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“A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.” ― Anaïs Nin (and anyone who is an artist or considers themselves one. I don't ... consider myself an artist ... but I am greedy.)
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"I want to meddle with an Olympic medal made of silver metal. I want to alchemize it into gold, and use a mixture of science and mysticism to transform losing into winning."
— Jarod Kintz (99 Cents For Some Nonsense)
Going for Gold, but I'll settle for Silver... well I had to have an Olympic themed shot today of all days ツ ツ ツ
* Sony Alpha α SLT-A77 DSLR and a Vivitar 100mm AF Macro Lens
My work is for sale via Getty Images and at Redbubble and 500px
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Do not use my images without my permission./ Non utilizzare le mie immagini senza il mio consenso./ No usar mis imágenes sin mi permiso. / 未经我许可的情况下不要使用我的图片
©2012- Tom Raven - Toute reproduction, même partielle INTERDITE
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Key set: "Imagining something is better than remembering something." (John Irving, The World According to Garp)
1
You scream, waking from a nightmare.
When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.
2
I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go down, I have stood by
as you told the flower, don't grow old,
don't die. Little Maud,
I would blow the flame out of your silver cup,
I would suck the rot from your fingernail,
I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light,
I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones,
I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body,
I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood,
I would let nothing of you go, ever,
until washerwomen
feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands,
and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades,
and rats walk away from the cultures of the plague,
and iron twists weapons toward the true north,
and grease refuses to slide in the machinery of progress,
and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men,
and lovers no longer whisper to the presence beside them in the
dark, O corpse-to-be...
And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry,
this the nightmare you wake screaming from:
being forever
in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.
3
In a restaurant once, everyone
quietly eating, you clambered up
on my lap: to all
the mouthfuls rising toward
all the mouths, at the top of your voice
you cried
your one word, caca! caca! caca!
and each spoonful
stopped, a moment, in midair, in its withering
steam.
Yes,
you cling because
I, like you, only sooner
than you, will go down
the path of vanished alphabets,
the roadlessness
to the other side of the darkness,
your arms
like the shoes left behind,
like the adjectives in the halting speech
of old men,
which once could call up the lost nouns.
4
And you yourself,
some impossible Tuesday
in the year Two Thousand and Nine, will walk out
among the black stones
of the field, in the rain,
and the stones saying
over their one word, ci-gît, ci-gît, ci-gît,
and the raindrops
hitting you on the fontanel
over and over, and you standing there
unable to let them in.
5
If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a café at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
where white wine stands in upward opening glasses,
and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking,
one day all this will only be memory,
learn,
as you stand
at this end of the bridge which arcs,
from love, you think, into enduring love,
learn to reach deeper
into the sorrows
to come – to touch
the almost imaginary bones
under the face, to hear under the laughter
the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.
The still undanced cadence of vanishing.
6
In the light the moon
sends back, I can see in your eyes
the hand that waved once
in my father's eyes, a tiny kite
wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look:
and the angel
of all mortal things lets go the string.
7
Back you go, into your crib.
The last blackbird lights up his gold wings: farewell.
Your eyes close inside your head,
in sleep. Already
in your dreams the hours begin to sing.
Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight,
when I come back
we will go out together,
we will walk out together among
the ten thousand things,
each scratched too late with such knowledge, the wages
of dying is love.
~ Galway Kinnell ~
Throw me a bone. Hand me a prompt, a set of words, a place to start, a seedbed or maybe just a seed. Tag me It and push me out from this place of big margins. I don’t need much. Just a few syllables, a sentence fragment even, like this one. Remind me that the weather has a skin, a voice, and some days wings and talons for gripping. Hand me a pencil you found in the hallway. I won’t mind the toothmarks or the empty pocket of air where the eraser used to be. I don’t plan on making those kinds of judgments anyway. Put on some music, something that sounds like something it isn’t: a string that hums like a friendly old machine or a reed that burbles like boiling water. I won’t need anything else. No slices of apple to lick clean of peanut butter, no salty chips to hear crunch while I think. no black tea to befriend until it’s strong and cold, like the big sky we saw that night at the orchard, a fierce and reachless bowl of stars with a flavor like that of sugar on metal. Just this: a shove, a nudge, a chord, a frame, a word. A smallness, waiting to grow layers, to disturb, sing, fracture, collide, transform, and humble. You won’t get back what you gave me but something else instead: a joke where solemnity once lived, a pile of fragrant sawdust where you used to have a two-by-four, a puzzle thrown askew until the spoons and hollows of its picture make no sense at all to the eye you’re used to seeing them with. You’ll have to learn to solve its riddle with another sense, one you might not know you have yet. Not a third eye, but a shudder that alchemizes and translates from just beneath your ribcage and doesn’t mind the scattershot way it has to work to collate and harvest what the world gives it. When you’re ready, you’ll find an ark, a big ship ready for sailing on the roughest mythical seas your storytelling soul can plant and nurture. I’m ready when you are.
----©Laura Sorrells 2012
all rights reserved
My dear old friend Maja, whom I've known since we studied English and Comparative Literature together at the University of Glasgow, in Nice'n'Sleazy. She now lives in Berlin, but has interviewed me for the excellent Glasgow magazine Lock Up Your Daughters. I include her introduction below: for the full interview, pick up the magazine, which is out on 22nd October (see their website for details of stockists), and they are having a launch party at the Flying Duck on that night. If you attend, the magazine is included in the ticket price. Again, details on their website.
"On a night out, Tommy Ga Ken Wan stops every few minutes to take a photograph. He grins, offers the LCD screen of his camera; his subject is pleased, grins back: a friendship is forged. He makes another Facebook contact, another Flickr follower: another fan.
And it’s no wonder. Short-listed for the National Theatre of Scotland’s photographer in residence, and lauded by - among others - public artist Martin Firrell, Scottish literary giant Alasdair Gray, and veteran Private Eye photographer Eric Hands, the Glasgow-based young photographer has, at the tender age of 24, already worked for and with an enviable panoply of emerging and established names in the art world.
The harrowing last days of his Alzheimer’s-suffering great grandmother; his circumcision, his fleeting relationships, his lovers; his wayward party antics and nocturnal peregrinations through Glasgow, Hong Kong, London, and Paris; nothing escapes the click of Ga Ken Wan’s shutter. His eye has a way of alchemizing every social encounter into something at once synaptic and fresh, yet cool and composed. His photographs are a contradiction in terms. Although documentative, they seem, much like beer-hazed, time-worn reminiscences of friends, to have a flagrant disregard for the veracity of the moment. They prefer instead to live on independently; the hipper, headier, film-version of our lives.
Tommy Ga Ken Wan is astute, by turns gregarious and withdrawn; wildly funny, erudite and, in conversation – as the following interview would suggest –always invulnerated from hesitancy with a suitably fitting quotation. In the four years I’ve known him, I’ve seen him rise from a relative unknown to a kind of local celebrity. Yet, with a headcount that boasts Stephen Fry, Germaine Greer, Richard Dawkins, and various noteworthy bands, writers, actors, poets, and politicians, he still insists that his favourite subjects are the people he knows, those without what he calls ‘a front’ for the camera."
www.lockupyourdaughtersmagazine.co.uk/index.html
Glasgow, 2010.
MONOLOGUE OF HISTORY, right side of the central diptych of the West Wall, which may be read in its entirety below.
STUDIO SECTION 2008-2009
East Wall: Calvary--Donors With Crucifixion
West wall: Self-Portrait As A Young Artist
Middle: Il Passetto
2008-2009
Wood, wood mâché, metal, gesso, modeling paste, acrylic, graphite
Each of the six diptychs measures 8' x 8' 1"
Over all dimension for exhibition: 40' x 40'
Collection:
Toledo Art Museum
Toledo, Ohio
STUDIO SECTION 2008-2009 is an extension of the “non-specific autobiography” realized and examined by Robert Cremean in VATICAN CORRIDOR, A Non-Specific Autobiography. It consists of three parts: East Wall: Calvary—Donors With Crucifixion, in which the artist gives unprecedented voice both to Gestas and to Dismas who were crucified with Jesus; Il Passetto, the corridor in which he makes a metaphoric exposition of the treatment of women by the three “hats”: the helmet of the warrior, the mitre of religion, and the bowler of commerce; and West Wall: Self-Portrait As a Young Artist in which “the young artist” is addressed verbally and metaphorically through three monologues: the Monologue of Art, the Monologue of the Artist, and the Monologue of History. Listening to the conflicting and diametrically opposing views written on the diptych behind him on the West Wall is the bust of the young artist who looks with an inscrutable gaze through the horrors of Il Passetto to the horrors of Calvary on the East Wall and at the Donors, aloof and blinded to the controlled chaos behind and in front of them.
These are but a few of the ideas and images contained within STUDIO SECTION 2008-2009. As in any work of art, the viewer may create his own world out of the images, metaphors and words confronted therein.
Monologue of History
I will create you. Defer! Defer to me. Hear my voice. It is loud with knowing. From its intelligence all things shall be judged. I am history. Hear my voice! I will define the who and the what of you...the right and the wrong—that which is and that which isn’t and the shoulds and the shouldn’ts of it all...all that presents itself to the formulae of my discerning eye. If you neither present yourself nor court my favor, then you do not exist. It will be as though you have never been...and so, perhaps, you haven’t. You do not signify. You signify nothing, not even a footnote within my pagination. If you seek silence then that is your reward. The future will not contain you. I make nouns out of verbs, pruning and paring the edges of chaotic enterprise to make concise patterns of hearsay and heresy, boundaries and time spans, hierarchies of significance, winners and losers, that which is and that which isn’t. I am a tyrant without parallel, compassion or appeal...witness, judge, and jury of my self-creation. I, too, am God, rivaling Art through persuasion of the intellect. I make nouns out of verbs. From my voice springs the reality by which actualities are formed, languages spoken, morals and mores ingested, wars fought, treaties signed, boundaries drawn and cultures authenticated. I am history, consensus, the tepid shallows of human necessity. I do not pretend to the passion of Art but I do claim its containment...Through my hands all things passeth....My mastery over such threats of chaos must not be questioned. I am History but without consensus, my abiding strength, I am history, a linear theory of reality. Art history is my crowning achievement. Look to my hierarchies. Look to my battlements. My logic is above reproach...that which was determines that which is (in retrospect) what will be. Survival is the only norm and this, too, is true of history. For my survival, the past must control the Now. For those who view me as a simple chronicler of fact, let them look again. I, too, am verb made noun. My participation is active in the affairs of men. Let me channel your desire and guide your hand. Only I can make you unforgotten, your works, cherished, your name revered. Is this not why you labor? Of which you also dream? Honor me. Let me channel your desire and guide your hand. If you thwart me, or try to thwart me, it will be as though you had never been. I will cast my light elsewhere and your shadow will cease to stain the cultural scrim. You did not spring from the forehead of Zeus. Your influences are obvious and undeniable—or so I shall proclaim. You have no resources to pit against my defamation. I will fold you into oblivion. I know you hear me for this is history’s loudest greatest threat to all artists. You are not unique. Think of your predecessors. Think of your peers. Who do you love? Of whom are you jealous? These lie within you as whores and succubi....Your studio is a battleground on which your mortality is fought. I can smell your competitiveness. It is pungent with envy. Do you seek fame? Would you kill for it...push aside others to claim the light? How hungry are you? Are you stiff with ambition...erect with desire? How great is your need...how large your talent? How hungry are you? History is a religion of comparisons worshipping the advent of first appearance and from thence the waves and ripples of influence unto entropy and beyond. I thrive on clarity and have no qualms about dismissing that which clouds my mirror. I worship straight lines and obvious connections and if it is necessary to strip away that which irritates or confounds conclusion—so be it...and though it is impossible to alter my course, I am not immutable. Whatever I record as was is, and must be viable in the ever present Now. In no other way can the never existing future be contained and the Now impervious to chaos. How clever was Man to have invented time—to have created me. Survival is always the norm and my Isness conspires, as you, young artist, must conspire. If you do not believe in me, if you do not believe in time and its linearity linking past, present, and future, then you are my enemy for you threaten my significance, my essentiality, our survival. I shall create you aberrant, consigning you and your works to nihility. What do you wish to achieve? Why would you deny me and yourself consummation? History encompasses art. What births this sense of separation? Would you place art outside of history? This temerity will destroy you. You have barely begun and already you tempt destruction...and this you shall have if you proceed. I will prune you like a twig, disappear you as though you had never been. Do not thwart me. Do you fear competition? That is my entelechy. Competition is the essence of survival and history is the recordation of triumphs and losses—winners and losers. Which frightens you most, young artist, the responsibility of winning or the freedom of losing? Art would ask of you martyrdom. Art history asks only that you present yourself for judgement. Do you fear judgement? Culture-makers will deem your viability and I will reify their judgement. Of all the conjunctive histories submitting themselves to man’s idea of himself, war religion, politics, etc., history is the one true artifact. Based on inventive and creative principles of manipulation, art history is a manufactured product of amoral construct...a deadly serious game of oxymorons and malapropisms. If you do not play the game, your refusal is deemed derelict and you are judged inconsequent to your time...and rightly so. My isness, history’s essentiality, is to enforce a clear and logical sequence from source to infinity maintaining past, present, and future in consensual alignment. It is your responsibility, young artist, to fulfill my purpose. My concept of time is unassailable. It is linear without exception or deflection, concrete and irreductible. If errors are made or lapses incurred, time’s decisive speed of linearity incorporates everything within the gestalt as just and accurate. I build on what is there...and this is history’s truth. History cannot be wrong anymore than it can be kind. You are what you are and what you are is how you are perceived. History can record no other. I move on with or without you. Individual artists are of little interest to me. Their lives are either messy or intemperate or staid or boring; both are tedious and unserious recordation...gossip and hearsay. I am dedicated to movements and metaphors, comparisons, and contradictions, hierarchies of influence, what came first and what came after with attendant pulses and repercussions—hot beginnings and tepid endings and all the mediocrities that lie between...These, however, are for lesser ambitions. I use culture as culture uses me—for authenticity. And, finally, it is the marketplace that uses us all. Only Art escapes this accommodation...not so its artifacts which are pimped, and trafficked, and hyperbolized to enhance value. I cannot control response. Culture cannot control response. We cannot prove that Art exists. My linearity excludes personal metaphysical transformations. If I trespass into subjective territory, I forfeit disinterested authenticity. I become a novel, a fiction, a curiosity and shall be judged as such. Everything that is produced by Man is an artifact: war, religion, science, art, and all tangencies. Man in his entirety is an artifact. He has invented his gestalt and I, history, am his most valued invention. I record him as he wishes to be seen, a self-portrait of magnificent proportion. Only Art defeats my deception. Through response and transparency, my facting becomes another false reality...I cannot record the transformations of Art; these lie within the mysterious seclusion of human Desire. The interior of a responder’s bourn is wordless and unwordable and of no consequence to the tides and turnings of history. It is for me to finesse the lumbering, laboring, linear repeat that bears my name: changing a boundary here, a revolution there, a white genocide for a black, a religious persecution with a religious persecution...the sameness grows progressively challenging to create empathy and involvement in such a large audience on such a small planet. Since 8/6/45 the final act of all intervening dramas share a sense of penultimacy and hackneyed conclusion. Since 8/6/45 it is I who have lost significance, however spectacular and world shaking my recordation. Human life has devalued all life and has become the most terrifying predator the world has ever known. Young artist, you are living in an age of miracles! What is this seeming indifference, as though it does not matter or as though 8/6/45, the birth of Death, has not occurred...Your culture’s retreat into entertainment and commodification bodes ill not only for the furtherance of art but for the furtherance of human significance. If you view yourself and your work insignificant, this is how art functions as the reflection of your time. It is cynical and miscreant. I will record this culture because I must record this culture. This is my isness. This is history’s isness...But I am become corrupt. I am a whore like any other which can be bought for fun and profit. Science has created our ending and in our conclusion we rejoice in our liberation. Finally all life is equal. The lion shall lie down with the lamb. Absence will envelop us all without distinction or prejudice...no ark to intervene and no arc to announce a new beginning. All pain will cease, all dreams end, and I, history, will be no more...no more linkage of a past that may not have been to a future that will never be...while silence, like ash, settles on the orb. I can only wonder at the ignorance of my inventor. Did he not see the possibility that everything that he is or would ever be was self-determined? Did he not sense that the swelling of Desire was his and his alone—as we now know as we try to avert finality. Why did he not heed Art’s counsel? At what point did his obsession blind his eye to the horizon? At what point did his obsession with infinity blind his eye to the horizon? At what point did his fear blind his eye to the horizon?..This obsession with possession and control has brought him to penultimacy. He has slain me and destroyed his metaphors leaving the actuality of all things to the ultimacy of absence. Soon not even pity will exist, or anger, or resentment for his blindness. He exists now as a broken whisper with three words left to utter: Destroy it all. And these words will be uttered; eventually they will be uttered for I, history, must deliver one final repeat. It cannot be denied. In conclusion one can only contemplate finality. I record only what man wants recorded and only the past can be recorded. I am pro-active only in repeat. I cannot prohibit. I cannot contain or restrain...only art history holds that conceit and I hold art history in dubious regard...It is meddlesome and unauthentic. It messes and muddies about in artifacts and commerce, inventing movements and romanticizing events in a desperate delusion that nothing has changed to alter the linear coordination of art’s impulses and isms...But it has severed art’s connection to a continuum before 8/6/45. Art criticism is lateral without depth of judgement. Clearly its current metaphors do not measure up to the past. Desire has been ripped from its Now. We are left wanting and waiting. We are in hiatus. We are diminished.To pretend that art history’s current crop of cultural artifacts should be judged as artifacts of Art is at best a culture in denial and, at worst, intellectual dishonesty bordering on fraud. It is a culture in name only based solely on activity and semantics. Art history traffics in celebrity and money...Was it always so? If I were to investigate the other histories in my gestalt would this be true also?... But all of my other histories create continuums based on verbs or adverbs of practicability: war, religion, commerce, medicine, sports, travel, clothing, cooking...but only artifacts of art can retain their nowness to conflate time...Only artifacts of Art can alchemize nouns into verbs. As you have observed, young artist, birds shit where they shit making no distinction whatever, be it the bronze head of Holofernes or your own, a grassy knoll or a pig sty. The human species’ capacity for killing is much the same as the pigeon’s indifference toward shitting...Look to war for that indignation...or to commerce for its treatment of the poor...or religion for shitting all over everything. Fortunately, my recordation is for man’s eye only. Whether he ends by shitting all over himself is of no consequence to me. He has postured me, disinterested—and so I am. In truth, I have grown weary of repeat. I have known the ending from the beginning but only since 8/6/45 have I known that I would not record it. Young artist, your culture-makers have, through manipulation of semantics and celebrity, simulated a climate that cannot subsist. They create stars without firmament, weight without gravity, time without history, an airless space of pure denial, an indulgence for fun and profit. This is a climate of preparation...a carnival...a dress rehearsal for absence. Young artist, why do you labor? Your fervency is obscene, obsessional. Do you hope that you have misread my dictums? What has been set in motion will complete itself. Your isness will end without witness. There will be no one to mourn nothing...a perfect double negative to crown mankind’s achievement. Total eclipse. Nothingness. My final repeat will occur for there is nothing to stop it. History will end in silence.
* Ek Kali, Ek Gori, translates to One Black, One White
I sit myself in a green outdoor patio of a Bandra coffee shop and stare up at the chalkboard menu. All I could read was a rubric of exotic coffees and their carmalized mochaed lattéd frapped iced versions. A few minutes later, a black coffee arrives. As the liquit eats through my mouth acrimoniously, I long for the smell of over pasteurized milk, a slice of ginger, a savory of cardamom dust, the crackle of a rusty stick of cinnamon all concocted and alchemized into something else.
Yes, I'm talking about Chai.
Chai to be slurped greedily in chipped glasses. And so I went looking for the perfect cup in Bandra.
Cafe Goodluck
The ceiling fan rattles, clicks and sways as it cools the chai in the chipped porcelain cups that lie below. A boy, a torn banyan walks up to our table and slides two glasses of water across the marble top. Smoke from an entire barrage of cigarettes spirals up to the ceiling as people drink their chai an accompanying glass of cold water, reading newspapers while eating kheema (mince) samosas and buttering their bun muskas. The Cafe permeates much Bombay talk, a bright hum insulated by its vaulted ceilings from the noise of the street outside.
These are the musty, yet strangely comfortable confines of one of the many Irani establishments in Bombay.
The boy slides across briskly to my table and looks at me with accusatory smile.
"Ek Kali chai doosri doodh walli", I tell him thinking about chai.
[t: One Black the second one with milk.]
"Ek Kali, Ek Gori", he repeats as his yellow smile widens.
[t: One Black, One White]
I laugh to myself as he walks away to the kitchen.
The chai arrives shortly only to prove to me yet again that the best cup of chai is served by a yellow smile with missing teeth belonging to a heat drenched body appearing from nowhere only to serve only more amounts of chai.
I am delighted to be adding a rather startling amount of color to the latest issue #399 of Black + White Photography Magazine UK with Simon Callow on the cover.
Thank you so much for having me, @bwphotomag
I was interviewed by the insightful @susanburnstine for the March issue about my work in the series "How The Light Gets In."
I am the issue's "American Connection" and in classic American fashion, I go on a bit overmuch about feelings and splash color around to an alarming degree in an otherwise monochrome publication.
All the pieces in this series began as black and white photographs upon which I layered collected paper ephemera into unfixed collages representing the fragility and brevity of life. I then painted on an abstract dot pattern, rephotographed the pieces and poked hundreds of tiny holes in the resulting prints, adding places for light to get in and love to shine out. It's a multi-faceted process that synthesizes my creative practices to alchemize the dark materials of grief into light.
I hope you get a chance to read the magazine. It's me once again honoring my commitment to being authentic and real in the face of so much that's artificial and fake in the world. Do I have a vulnerability hangover once again? Yes. Do I regret it? No.
Here’s the link to their subscription and order website:
www.gmcsubscriptions.com/product/blackwhite-photography/
Though a UK publication, the magazine is also available at international newsstands and Barnes & Noble in the US.
Edited · 3d
2024 In my Glimmers series I use photographs from my archives layered with found vernacular photos to reinterpret my own work and memories; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express the yearning for something (anything) to pin our hopes on; gathering together what scraps of magic we can find. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger— it is some kind of cue that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to feeling the softness of the sheets on your bed after a long day. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of appreciation or hope, a spirit of being fully alive in that moment, as if, just for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of awe in the presence of Nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again by layering images, alchemizing past awe with present realities. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems; a small step toward helping your body and mind feel both safe and connected. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
* Ek Kali, Ek Gori, translates to One Black, One White
I sit myself in a green outdoor patio of a Bandra coffee shop and stare up at the chalkboard menu. All I could read was a rubric of exotic coffees and their carmalized mochaed lattéd frapped iced versions. A few minutes later, a black coffee arrives. As the liquit eats through my mouth acrimoniously, I long for the smell of over pasteurized milk, a slice of ginger, a savory of cardamom dust, the crackle of a rusty stick of cinnamon all concocted and alchemized into something else.
Yes, I'm talking about Chai.
Chai to be slurped greedily in chipped glasses. And so I went looking for the perfect cup in Bandra.
Cafe Goodluck
The ceiling fan rattles, clicks and sways as it cools the chai in the chipped porcelain cups that lie below. A boy, a torn banyan walks up to our table and slides two glasses of water across the marble top. Smoke from an entire barrage of cigarettes spirals up to the ceiling as people drink their chai an accompanying glass of cold water, reading newspapers while eating kheema (mince) samosas and buttering their bun muskas. The Cafe permeates much Bombay talk, a bright hum insulated by its vaulted ceilings from the noise of the street outside.
These are the musty, yet strangely comfortable confines of one of the many Irani establishments in Bombay.
The boy slides across briskly to my table and looks at me with accusatory smile.
"Ek Kali chai doosri doodh walli", I tell him thinking about chai.
[t: One Black the second one with milk.]
"Ek Kali, Ek Gori", he repeats as his yellow smile widens.
[t: One Black, One White]
I laugh to myself as he walks away to the kitchen.
The chai arrives shortly only to prove to me yet again that the best cup of chai is served by a yellow smile with missing teeth belonging to a heat drenched body appearing from nowhere only to serve only more amounts of chai.
DISTURB MY SLUMBER by Recto Verseau
Participants may enter Disturb My Slumber, a tribute to the mythical Cave of Wonders, day and night. They will be invited to reflect on their individual time of darkness during the pandemic, and share it verbally or in writing inside the walls of the internal space. What terrified them? What did they confront? What did they learn? What treasures may have been unburied by this nightmare? In this way they will be invited to HONOR their experience, SHARE it with the collective and upon the piece’s burn ritual, ALCHEMIZE it.
2024 In my Glimmers series I used photographs from my archives layered with found vernacular photos to reinterpret my own work and memories; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express the yearning for something to pin our hopes on; gathering together scraps of magic. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger— it is some kind of cue, either internal or external that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to feeling the softness of the sheets on your bed after a long day. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of appreciation or hope, a spirit of safety and connection, as if, just for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of awe in the presence of Nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again by layering images, alchemizing past awe with present realities. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems; a small step toward helping your body and mind feel both safe and connected. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
* Ek Kali, Ek Gori, translates to One Black, One White
I sit myself in a green outdoor patio of a Bandra coffee shop and stare up at the chalkboard menu. All I could read was a rubric of exotic coffees and their carmalized mochaed lattéd frapped iced versions. A few minutes later, a black coffee arrives. As the liquit eats through my mouth acrimoniously, I long for the smell of over pasteurized milk, a slice of ginger, a savory of cardamom dust, the crackle of a rusty stick of cinnamon all concocted and alchemized into something else.
Yes, I'm talking about Chai.
Chai to be slurped greedily in chipped glasses. And so I went looking for the perfect cup in Bandra.
Cafe Goodluck
The ceiling fan rattles, clicks and sways as it cools the chai in the chipped porcelain cups that lie below. A boy, a torn banyan walks up to our table and slides two glasses of water across the marble top. Smoke from an entire barrage of cigarettes spirals up to the ceiling as people drink their chai an accompanying glass of cold water, reading newspapers while eating kheema (mince) samosas and buttering their bun muskas. The Cafe permeates much Bombay talk, a bright hum insulated by its vaulted ceilings from the noise of the street outside.
These are the musty, yet strangely comfortable confines of one of the many Irani establishments in Bombay.
The boy slides across briskly to my table and looks at me with accusatory smile.
"Ek Kali chai doosri doodh walli", I tell him thinking about chai.
[t: One Black the second one with milk.]
"Ek Kali, Ek Gori", he repeats as his yellow smile widens.
[t: One Black, One White]
I laugh to myself as he walks away to the kitchen.
The chai arrives shortly only to prove to me yet again that the best cup of chai is served by a yellow smile with missing teeth belonging to a heat drenched body appearing from nowhere only to serve only more amounts of chai.
Saint Vallalar said about his light body: "O God! You have shown me eternal love by bestowing on me the golden body. By merging with my heart You have alchemized my body!"
This is similar to what happened to many Tibetan Saints and to Jesus Christ in his tomb after his crucifixion.
* Ek Kali, Ek Gori, translates to One Black, One White
I sit myself in a green outdoor patio of a Bandra coffee shop and stare up at the chalkboard menu. All I could read was a rubric of exotic coffees and their carmalized mochaed lattéd frapped iced versions. A few minutes later, a black coffee arrives. As the liquit eats through my mouth acrimoniously, I long for the smell of over pasteurized milk, a slice of ginger, a savory of cardamom dust, the crackle of a rusty stick of cinnamon all concocted and alchemized into something else.
Yes, I'm talking about Chai.
Chai to be slurped greedily in chipped glasses. And so I went looking for the perfect cup in Bandra.
Cafe Goodluck
The ceiling fan rattles, clicks and sways as it cools the chai in the chipped porcelain cups that lie below. A boy, a torn banyan walks up to our table and slides two glasses of water across the marble top. Smoke from an entire barrage of cigarettes spirals up to the ceiling as people drink their chai an accompanying glass of cold water, reading newspapers while eating kheema (mince) samosas and buttering their bun muskas. The Cafe permeates much Bombay talk, a bright hum insulated by its vaulted ceilings from the noise of the street outside.
These are the musty, yet strangely comfortable confines of one of the many Irani establishments in Bombay.
The boy slides across briskly to my table and looks at me with accusatory smile.
"Ek Kali chai doosri doodh walli", I tell him thinking about chai.
[t: One Black the second one with milk.]
"Ek Kali, Ek Gori", he repeats as his yellow smile widens.
[t: One Black, One White]
I laugh to myself as he walks away to the kitchen.
The chai arrives shortly only to prove to me yet again that the best cup of chai is served by a yellow smile with missing teeth belonging to a heat drenched body appearing from nowhere only to serve only more amounts of chai.
2024 In my Glimmers series I used photographs from my archives layered with found vernacular photos to reinterpret my own work and memories; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express the yearning for something to pin our hopes on; gathering together scraps of magic. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger— it is some kind of cue, either internal or external that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to feeling the softness of the sheets on your bed after a long day. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of appreciation or hope, a spirit of safety and connection, as if, just for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of awe in the presence of Nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again by layering images, alchemizing past awe with present realities. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems; a small step toward helping your body and mind feel both safe and connected. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
In my Glimmers series I use photographs from my archives layered with found vernacular photos to reinterpret my own work and memories; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express the yearning for something (anything) to pin our hopes on; gathering together what scraps of magic we can find. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger— it is some kind of cue that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to feeling the softness of the sheets on your bed after a long day. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of appreciation or hope, a spirit of being fully alive in that moment, as if, just for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of awe in the presence of Nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again by layering images, alchemizing past awe with present realities. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems; a small step toward helping your body and mind feel both safe and connected. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
Today I am taking all of our wishes off of The Wishing Tree in my backyard. I'll bundle them together with care. And tonight I'll throw all of them into the Summer Solstice bonfire being held nearby at Olbrich Park.
My aim is to alchemize our hopes - to let our dreams be forged by fire.
Perhaps the wishes you made came true already. Maybe they are just beginning to spring to life. In any case, keep the faith and pay attention. True intention always manifests itself somehow...but often not in the way one expects.
Detail from the Triptych, CHAOS, of MARTYRS OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN, the Feminine Entelechy. The floating letters at each corner of the triangle and at the lower center outside of it spell GAEA, the significance inherent in the piece as a whole. The writing in the Triangle of the central panel of the triptych is transcribed below:
[BEING]
I am the eye of Chaos...a single point of light illuminating the duality of that which is….I am the eternal moment…the personification of isness….Those that seek me would become me…painters of light…diviners of the line between light and shadow…invaders of shadow, conquerors of shadow….But always there is shadow…definer of light. I am denied and defined out of human need as here again I am defined…given purpose, given audience, given history. I am nothing and everything…I am Being, the invention of being….Washed in shadow…reflecting shadow I am what I seek. Forced by desire, formed by chance, I am the shape of light filtered through the motes of chaos….I am becoming…the reflection of process….Forced through the conflicted grid, formed and forming, I seek pause within interstices of silence. In hiatus, I lid the naked eye of desire and dream of static order…personification of the void…Herein gods are born….Stretched out over vast continents of time, I am a palimpsest of the stains and etches of prevailing certitudes…weaving whole cloth from Procrustean slumber….Layer upon layer of intersection and repose have assured me a kind of history…a sequential pattern of survival. My faces are legion, conflicting and parallel….I am the mirror and mimic of chaos….Beneath lidded eye, I paint the cave walls of myself with remembered light…images formed and forming to create a chamber of comprehension…a brief moment of semblance before Desire forces the lid and bleaches the walls with sight….In repose, I create the gestalts of recognition, the metaphors of embrace…the structures and strictures of redundancy…real to actual…the narcosis of Desire…the reification of light…the paradox of creation: In order to make, I must Be…In order to Be, I must make…In order to wake, I must sleep…In order to live, I must die…Obtected, I created myself within the cradled pupa of becoming….With Desire’s Vision inverted…eye lidded in repose…sparks of comported light explore my interior in a microcosm of resemblant chaos creating chambers from the mirrored grid….Trapped, compartmentalized, chaos is divided and restrained through metaphors of concordant gestalt….I was born of desire from the first question imposed by chance…the first chamber internalized ripped from the interstices of chaos….I am a mirror in search of reflection….Awake, I scan the motes of chaos…in repose, I dream the dreams of order….Universe within universe within universe the stratum layers from infinity to infinity in phyla of similitude…macrocosm to microcosm, all, reflecting sheets of isness….This is the bed of Procrustes…sheet upon sheet of process layered to the cut of generic repose…Each sheet cut to the perimeters of survival…specific in its pattern of disclose….It is survival that sharpens my edges and directs the eye of desire…it is survival that rips the silent interstices from the grids of chaos to submit becoming to the angled whims of time…and it is time that distorts the hierarchies of being…bending light to the chambered interludes of possibility….It is Being who has invented time…and it is time that sculpts the contoured weights of being to a human scale….Time is the obtect of becoming…folding furtherance in protective embrace isolating Being from the tides of chaos in a hubris of comprehension…dreams of order…re-creating chaos in microcosm within the cycling solutions of being…alchemizing space into time…and seeking survival through the dramatization of impulse….Time is the armor of Being…obtect of becoming….I am of human invention…created of desire, I am the survival of a species. Existing only in evidence I create evidence to support my existence. Projecting myself into the center of chaos, I create chaos to surround me. In a layering palimpsest of discovery, I seek myself in a mirror of large design. Desire motivates my becoming and objectifies my desire. Born of the middle, I seek beginnings and endings. I am a metaphor in search of gestalt…a tautology in search of resolve….August Sixth Nineteen Hundred and Forty Five:…I am blinded by light…the layering lid burnt crisp in mirrored sun…Trapped, encapsulated…riveted to a spinning orb of containment…I am raped with light….Light enters my chambers and strips free the shadows from the contoured walls…holocaust!…I am beset by light…ravaged and pillaged…I am entered and left naked of construction…There exists only space…and light. I am in hiatus….Fleeing the light, old shadows drape threads of history across the scoured walls…insinuating angles into liquid light. Raped by light…I am purged by light. Scanning the infinities for survival, I seek to clothe myself in new tapestries of definition…projecting desire into Gaean cycles of becoming…I seek survival….I am emptied of the father…raped by the father I am purged of the father…his death, as foretold, lives in fire…his circle closed…there exists only light….The absence thrills me…the dissolving obtect frees my wings as I scan the shadows of the sun. Am I dying?…Blinded by light, I am born of light…Suspended, my wings unfurl the grids of chaos…And if I die… Who dreams my death….
"MARTYRS OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN examines the First Holocaust. Based on the blue triangle that descends the back panel of PROCRUSTES IN SITU, the third section of the Trilogy concerns itself with the destruction of the cities Admah, Gomorrah, Sodom, and Zeboiim which the Old Testament attributes to the wrath of God. It examines the procrustean constrictions of patriarchy and the liberating challenge of feminine entelechy through the songs of Procrustes and the opposing chants of Chance, Being, and Desire. Masculine gestalt versus feminine insurrection." Robert Cremean
Collection:
Fresno Art Museum
Fresno, California
2024 In my Glimmers series I used photographs from my archives layered with found vernacular photos to reinterpret my own work and memories; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express the yearning for something to pin our hopes on; gathering together scraps of magic. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger— it is some kind of cue, either internal or external that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to feeling the softness of the sheets on your bed after a long day. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of appreciation or hope, a spirit of safety and connection, as if, just for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of awe in the presence of Nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again by layering images, alchemizing past awe with present realities. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems; a small step toward helping your body and mind feel both safe and connected. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
* Ek Kali, Ek Gori, translates to One Black, One White
I sit myself in a green outdoor patio of a Bandra coffee shop and stare up at the chalkboard menu. All I could read was a rubric of exotic coffees and their carmalized mochaed lattéd frapped iced versions. A few minutes later, a black coffee arrives. As the liquit eats through my mouth acrimoniously, I long for the smell of over pasteurized milk, a slice of ginger, a savory of cardamom dust, the crackle of a rusty stick of cinnamon all concocted and alchemized into something else.
Yes, I'm talking about Chai.
Chai to be slurped greedily in chipped glasses. And so I went looking for the perfect cup in Bandra.
Cafe Goodluck
The ceiling fan rattles, clicks and sways as it cools the chai in the chipped porcelain cups that lie below. A boy, a torn banyan walks up to our table and slides two glasses of water across the marble top. Smoke from an entire barrage of cigarettes spirals up to the ceiling as people drink their chai an accompanying glass of cold water, reading newspapers while eating kheema (mince) samosas and buttering their bun muskas. The Cafe permeates much Bombay talk, a bright hum insulated by its vaulted ceilings from the noise of the street outside.
These are the musty, yet strangely comfortable confines of one of the many Irani establishments in Bombay.
The boy slides across briskly to my table and looks at me with accusatory smile.
"Ek Kali chai doosri doodh walli", I tell him thinking about chai.
[t: One Black the second one with milk.]
"Ek Kali, Ek Gori", he repeats as his yellow smile widens.
[t: One Black, One White]
I laugh to myself as he walks away to the kitchen.
The chai arrives shortly only to prove to me yet again that the best cup of chai is served by a yellow smile with missing teeth belonging to a heat drenched body appearing from nowhere only to serve only more amounts of chai.
a river can alchemize
something cutting
into an adornment
one a woman wears
to soften
the ragged rhythms of days
carved into her face
to create an excuse
for him to reach across the table
and cup the side of her face
and say
“what are these here?”
she thinks
but does not say
“they are an excuse
to seek god
in a stranger’s arms
an excuse
to work a blank slate
into a flower bouquet”
/////////////////////////////////////////////
2024 In my Glimmers series I use photographs from my archives layered with found vernacular photos to reinterpret my own work and memories; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express the yearning for something to pin our hopes on; gathering together scraps of magic. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger— it is some kind of cue, either internal or external that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to feeling the softness of the sheets on your bed after a long day. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of appreciation or hope, a spirit of safety and connection, as if, just for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of awe in the presence of Nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again by layering images, alchemizing past awe with present realities. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems; a small step toward helping your body and mind feel both safe and connected. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
In the heart of innovation, where the gears of imagination mesh with the pistons of progress, the Genesis Engine thrums with vibrant life. A conglomerate of creation and chaos, it is the forge of wonders, the crucible where the raw materials of thought are alchemized into the gold of reality.
This is no mere machine; it is a masterpiece, the pinnacle of a tinkerer's dream, where every sprocket and spring sings in harmony with the universe's grand design. Its core pulses with orbs of potentiality, each a world awaiting its birthright of existence. The flames of inspiration lick the edges of possibility, kindling the sparks that will light up new galaxies.
Colors erupt in a carnival of creation, painting the canvas of the void with splashes of invention and strokes of genius. Look closely and see the minute intricacies, the delicate balance of order and entropy that propels the engine ever forward. Here, the impossible is merely untried, and the limits are just horizons waiting to be transcended.
Behold the Genesis Engine, the heart of all invention, where every burst of color is a testament to the boundless realm of ideas. In its perpetual motion lies the promise of tomorrow—a promise that within the chaos of creation, lies the blueprint of new worlds, new adventures, and new wonders.
Mural: Alchemizing - (Oak Park Brewing Company mural excerpt)
Mural Artists: Shaun Burner @ instagram.com/shaunburner/ +
S.V. Williams @ instagram.com/svwilliamsart/
Photographer: Janice Marie Foote
Location: Oak Park Brewing Company in Sacramento, CA - www.opbrewco.com/
Feliz de colaborar en las aventuras didácticas de Maité Pegoraro desde su Astarté
Luego de alquimizar juntas eventos previos:
facilitaré dentro de este nuevo Ciclo de varios meses, algunos momentos de Escritura Creativa:
comienza HOY
Astarté :
👉🌿 Les presentamos al equipo de trabajo que estarán compartiendo sus conocimientos y abriendo propuestas en el Laboratorio Botánico 👏☘️
🌳 Maité Pegoraro @astarte.evolucion
🌱 Eve Hernández Roque - @masqueyuyos
️ Aye Salas @nipoarte_
✍ Karina Polacek
@karinapolacek
@amoralcolor
Muchas gracias por abrirse a compartir 💜
✨Comenzamos en Julio esta experiencia de conexión, aprendizaje y expansión 🌀
.
.
✉️ Escribinos si estás interesado a nuestro mail astarteevolucion@gmail.com
About me
I AM KARINA POLACEK
I LIVE WITHIN ART
PAINTING IS MY MOST PROLIFIC LANGUAGE
I LOVE LIGHT WITHIN COLOR , AND THAT HAS LED ME TO RESEARCH THE #COLORSNURTURE THEME, WHICH I LOVE, THROUGH WATERCOLOR PAINTINGS
WRITING HAS BEEN IN MY LIFE FOR ABOUT 3 DECADES
I LOVE FACILITATING MAGIC BRIDGES
GROUP CREATIVE WRITING : ALLOWS FOR ONE;S OWN VOICE AND THE WORD BEING ALCHEMIZED BY THE COLLECTIVE RESONANCES
I FEEL FASCINATED AND REJOICED BY WHAT IS GENERATED BY THESE ENCOUNTERS.
I will be facilitating Creative Writing moments within the Botanical Lab, 5 month @astarte.evolucion workshop by Maité Pegoraro
In my Glimmers series I use photographs from my archives layered with found vernacular photos to reinterpret my own work and memories; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express the yearning for something (anything) to pin our hopes on; gathering together what scraps of magic we can find. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger— it is some kind of cue that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to feeling the softness of the sheets on your bed after a long day. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of appreciation or hope, a spirit of being fully alive in that moment, as if, just for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of awe in the presence of Nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again by layering images, alchemizing past awe with present realities. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems; a small step toward helping your body and mind feel both safe and connected. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
2024 In the new Glimmers series I used found photos layered with photographs from my archives to reinterpret my own work and the past; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express this yearning for something to pin our hopes on; gathering together what scraps of magic I can find. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger—it is some kind of cue, either internal or external that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to seeing a photograph of a loved one. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of love or hope, a spirit of safety and connection, as if, for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of “awe” in the presence of nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again, alchemizing past awe with present reality. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
2024 In my Glimmers series I used photographs from my archives layered with found vernacular photos to reinterpret my own work and memories; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express the yearning for something to pin our hopes on; gathering together scraps of magic. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger— it is some kind of cue, either internal or external that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to feeling the softness of the sheets on your bed after a long day. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of appreciation or hope, a spirit of safety and connection, as if, just for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of awe in the presence of Nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again by layering images, alchemizing past awe with present realities. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems; a small step toward helping your body and mind feel both safe and connected. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
2024 In my Glimmers series I use photographs from my archives layered with found vernacular photos to reinterpret my own work and memories; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express the yearning for something (anything) to pin our hopes on; gathering together what scraps of magic we can find. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger— it is some kind of cue that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to feeling the softness of the sheets on your bed after a long day. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of appreciation or hope, a spirit of being fully alive in that moment, as if, just for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges, with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of awe in the presence of Nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again by layering images, alchemizing past awe with present realities. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems; a small step toward helping your body and mind feel both safe and connected. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
2024 New work - In my new Glimmers series I used found photos layered with photographs from my archives to reinterpret my own work and the past; reaching for the light in dark times. In this series I incorporate something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue to express this yearning for something to pin our hopes on; gathering together what scraps of magic I can find. A glimmer is the exact opposite of a trigger—it is some kind of cue, either internal or external that brings one back to a sense of joy or safety. A glimmer can be anything from catching a view of the sunset out your window to seeing a photograph of a loved one. A glimmer is a moment that elicits a spark of love or hope, a spirit of safety and connection, as if, for a second, all's right with the world. The concept is part of Polyvagal Theory, coined by behavioral neuroscientist Stephen Porges with the term glimmer introduced in 2018 by licensed clinical social worker Deb Dana.
For me glimmers come in as feelings of “awe” in the presence of nature. Awe is an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, even a shiver of mystery in knowing that you are connected to something larger than yourself; something powerful and wise and grand. A sense of wonder arises from the profound curiosity and amazement for things beyond your immediate understanding, experienced with the full spectrum of the senses. I raise my camera to my eye in an act of reverence; later I relive these moments of magic again, alchemizing past awe with present reality. In our overstimulated world, glimmers can be the answer to regulating our overwhelmed nervous systems. Science shows it is possible to anchor yourself in this hope even in the darkest of times, and who among us couldn’t use a respite, however fleeting, in the cacophony of our chaotic world.
Kate Macdonald (K'tiona) finally getting the crowd out of their seats and into dance mode...
k’tiona (Kate Macdonald) was born and raised in Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki. Proudly, African Nova Scotian and queer. Since she was young art has been a way for her to process her identity and the world/systems around her. She has been long intrigued by the possibilities of creating immersive other worlds. Themes that are of particular interest include themes of justice, healing, joy, magic, self, community, energy, shapes/movement, gender, the ocean, astrology, and ancestral connection - of course all seen through and interpreted through a Black lens. k’tiona has recently moved towards alchemizing sound, movement, projection, performance, visual art and magic all in one space in attempts to create and immersive experience.
sound, projection, and movement all coming together to create a new planet. what's it gunna be? a weird ride, for sure.
I am delighted to be adding a rather startling amount of color to the latest issue #399 March 2025 of Black + White Photography Magazine UK with Simon Callow on the cover.
Thank you so much for having me, @bwphotomag
I was interviewed by the insightful @susanburnstine for the March issue about my work in the series "How The Light Gets In."
I am the issue's "American Connection" and in classic American fashion, I go on a bit overmuch about feelings and splash color around to an alarming degree in an otherwise monochrome publication.
All the pieces in this series began as black and white photographs upon which I layered collected paper ephemera into unfixed collages representing the fragility and brevity of life. I then painted on an abstract dot pattern, rephotographed the pieces and poked hundreds of tiny holes in the resulting prints, adding places for light to get in and love to shine out. It's a multi-faceted process that synthesizes my creative practices to alchemize the dark materials of grief into light.
I hope you get a chance to read the magazine. It's me once again honoring my commitment to being authentic and real in the face of so much that's artificial and fake in the world. Do I have a vulnerability hangover once again? Yes. Do I regret it? No.
Here’s the link to their subscription and order website:
www.gmcsubscriptions.com/product/blackwhite-photography/
Though a UK publication, the magazine is also available at international newsstands and Barnes & Noble in the US.
Edited · 3d
k’tiona
k’tiona (Kate Macdonald) was born and raised in Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki. Proudly, African Nova Scotian and queer. Since she was young art has been a way for her to process her identity and the world/systems around her. She has been long intrigued by the possibilities of creating immersive other worlds. Themes that are of particular interest include themes of justice, healing, joy, magic, self, community, energy, shapes/movement, gender, the ocean, astrology, and ancestral connection - of course all seen through and interpreted through a Black lens. k’tiona has recently moved towards alchemizing sound, movement, projection, performance, visual art and magic all in one space in attempts to create and immersive experience.
sound, projection, and movement all coming together to create a new planet. what's it gunna be? a weird ride, for sure.
In partnership with Eyelevel
instagram: @kaymackd, @themagicproject_, @omni_astrology