, another layer of meaning and narrative possibility.  It is a taking hieroglyphics into another level, with each letter an image.

In short, See Divination and Prophecy as part of an art of seing and comprehension that is interpreted in a mutivalent diaphanous Universe through Images. Fools-the journey and journeyer… World-living in the destination, in a new time of Kairos, Chronos~Kairosis. This perspective is a place of arrival, but already, far into the next narrative.

KaRa

Good quote about the fool…

A fool may be known by 6 things

Anger without cause

Speech without profit

change without progress

inquiry without object

putting trust in strangers

mistaking foes for friends

Arabian Proverb

copyright 2008 karos

This series, printed on on Canvas

and paper,  Giclee in Large sizes and a small print of 12 x 17 with

an Indigo. There are several scrolls and versions of these works in various degrees of

transmutation.

All of my work has a B&W version, which can be a different kind of seing.

Inquire: karaorlove@gmail.com

Official Definitions of Kairos~Kairosis

Kairos

image:  Francesco Salviati        

 Kairos (καιρός)

is an Ancient Greek meaning the “right or opportune moment”. The ancient Greeks had two words for time,chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies “a time in between”, a moment of undetermined period of time in which “something” special happens. What the special something is depends on who is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.

In Theology

 

The term ”kairos” is used in theology to describe the qualitative form of time. In Rehetoric kairos is “a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved.”In the New Testament kairos means “the appointed time in the purpose of God”, the time when God acts (e.g. Mark 1.15, the kairos is fulfilled). It differs from the more usual word for time which is chronos (kronos).

 

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, before the Divine Liturgy begins, the Deacon exclaims to the Preist:   “Kairos tou poiesai to Kyrio” (“It is time [kairos] for the Lord to act”); indicating that the time of the Liturgy is an intersection with Eternity.

Miscellaneous

Kairos time is usually perceived as a time of crisis. The Chinese character for “crisis” is often claimed to be a combination of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity”, although this is not actually true.  With this in mind, one has a possibility of participating in a “new creation” One has the choice of danger or opportunity, a chance to build something new out of the old. Kairos time bridges the tearing down of the “old way” with the building of a “new way.”

 

In Trogir (the ancient Roman Tragurium), Croatia, in the Convent of the Benedictine Nuns, was displayed a marble bas-relief of Kairos from the 3rd century B.C., a naked young man, running. The bas-relief is now kept at the Municipal Museum of Trogir. According to ancient Greeks, Kairos was the god of the “fleeting moment,” “a favorable opportunity opposing the fate of man.” The moment must be grasped (by the tuft of hair on the forehead of the fleeing figure); otherwise the moment is gone and can not be re-captured (shown by the back of head being bald.) A bronze statue known in literature and made by the famous Greek sculptor Lysippos from Sikyon was probably the model for the bas relief. Kairos is described in the verses of the poet Poseidippos. The original bronze allegoric statue made by Lysippos stood at his home, in the Agora of Hellenistic Sikyon, and the following epigram by Poseidippos was carved on the statue of Kairos:

 

“Who and whence was the sculptor? From Sikyon.And his name? Lysippos.And who are you? Time who subdues all things.Why do you stand on tip-toe? I am ever running.And why you have a pair of wings on your feet? I fly with the wind.And why do you hold a razor in your right hand? As a sign to men that I am sharper than any sharp edge.And why does your hair hang over your face? For him who meets me to take me by the forelock.And why, in Heaven’s name, is the back of your head bald? Because none whom I have once raced by on my winged feet will now, though he wishes it sore, take hold of me from behind.  Why did the artist fashion you? For your sake, stranger, and he set me up in the porch as a lesson”.

 

 

The theme of Kairos was felt as extremely important during the Middle Ages.  Carmina Burana 16,  a famous poem about Fortune, mentions Kairos in this way: “verum est quod legitur, fronte capillata, sed plerumque sequitur occasio calvata”; which means “it is true what is read, that Occasio has the forehead with hair, but that almost always she passes being bald”. Several representations of Kairos survive; a relief (about 160 C.E.) is kept at the Museum of Antiquities of Turin (Italy); another relief was kept (now lost) at Palazzo Medici in Florence; an onyx gem (ex Blacas Collection, I-II century C.E.) with an incision of the god Tempus with attributes of Kairos is kept at the British Museum; a marble relief showing Kairos, Bios (the Life), and Metanoia (Afterthought, the female Latin Paenitentia) is in the cathedral of Torcello (XI century C.E.); a monochrome fresco by Mantegna at Palazzo Ducale in Mantua (about 1510 C.E.) shows a female Kairos (most probably Occasio) with a young man trying to catch her and a woman representing Paenitentia.

 

A concept similar to Kairos is that behind the famous motto carp diem  and a sort of recurrence in the idea of Kairos is linked with the theme of the Wheel of Fortune which continuously rotates; in fact the Greek words used by Poseidippos to describe the Kairos (in the verse “I am ever running”) are “aeì trochào” which literally mean “I always rotate”, and the verb itself is the same used by the poet and astronomer Aratus (Phaenomena, 227, 309) to pinpoint the eternal motion of the celestial spheres. It is not by chance that in Carmina Burana 17 the Fortune is associated to an ever-rotating wheel Tibullus himself described the Fortune with a wheel: “Versatur celeri Fors levis orbe rotae”, I, 5, 70).

 

In rhetoric

Kairos was central to the Sophists who stressed the rhetor’s ability to adapt to and take advantage of changing, contingent circumstances. In Panathenaicus, Isocrates writes that educated people are those “who manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day, and who possess a judgment which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely misses the expedient course of action”.

 

Kairos is also very important in Aristotle’s scheme of rhetoric. Kairos is, for Aristotle, the time and space context in which the proof will be delivered. Kairos stands alongside other contextual elements of rhetoric: The Audience which is the psychological and emotional makeup of those who will receive the proof; and, To Prepon which is the style with which the orator clothes their proof.

 

Kairosis-in the field of literary aeshtetics

 

Kairosis is the literary effect of fulfillment in time. This effect is normally associated with the epic/novel of literature, and can be understood by the analogy as “catharsis”  is to the dramatic, so kairosis is to the epic/novel.

 

Kairosis is the feeling of integration experienced by the reader of the novel or epic form; it is experienced by the reader as the central protagonist’s character and characterisation faces crisis and resolves itself into an explored and integrated personality. This typically occurs by challenging unique and interesting characters with typical and stereotyped actions that are generally applicable to all people., the reader experiences kairosis as a character reaches a moment of synthesis that embodies the previous dialectical contradictions.

 

Kairosis is experienced by the reader of the modern novel when the character reaches a moment of psychological integration in time.

 

 Wikipedia 

 

Ibis

copyright 2008 karos

 

ibis-ibis |ˈībis|noun ( pl. ibises )a large wading bird with a long down-curved bill, long neck, and long legs. • Family Threskiornithidae: several genera and species, including the sacred ibis and white ibis.ORIGIN late Middle English : via Latin from Greek.

TheOrb: Seasons on a Lucid Boat

~Artist Launching~Sept. 18 08~

copyright 2008 karos

The-Orb Seasons on a Lucid Boat #4 in blue

A Gallery/Storefront:  in the midst of construction and will be completed in the near future.  Working through first drafts,  editing, and  a work in progress here creating order.

If interested in Fine Art Purchase,  or would like to find out more about  Tarot & Image Mediumship Readings, contact: karaorlove@gmail.com

In the meantime, thank you for stopping by what has been an ongoing process

of working a blog and website.  Would enjoy your feedback and will respond.

Original Paintings

Oil & Acrylic

The Fine Art of Printing

Giclee: Canvas & Paper:

Monoprints/Editions Custom Printing upon Request

Stay tuned for  Virtual

Gallery/ Portfolio &  Prints

(sheesh, these things seem to take forever!!)

Kairos aka Kara

THE WAY IT IS-William Stafford

THE WAY IT IS

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

- William Stafford

Origin/Seeds/Elements/Antecedents

Detail Exquisite Crone Series

-Imago Reflection-

copyright 2008 karos

There are several of these with a variation of colors and forms  for which this is a detail. For myself, the work is descriptive of an Exquisite Corpse-an untame visual and literary Collage Technique coined by the Surrealists…Highlighting a group of people with their own unique song, where someone visually responds to, but does not copy or do anything to the integrity of the image before. The Exquisite Corpse reads like one long chain of images, on a visual level.  On the written level Exquisite Corpse is wild, with many twists and turns.   I see the linking one work to the next in one long scroll as quest to describe a unique vision, after a set of lenses thrust upon me, became a Perennial Road Less Traveled.

While educating my imagination, the material became a Thesis without conclusion. Practicing the order of that Thesis, is part of my purpose here, to articulate an order to things, aspects of life as a Work of Art, about an Aesthetic Sensibility unfolding in time and then living it again while organizing it.

Each picture is a stopping station, a construction of the present moment rooted in patterns revealed in time.  After almost 30 years, it became a house where every image has its place with a solid foundation inspired by Studies in areas of Aesthetic Contemplation and the Humanities.   In a real sense, my work could read as one long scroll sequencing a quest, in areas of the Collective Unconscious…From the Great Sea Outward. Early on,  coined this time of vision, Dream/Fast, in a long Epic Graffiti poem that will be part of the archives in time to come.

-synchronicity-

copyright 2008 karos

Every piece has its origin/source, each fits somewhere in a long scroll of life, yet each piece likes to stand alone as a unique event and work of art transcending, suspending, animating, something familiar yet mysterious. The “it looks like” is the very thing to hear… A calling and invitation for the making of meaning with contemplation and insight;  Animating  a panorama of what has been thrust in front of me in time.

To make meaning without it being strictly assigned, is to project ones own template of experience, ones own freedom to find connection, each in ones own unique way. To contemplate the window into the unconscious, its vastness, its absoulte truths found there, is to say yes:  To living in what Nietzsche termed, The Eternal Return. The will to do your life over again, every joy, every pain, “whatever is eternal, the see will wash it up again”.

Most students of Nietzsche take him literally in his death of god calling him an Aethist, a person who has bad things to say about everyone, Women, Christians, Jews, insiders outsiders…he hated everyone. ” I,  who have ears behind my ears” say god, is dead in the way we have come to know god.  This is what has intrigued me about the many ways one can read Nietzsche.  That was the 19th and 20th century.   Eric From has said that “in the 20th century, the problem was that god is dead, but in the 21st century, it is man who is dead”. For many years had to reconcile the very dreadful idea that my experiences in this lifetime found this to be unfortunately true.  Like Zarthustra, i retreated to a cave saying my time had not yet come.

Eternal Return

To will do ones life over again,

for the one little crack in the surface of reality,

that spoke back

in a Rilkean…”the mighty,

the uncommon”,

while in the midst of the very common,

the authentically real,

The depths to be opened and sealed,

congealing

a being qua being,

revealed in the unconcealed

between the leaves

before one speaks

the answer to that question

enabling all other questions

to remain suspended

enduring ambiguity

without answers.

Where all of life is a footnote

to that one little indisputable experience.

A bee in the invisible,

doing a job in the cracks

that  no one else can see,

the invisible hand

a tiny crevice,

a life line

Mined

the urban version of a rabit hole.

Mined is the solid gray area of concrete

reading the sidewalk patterns

and lines

in the miniscule mild

as a train whisks by

and throws you into the rabit hole

of all your endeavors.

I don’t live in Chicago any more,

i am experiencing well being

for a long time now,

though still every thought,

feeling, idea, has a footnote.

The foot of a new truth

To will

To do ones life over again,

for the one little crack

in the surface

that spoke back

and before i speak i say.

Detail Nietzsche’s WTP 1978

All Rights Reserved Copyright 1978 Karos

It is said that true Prophecy occurs against the will.  I believe this is true. Being an artist first, before i was thrust into another world, in my early 20′s, we naturally joined forces and became impatient with incubation for long long periods of time, which had no control of. Began to draw pictures and label my experiences, and a blend of internal states projected outward began to emerge. By first finding pictures in magizines and then doing collages made contact from the ouside in.  In drawings with pastels to music, Registered into narrative, an all-at-onceness-a conflation in time and space…of a series of explosive volcanoes within that ended up being an integrative and healing force with its own agenda.

Sage 1982

Copyright 1982 Karos All rights reserved

The lava being released was definitely the substance of paint and during this time worked in Oil and Pastels with ideas of understanding all the forces operating in my life.  Within the Context of Psychoanalysis, bringing pictures to talk about, began a process that evolved my ability to gain objectivity of a world without walls, timeless boundless all-at-onceness. During the first meeting of  meetings- the Unconscious, it was there i saw every painting i ever did, every image in a great deluge, showing me where each originated from and why i ever painted to begin with  since age 11 became clear.

Freud’s Psychic Aparatus-1981

Copyright 1981 Karos All Rights Reserved

The quest of trying to figure out what the automatic drawings were saying to me and developing reading techniques for those images.  I could see where i was by the drawing i was doing. Each mental state back and forth had its correlation.  If I wanted to be more organized i would do a more organized drawing.

Grappling with a new layer/level of expression, took me back to the undergraduate department painting classes where i had done a series of six paintings illustrating Nietzsche’s Philosophy.  It was there realized the breakthrough and the first hints of the “earth shaking me beneath my feet”.

At the end of a Modern Times Conveyer Belt, three paintings falling into a fire in the transformation of Modern Art:  Nietzsches three metamorphosis, the story of the Camel, who takes on all things difficult, saying yes to the load, the lion who struggles with her will to power, and the child says yes to the Eternal Return, wills to do it over again, all the joy and all the pain, “what ever is eternal, the sea will wash it up again.”   (Fredrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarthustra).  I did not know this painting was the last of this era,  and did not know that i was painting the liquid marrow that two years later would come to engulf  my life.

Detail:  Nietzsche’s 3 Metamorphosis-1979

All Rights Reserved Copyright 1979

Two years later my experience with the unconscious was to be my final departure, never to return to life as i would ever know it.

First one must know how to think, before painting what “that” looks like. Often say “How do i know what i think, until i see what i say”?  Learning how to think led me to the Pre-Socratics of Ancient Philosophy, Plato, and  all the tools that were needed for departure.   Have often asked if i was being prepared for take off back then, and ponder if i ever would have been able to create semblance,  had it not been for these courses taken with great seriousness before my departure.   Plato left me with not only the tools for asking questions, but a foundation for developing both reason and intuitions for the great sea that had come to swallow me whole. The certitude and balance these studies initiated were a foundation to my knowing, so solid that remains central to my thinking and being.  Plato had left me with an unshakabe structure and scaffold to all possibility,  a faith for along the way that was essential.

All of these topics will be taken up with great detail, and hopefully will get better at organizing and articulating it as time goes on.  Stopping stations of my own choice-editor that are monumental moments, have come to have variations inside the computer that open yet another layer of knowlege. Variation, numbering, sequencing, all become part of a narrative whose nuanced changes in technique alter the meaning of the piece.

In other words, all of this is easier said than done often feeling like a turtle in slow motion, condensing all the steps in images, while separating it from all the  the scribbles and garbage which also comes through simetaneously.  Taking the good with the bad, the editor in a sense rewrites it in a way that can be palpable.  Looking back at my notes, I’m the only one that can decipher them.

Especially with image making, hindsight is so 20/20.  While in the making, it always has a different intention than looking back a day or two, a few months later, and again a few years later. Art is such a play with time and as is said “Time is Short, Art is Long” (Keats).   WilI spend much time on an idea with its many variations and offshoots.  Each variation is imbued with meaning and part of a sequence.  Suppose this is my map making tendency. However, there was the outside to contend with, where the visions experienced in the outside world were filtered through long periods of inwardness and incubation.

An image can incorporate so many opposing ideas;  where words fail.  if the image contains enough polarities it eventually becomes neutralized and then a symbol which gets recharged by its new meaning, reimbued. There were many configurations to my inwardness when dealing with what at first was chaos. Ordering these places was essential, learning the philosophical nuts and bolts became a matter of articulating deeply felt thoughts.  You know you must go on, but where?, in a labyrinthian quagmire wondering and trying to make sense of what i was receiving.

There are many complexities when i say the word Imago. It is easy to be wordy, but To say the meaning of this word, makes for a silence and deep looking. Reflection, Symmetry, Synchronicity, Serendipidy are ideas and titles lately for what is going on in this work, Drawing and Painting specifically from that place, while refining it into a chronicle,  is no small task, sometimes the pace and the devotion it requires has been rather daunting.

-serendipity-

copyright 2008 karos

-Sphinxing-

-sphinxing1-

copyright 2008 karos

imago |iˈmāgō; iˈmä-|   

noun ( pl. imagos , imagoes or imagines |iˈmāgəˌnēz|)

1 Entomology the final and fully developed adult stage of an insect, typically winged.

2 Psychoanalysis an unconscious, idealized mental image of someone.

ORIGIN late 18th cent. (sense 1) : modern Latin use of Latin imago ‘image.’ Sense 2 dates from the early 20th cent.

Universal Mac Dictionary

About The Daily Orb (TheOrb) Image Mediumship

September 1 2008

First Questions and Guide for New Venture:

Where do i begin to contribute/put forth a Seer with visions and perceptions that need to organize into the outside world with Voice?  What can be a guiding force that assists this attempt to make art and vision visible outside in the world, with what has always been a private and personal journal process? How to discern these two modes, what remains private and what is shared?  Have spent all summer long on these variables, sifting through a major body of work to ask what gets concealed and what gets revealed?

How does one become interpersonal and transpersonal, possibly hyperpersonal (!), doing what i always do; as a life long artist and seeker, as an active interpreter of my own experience of multivalent realities?(multivalent- to have many meanings; forms, functions, facets)?

(Palidini Deck) Fool-Aleph 0-1-Uraneus

Couldn’t ask for a better  Tarot card for these questions and will pick no others.  The Fool is the God of the deck assuming each of the 78 cards at different times to attain Being; of the Royal Road…Journey of Enlightenment, Isness,  or fulfilling ones illuminated potential, ones highest point…A Holy One of Being, Individuation…Self Actualization etc… In religious circles, it is called Dark Night of the Soul, and from the Mythopoetic standpoint,  Journey of the Hero, and so many other ways of describing the sequence of birth to death, rebirth, and all the stopping stations in between transits.

Fool is yes saying zero, becoming one…The silent pause before speaking… Take a leap spontaneously, be foolish, speak your truth…Possibility, Uraneus-Personal R-evolution.  The ten thousand mile journey begins with the first step, take that step, whatever it is, with persistence and willingness to explore, will come to solidify its own form. Abra Kadabra-I shall create as i speak.

Need to just leap without a net…says the Fool…Feel the need to start somewhere with Tarot Readings and use of Crystal Orb that often see into, and recieve images as messages, for the asking.

The images received either spontaneously or in The Orb are often ephemeral;  Usually read the cards after gazing, do a quick sketch to remember it, and might elaborate upon later in the reading, or another time in my studio.   At first, the quick sketch or automatic drawing, simply acts as a memory device due to its fleeting nature. Automatic drawings as well as drawing what i see in the Crystal Orb, often yield images that correspond with events as well as my Tarot Cards that i am about to pick. Learned this very early on in my journey, doing Shamanic Journeying and about my drawings reading future events in general; Over the years learned how to incorporate the Crystal Orb which becomes a frame of reference and focusing tool.

Another great influence, almost thirty years ago in an Art Therapy Masters program,  was destined to switch gears going into a Fine Art program, though not before Freud, Jung and learning the basics of being tuned into the vocabulary of my own images; informing them with a deep reading of my own psychoanalytic herstory. There was a thread of my drawing that continually went so deep into the past, that it could see the future in the immediate present of Artmaking.  Connecting it to what i was putting on the paper, over many years, established unconscious and conscious connections… analyzing form and content,  with different layers of Art, Aesthetics, and my own knowing, which became so connected with how to read those images and what they were saying.  This also translated later on to reading works of Art in all my Museuming, and finding active material in the subterranean aspects of vision and visuality.  Learned how Art knew where i was going before i did.  By constant practice, analysis, and study,  is how i learned  about my drawings preceding and predicting future events in general. I came to do this in the Museum as well and an area of interest that of the interplay between the microcosm and macrocosm of existence.

Sometimes my clients relate to it as a personal Totem or Archetypal Image, and want to acquire the Drawing as well as a Reading.  For clients, they are often one of a kind images that conjure past, present or future connections; essential images that connect to the persons life in Archetypal ways, and always help articulate the reading with more clarity.  Hindsight here is 20/20 and have many writings about Tarot readings that combine  the Crystal Orb.  Due to the fact that it conjures only a single image, when reading for others, it usually acts to highlight a major point or message in reference to the seeker. There are times where multiple symbols will appear as well that will highlight something in the Tarot cards.

Eventually will put the drawings up, and sometimes, if profound, will evolve into prints and paintings. If i use TheOrb, always do so before picking the cards.  For example, today, recieved an image of a helicopter-like flying machine above and next to a steep mountain.  It was either coming off the mountain like a piece breaking off that looked like a strange flying machine with a propeller, or it was running into and becoming part of a steep monolithic slab of earth.  It happens that about a month ago did some strange flying machines that emerged by themselves without TheOrb.  (as i later insert this, there are many versions now that formed a series, the one below being an early favorite.

Flying Machine #3 series of prints

(Copyright 2008-10 Karos all rights reserved)

Wonder if i saw it today in the crystal orb because it does not want to be forgotten as i assemble this blog and website, actually, a project that has taken all summer.  We shall see.  Have a few commentaries that are coming, that will explain this process in more detail as it unfolds during these readings.  My purpose here is simply to begin where i am, to  integrate my social commentaries/interpretations with my Psychic Image Readings and Tarot Practice as a live Art form of seeing:  divination and prophecy.

This is what my own art work is ultimately about, stimulating the visionary process of seeing into the vortex of a deeply felt imagining.   Like a journalist taking snapshots along the way and reporting, or as i like to say: As an artist speaking her language of precise picture making on-sight, in the field, insight and in-site, a Philosopher of Ancient Revolution, with a delicate brush instead of a Nietzschean Hammer, channeling the territories of the Collective Unconscious…a trail blazed one step at a time over many years and shifting terrains.  I have sought and have found. Have been every card in the deck more times than can count, and sometimes foolishly feel like there are 78 fools in the deck.  During those times, can’t relate to the Tarot images right in front of me, and in my hand, and, do not fully grasp them or absorb their energies…they do not move or stimulate that area of me that sees something else not quite palpable and leave me unimpressed. It is there where i simply work with my own images in trying to monumentalize each sequence of my particular journey, each stopping station in my own way, shape and form.  Find there is a love-hate ambivalent relationship with Tarot that hits me profoundly and has been worth exploring.  Reckoning with the inside imago vs. the outside imago. “In Psychoanalysis an unconscious, idealized mental image of someone” and i will add ” or something”.  Yes, Idealized images vs the harsh realities that put the cards in and out of the closet for varying periods of time.

To begin with a few recent current events, appropos, for doing Readings in the ouside world.  As time goes on, hope my entries, as i refine this structure and process, will become regular and rhythmic, thought provoking and insightful.

Hurricane Gustav- Democratic Convention

Two weeks before Katrina received King of Cups continually until Hurricane struck, as if it wanted to get my attention.  

Using the Quest Deck Asking about Hurricane Gustav:

 For several days now, keep getting strong water cards.  There is going to be major flooding and have felt this recently…somewhere.  Nine of Cups Ace of Cups, earlier Queen and Page of Cups…and think meditation for awhile needs to be on thoughts on diverting it…Ace of Swords.  Have been meditating & visualizing on Gustav running its course in the ocean where it will run out of steam. Also feel there will be More problem in Texas than New Orleans and thats off the top of my head and have no reason for saying that.  Will explore that later.  I do not feel it will be New Orleans, somewhere else it seems.

Democratic Convention & Upcoming Presidential Election:  

Find it fun as well as fascinating thing to track, and have always done so, though the first time blogging about it!  This is a very particular kind of reading, a bit of a rambler, fun like that!!, loaded with my own jaded personal opinions, bias, conjectures and intuitive hunches.  Always, like to say where i am coming from for a Tarot Reading or my context, which often changes.  Sometimes, do more serious verification work, hunting for clues and answers, and go into more detail, more analytic and less speculative.  I like all different kinds of reading, but for politics, can’t help having fun with looking into current events that  will determine all sorts of world changes and will track readings leading up to election.  

Now that we are not going to have a President Hillary right now, (do see her as a future president), have stopped to read details about Barack Obama and watched the convention wanting to get to know him. I think he will regret not picking Hillary for his VP (10 Wheel 6 Lovers R and Strength-Palladini Deck).  A Population of 18 million, spoke, and he should have listened to the voters.  This might prove to be a flaw in vision.  They have charisma and dynamism together and she would have really challenged him on more levels than anyone could and would always be in the news.  I would have admired that decision much more. Think he should put her into a cabinet position where she works only on the medical program (Tower r, King of Rods, 8 wands)…Indicating great structural change that takes a single qualified person to create;  with great momentum & speed,  a program on a national level where she has authority and expertise.

Also, using the Quest Deck (Joseph Martin), Pulled some cards during Democratic convention and got a struggle…the five of swords, a great fight especially intellectually-a win/lose/draw conflictual situation, and, fueling the five of wands, a passionate and playful/interesting struggle…combined, the way he fights, will determine much of the outcome as a new octave emerges, and then, the 9 of pentacles the card of gain. This is the Convention and outcome, will express itself later as well.  Also, a time of learning and using ones gain for more increase and to win.   All Cards Equal 19 the Sun, the eventual victory through illumination… Later on this eve, 19 Sun was picked and validated the earlier results and mirrored the idea of walls coming down for the light to come in, which i think this convention accomplished as well as eventual result, (is there a giant in our midst?…that history only gifts the world upon occasion for integration-evolution-new leaps?… and illumi-a-nation…the issue of Obama winning. Each 5 is a struggle between the earthly status quo and the spirit…the Fates which is the 10th Major Arcana, the Wheel of Fortune, Ruled by Jupiter, a larger world view, that asks, How are the fates and forces operating?  Five is also the number of blessing, connecting the celestial and the terrestrial the three and the two.  Later, the next day, Recieved the Hierophant when specifically asking about Obama…The preistly blessing that takes place through the third and fourth fingers, the latices of the hand, I do believe a giant and a world leader has emerged and he is outside the parameters of the small lenses we have been viewing Presidents, and people who have come seeking this office… Transcending race, party and other things, ushering in a powerful intelligence that has potential and hope, for a change.  That he is half and half is literally a middle road of balance,  his name Barack meaning Blessing. That the United States has produced such a person, is an interesting mix in itself;  hopeful, people don’t know what to think, a refreshing outside the box candidate with so many fine qualities and of the stature right up there with great world leaders. This are my initial impressions and idealistic,  can only be realized or understood with time.  Exciting the youth is a sign that his very qualities are touching the collective unconscious in ways not to be underestimated…People gravitate to real leaders, they wake each other up. The fact that he is a writer first, a man with vision and ideas… says so much about what the world needs now, and he has come at an opportune moment. A good example of Kairos and also the idea of Kairosis the idea of Epiphany as a result of a dramatic time in our herstory/history.  

seasons on a lucid boat 1

 

 

 

 

 copyright 2007 karos

 

conversations with su

journeytokairos Hi Su, So glad to hear from you and Thank you for stopping by to have a look at art work; much you haven’t seen in years.  Seasons on a Lucid boat is a current image concerning  creation as my work often does. Yes…The ongoing series of boats that are otherly, contain several possibilities that on different levels, experience a journeying toward, without having arrived.  The ferry and what gets you to other shores is a theme of early intrigue from Herman Hessedays, Siddartha.  Kairos, an expression of a certain time, will explain in the next few posts. Remember with some sort of Socratic/Diotima smile, and my own interpretation, what Flaubert says while immersed inside a dramatic moment of painful embrace, and somewhere disgust, about being an artist;  “Go on, rend yourself, whip yourself, roll yourself in ashes, make matter vile, spit on your body, tear out your heart, you’ll be alone. Your feet will bleed and infernal feeling of disgust will accompany you the whole way, none of what makes other peoples joy will go to make yours. What are pinpricks to them will be lacerations to you. And you’ll flounder on, lost in the storm with this little light on the horizon…But it will get bigger, it will get bigger like the sun, its golden beams will cover your face, they’ll pass into you, you’ll be lit up from the inside, you’ll feel airy and all spirit and after the letting of blood the flesh will weigh less.”-Gustave Flaubert In a recent series of otherly boats/vessles..…for myself, feeling this familiar image…along with very specific kinds of drifting along…Know these are part of the moments of the artistic journey, filled with risk, that often parallel creation; works of art that are living legends & myths in ones own Herstory. One must always acknowledge Creation and its processes, recognize in some way, and reflect those stopping stations…and, yes, somehow sail through to those little hints of illumination that do get bigger, from that little drop of light on the other end of the horizon, often obscured… Out of the mists of blue, survive in spite of great truths that we learn, that have G’_s signature (great spirit) on it, no doubt,…and yes, if possible, put them into context, creating a personal perspective of the whole microcosm-macrocosm of existence, depending on where one is. Does one ever arrive? There is always another port or stopping station in Journey to Kairos, a very particular time, not any time. There just has to be another moment!… “Upon some lost plateaus, we shall hope to hear the painters, poets, architects, sculptors, state that they possess the whole reality of images they have created…a reality which drives them on.” -Antonin Artaud later kara From Theorb: seasons on a Lucid Boat, 2008/06/11 at 12:33 AM

Needle Butterfly Hand-watercolor & colored pencil

the jar…adam rumi ~Jars~pandora-inside-the-bell-ajar-

copyright 2007 karos
Pandora III:  Acrylic on Paper




 the jar...adam rumi

If you are born of Adam, sit like him

and behold all his progeny within yourself.

What is in the jar that is not also in the river?

What is in the house that is not also in the city?

This world is a jar, and the heart-spirit is like the river;

this world is the chamber, and the spirit is the wondrous city.

 

Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
“Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance”

copyright 2007 karos
Pandora I in B & W:  
on Arches Buff Paper
Graphite, Charcoal, mingle hand w computer

choice

 

copyright 1999 karos

 

From Series of 3 doors-unplugged-oil painting …( 6′x4′ now prints)

questioning a lion

 

 

“If a lion could speak we wouldn’t understand her”  Ludwig Wittgenstein

A story that continues to haunt me in a beautiful way and a funny way, was in the manner i would answer the question about “what first brought me to the Art Institute of Chicago?”, as one asks and gets asked that question often in Art School.   When asked of me what brought me here,  would reply, “the wind”;  oh the saving grace of being literal!

It was a gathering time after a third Kundalini experience, gathering myself after another round of intense incubation and vision; that lasted two years, around the early to mid 80′s.  A tempestuous sky and windy Easter Sunday, was walking east on Armitage near Halstead Street toward Lincoln Park Zoo.  I caught a glimpse of a torn-off envelope that had a strange energy about it in the circular way it was teasing me to chase it in the wind. From a distance it looked like a white piece of paper with writing on it.  As I was running, was told what was on the piece of paper were words such as: reward and a surprise from what had been through, maybe an admission ticket of some sort were the things that went through my mind.  There had to be some explanation and why me, after such Jobian Sunamis in other realms.  After 3 blocks, I stepped on it during a momentary pause, with my foot clamping it to the ground.  Dropping onto my knees to pick it up, as i finally caught that pesky piece of paper; in the middle of the street, of the busy Armitage and Halstead.  As i stood  on my knees reading “The Art Institute of Chicago” logo as a torn envelope, a taxi cab screeched on its breaks, in a well timed way saying “go now”.  So rare to hop a cab, in its shiny and new dark cadium yellow, with black and white checks boarding the lights, it was a floating magic carpet ride in such grandness.   The cab driver gave me a lecture about getting hit by a car and then said where to?  

So began my initiation of looking at Art on a very different level than had been used to. This was a new pair of eyeglasses….And so it was that the taxi dropped me off,  ran up the stairs on a mission, in retrospect, felt a very specific force guiding me, knowing just where to go, and what to do… Before running up another set of stairs, went to my knees and  bowed at the Easter bouquets, as here i was in the spirit of all that had happened.   Was a holy fool having visions, and when traveling time and space in all-at-onceness, it is a space where you know what to do and you know what every symbol means.  It is a space where everything communicates not through words but through silences and symbols that graze you gently.

 

Have often referred to this time period as “that time in my life that could see gas coming out of radiators” as external signs of change in reality.   That time in my life being visited by a whole host of people from other worlds and times,  and i knew who they were without them saying so.  It was not until later that when we would spend longer periods of time with each other, getting used to my awe on the inside, that i would come to my senses and ask them questions.  None of them had any kind of awareness displayed that they were visiting me.  I felt a strong taboo about asking at first, and for a long time. Began to keep a tablet with me and asked them to write something down.  My question was that was i in a high enough place (which i was in many respects, out of this world and in a vacuum)… Where i was simply looking into another world due to where my mind was, or was it them coming to bring me messages, which they did?  I have learned in its own beautiful transparency, that it was a little bit of both.   Also they always knew what i was thinking and a transparent relationship ensued where i also knew what they were thinking.  

I was led to the Traveling Vatican Show; to this day believe this was the place that a different type of perception and vision started to occur, than the ones before, and felt it was a real breakthrough.  For a few years prior, it was preparation, like i was being tested to see how i reacted to such hapenings. They were visits that were transient moments that contained more allusions or hints going through people and things, but not the real thing in physical form.  Being compressed and time folding in was the perception here;  it was here, that i met spirits and knew them as such but they were in physical form wearing normal clothes and every day people.  I never saw them before, or after, for that matter. These were found guides and the world of the dead began to come to me and teach me what was an entirely new realm of experiences.  This is the chapter of life that began to question a substratum of reality coming to me, yet the challenge of being curious enough and faithful enough to go to it. There were many requirements that clearly were tested about, always.

 

In a very real way saw my entire life as preparation for what i was pursuing.  It was more than a thread i was following, it was a reality i was in and others could not see it.  Have many discussions about this later on, absolutely questioning where i have stood.  How it is that i took the call from beyond my very self.   In the alphabet it is the letter Kaph where great spirit comes to meet you and you go to meet it.  It is a covenant between Great Spirit and a person that begins as an allusion to, and it gets built up over a long period of time.  It was a particular stage that I still grapple with, and truly does remain a footnote to everything in my life that has come after that.  

I walked into a Vatican Show of large statues that were talking to me feverishly  in a whirlwind.  By the time I went to Day of the Gods upstairs,  the entire painting was moving and there was a gentle breeze and the trees were swaying back and forth and was inside a living and breathing painting forever swallowed on the inside.  My eyes never saw the same again.  Death and Rebirth in the same moment that I will forever mine as a painter, or that which shall forever mine/mind me.  One moment of many that remain eternal pieces of a long opus.  Several other visions happened that day that took me so far away,  it took me a year to grasp it all colapsing several times in the process.  It took me an entire year to walk back into the Museum and decided to take a single course at the school, something easy and non threatening such as feminism might help me get to the painting room, upstairs to what had become fearful on levels I could not fully yet comprehend.

 

All Rights reserved copyright 2008 karos

 

 

 

 

invocation/invitation: journey to kairos

invocation

invitation 

invocation

in vocation

excavation

Wish to thank my teachers

and students, 

in all sizes, ways

and shapes, 

in an animated universe

in a barrel of laughter and tears,

for their patience and wisdom, 

my friends, fellow artists and cohorts

for their grace, 

their help 

and encouragement,

even

in spite of 

when it did not look like that, 

oh be weary of appearances.

I wish to thank

my invention who became alive

before and after i…

give thanks

god,dess 

for her/his  

passionate steadfast and unwavering love, 

embracing endurance,

protection,

lessons, 

and magical angelic intervention 

in the forefront always of my life

and yes now and then in the background living off the

power of remembrance in the bird crumb days.

Thank you for making me an artist and writer 

so i could describe your 

magnificence, or did its powers

drill holes through my heart

till your nothingness was left

in the doorframe

that fact

of a door

as raft

adrift adraft

setsail

A steady guiding voice 

who i would not be here without

a reason for being in itself;

to create a space for you to occur, 

permeating everywhere within and without, 

here is my song to you. 

Thank you for bringing 

me 

here to your city alive.  

She arrived at the city alive (copyright karos 1992)

May i create understanding 

with all my words and pictures in my 

journey to kairos, 

that moment of all moments, 

that monumoment in vision,

a mile-of stones stacked

milestones as doorways

of certitude

where i learned what moment i was in, 

setsail

a being in time sailing into creation

for creations sake…

registering in words and imagos

a holy one of being in time.  

Thank you for making me world, 

and now may i fill your cup  

somehow contribute meaningful expression

original voice

to the suffering streets i have seen in every strata

perplexed in a very difficult world you have shown to me.

Urged and urgency congeal a

who am i?

how did i get here?

where am i going?

what is being qua being?

This is my invocation and blessing

as i listen to the wisdom of the ancients

like the wise diotima, the teacher of socrates

who ask me to go to the sources of my inquiry

to once again seek answers to those fundamental questions.

May i give back what i have been so generously given

in love 

a poetic constant

questioning my own constructs of reality

calling into question all that have ever known

May i make you visible

May i make you a new house

as you so long ago asked of me

Commanding a new approach

challenging and 

dissolving old rectangular rafts

rebirthing new ways and means

May i make something visible

for the asking?

Is there justice?

Is the universe a friendly place?

Can rage be registered somewhere

evolving into a work of Art?

may i speak to my love quarrel with the world?

With my lovers, cohorts, friends, and funnys,

from the streets through the news channels the

weather refugees, the

mental hospitals in all the units of a suffering hospital,

through the echelons of education and classes

May my inquiry be an alter of silence and listening?

Forever souls in journey, may one read this and persist,

explore, get curious,

but most of all know there is an agency of the

art spirit that is higher 

and more magnificent than

i can give voice to and always striving to be part of 

that voice, to stand up finally and be counted.

A milestone with ripples in the circles of time

Confessions that have been busy surviving, 

to be 

sensitive

one becomes sensitive about ones sensitive

and then it disappears

alas

finally to be here

having been to the alter

of silence and listening

Alter of Silence and Listening (copyright 2008 karos)