Conscious Collaboration with Spirit
March 5-28, 2020 at SOIL Gallery, Seattle
Opening Reception: March 5, 6-8p / Artist Talk: March 15, 1-2p / Performance: March 21, 2-2:40p
Artists: Hayley Barker, Emily Counts, Sara Long, Jean Nagai, Leah Nguyen, Nicholas Nyland, Elizabeth Traina
Curated by Leah Nguyen, Conscious Collaboration with Spirit brings together the work of seven artists working in collaboration with spirit to expand the conversation around these practices and understanding of the spectrum of methods that are used to connect, communicate, and receive information, and how these processes change their work.
Artists have long worked with the spiritual realm. Some collaborate unknowingly and some consciously. Most common as a mode of collaboration is inspiration, opening yourself to what ‘wants’ to be made. Sometimes this collaboration is almost unconsidered by the artist, or a mystery to them. Much of the artist mystique is related to artists not knowing how to navigate this relationship with intention and consciousness. Sometimes artists try to access the ineffable through reducing their inhibitions (insecurities, fear, ego’s voice) with substances. Artists have also tried to portray or depict the spiritual realm, mediating the portrayal through their mental models. Many of the first abstract artists were doing this, e.g. Kandinsky, Kupka, Mondrian, but the distance created by mind trying to understand the spiritual realm rather than directly experiencing it and collaborating is the difference between their work and the work of Hilma af Klint or Emma Kunz.
The artists in this show use a few different methods of connecting with spirit, Nyland uses a method that is familiar to many artists, sensing when his work has a life and consciousness of its own, and being tuned and responsive to this presence. Long spends time alone in nature, being quiet, letting herself be still and bored until she is sensitive enough to notice the communications of plants, stones, and alien beings. Then in her studio she records the imprints these have left on her emotions. Counts asks her soul what to focus on in her ceramic works, through each step of drawing, sculpting, and glazing. Nagai uses meditative, half-waking, between-reality states to create paintings to connect us to the universal. Barker began her collaboration with spirit as a witch, each brushstroke a word in a spell. Her work now uses prayer: her morning bed drawings setting the intentions for the day and the paintings to come. Traina’s collaboration is inquiry-based she both asks for assistance from spirit and studies broadly, letting what she learns deepen her understanding and help form the geometries and color choices that create the portals she paints. Each painting is accompanied by words she receives that instruct the viewer on how to access the portal’s purpose. Nguyen, an artist-healer, uses energy testing and a complex question matrix, as well as dance, song, and intuition to talk with her spirit team and find every aspect of her paintings and the accompanying healing work.
Special events:
Artist Talk Sunday, March 15, 1-2pm, free and open to the public.
Intro to Conscious Collaboration with Spirit Workshop taught by Leah Nguyen on Sunday, March 15, 2:30-4:30pm, $50, class limit 12.
Performance Choreographer/Healer Michelle Boule and Artist-Healer Leah Nguyen through movement and song create an offering to honor the past, heal the present, and expand the potential of collaboration with Spirit. Performance starts promptly at 2pm and is 20 minutes followed by conversation.