Awareness, Belief Systems and Randomocity

Before having these thoughts about divination, I made a couple of bodies of work related to consciousness, concepts of knowledge, and belief. One of the questions that has most fascinated me since I was young is "Why do we believe what we believe?" Asking this question has led me to explorations of a variety of spiritual paths and a general skepticism about pre-conceived notions of normality, truth, and "human nature" - that is, the things that we live our lives by - the ingredients that we take as immutable facts. This is the question that dug under my other one, which is "How do our beliefs determine the way we live?"

So my previous work used a very literal, way too obvious symbol (the head) to express the mind. I circled around other ideas too - containment, as in containing thoughts and attitude and various physical manifestations and embodiments of containment. These were the ideas I worked with in the head sculptures on my website: www.solanima.net .

Last summer I invited other artists at the Vermont Studio Center to participate in a collaboration using one of the "generic" heads I cast in plaster. Called "How to Get A Head", the piece was installed at a gathering place around the campfire in back of the VSC sculpture building.

From there I migrated to drawing, at first the heads, and then the space or energies around them - engendering a new series of drawings called the "Not Heads" - which may or may not still be going on. As it progressed, obsessively at times, it became clear that the work was really about the connection among humans. The heads themselves are empty spaces for the most part. R. dug this as he felt it related to the Buddhist concept of emptiness. They also connected to my fascination with nets and roots. R. pointed out a connection with Indra's net. In a way I now realize they are the opposite of the visible, or what we think of as the tangible, world: the representation shows what is *not* seen, of what we perceive to be empty space - the connective energy (although this should not just be among humans, of course). On the other hand, what one sees in the physical world - the head - was literally just blank space on the paper.

Alot of weird stuff happened around these drawings. First of all I was obsessed by doing them for months. Second of all, I cannot remember in all my many years of making art ever having so many moments of genuine happiness while creating. For some reason these things just bubbled out of me. Over time the joyousness did come and go. Often my work is about death or decay or some other fun topic. But this stuff for some reason was just buoyant - usually. Third of all, I think most people seeing them without knowing anything about their background would think they are eggs or balloons. Ugh. And fourth, I really don't like some of them at all. Quite a few. They look kind of corny and superficial. But in a way I feel like they are the deepest work I've ever made.

Oops. Got so carried away I forgot to write about randomocity.

© Priscilla P. Stadler 2008