Haiku Variations - Tara & Chod Dakini With Spinning Yantra

 Haiku 112 Tara & Chod Dakini With Spinning Yantra  #1 (00:16)

Haiku 112 Tara & Chod Dakini With Spinning Yantra #2  (00:16)

Haiku 114 Tara & Chod Dakini With Spinning Yantra  #3 (00:16)

Sample Haikus from Buddhaverse Variations ©2020-21

[Please turn on audio to hear chant/soundtrack] 

--- WATCH FULL SET OF HAIKUS AT HOME --- 

https://vimeo.com/showcase/7916179 

Select thumbnails to view on Vimeo Showcase page, or click thumbnail title (ex: v001) to watch & enable autoplay.

Chod Dakini & Tara (Haiku Variants with TAVIS Fractal Gradient)

 Haiku 108 Chod Tara TAVIS Portrait #1  (00:18)

 Haiku 111 Chod Tara TAVIS Portrait #4  (00:18)

Sample Haikus from Buddhaverse Variations ©2020-21

[Please turn on audio to hear chant/soundtrack] 

--- WATCH FULL SET OF HAIKUS AT HOME --- 

https://vimeo.com/showcase/7916179 

Select thumbnails to view on Vimeo Showcase page, or click thumbnail title (ex: v001) to watch & enable autoplay.

Haiku Variations - Tara & Chod Dakini

 

Haiku 99 - Tara & Chod Dakini with Flower Halo (00:16)

Haiku 100 - Tara & Chod Dakini with Flower Halo (00:16)

Sample Haikus from Buddhaverse Variations ©2020-21

[Please turn on audio to hear Dalai Lama's Tara chant] 

--- WATCH FULL SET OF HAIKUS AT HOME --- 

https://vimeo.com/showcase/7916179 

Select thumbnails to view on Vimeo Showcase page, or click thumbnail title (ex: v001) to watch & enable autoplay.

3 Haikus: Merkaba Yantra with Female Dieties

 Haiku 87 - Merkaba Yantra with Vajrayogini & Dakinis (00:14)

Haiku 88 - Merkaba Yantra with Dakini & Pair of Durgas (00:14)

Haiku 89 - Merkaba Yantra Wireframe with Dakini (00:14)

Sample Haikus from Buddhaverse Variations ©2020-21

[Please turn on audio to hear chant] 

--- WATCH FULL SET OF HAIKUS AT HOME --- 

https://vimeo.com/showcase/7916179 

Select thumbnails to view on Vimeo Showcase page, or click thumbnail title (ex: v001) to watch & enable autoplay.

Haikus 82 & 84 - Prayer Wheel with Emerging Energy Field

Haiku 82 - Prayer Wheel with Energy Field & Emerging Rutt-Etra Buddha (00:20)

Haiku 84 - Prayer Wheel with Energy Field & Emerging Flying Dakini (00:17)

Sample Haikus from Buddhaverse Variations ©2020-21

[Please turn on audio to hear soundtrack] 

--- WATCH FULL SET OF HAIKUS AT HOME --- 

https://vimeo.com/showcase/7916179 

Select thumbnails to view on Vimeo Showcase page, or click thumbnail title (ex: v001) to watch & enable autoplay.

Haiku 34 - Dancing Dakini Pair in Energy Matrix

Haiku 34 - Dancing Dakini Pair in Energy Matrix (00:23)

Sample Haikus from Buddhaverse Variations ©2020-21

[Please turn on audio to hear chant soundtrack] 

--- WATCH FULL SET OF HAIKUS AT HOME --- 

https://vimeo.com/showcase/7916179 

Select thumbnails to view on Vimeo Showcase page, or click thumbnail title (ex: v001) to watch & enable autoplay.

Upstream Gallery 'NEW BEGINNINGS' 2022

My newest series of short video haikus (Buddhaverse Variations ©2020-21) is on view at the Upstream Gallery this month: 

Annual National Juried Small Works Exhibition

‘NEW BEGINNINGS’ 2022

January 6 thru January 30th, 2022

Location: 

8 Main Street, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, 10706 

www.upstreamgallery.com 

Gallery Hours: 

Thursdays & Fridays: 12:30 - 5:30 pm

Saturdays: 10 am to 5:30 pm

Sundays: 12:30 - 5:30 pm

Self Portrait as Thai Medicine Buddha (00:15)

Use QR code to watch my newest set of short video animations entitled Buddhaverse Variations in my Vimeo Showcase.

https://vimeo.com/showcase/7916179

Online access to the complete set of 125 video haikus. Select thumbnails to view on Vimeo Showcase page, or click thumbnail title (ex: v001) to watch & enable autoplay.

Less Is More

'Less Is More' is the current exhibition at Upstream Gallery. It's described as a Juried National Small Works Exhibition running from January 7th through January 31st. Open Thursday - Sunday, 12:30 - 5:30pm

8 Main Street, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, 10706

email: UpstreamGallery26@gmail.com

gallery phone: 914-674-8548

I have work in the show - a small 5.5"x3.5"x3" sculptural piece entitled Portable Healing Shrine. This piece is built upon a found object (a small hand made, hand-painted Hindu shrine that I found at the AsiaBarong marketplace in Great Barrington). While the found shrine was rather crudely made and painted, I thought it would be fun to use the wooden framework to create a personal shrine using my own imagery. 

A selection of images follow:

a front view of the shrine with all doors closed

the shrine under its protective glass jar in the gallery

a view with one side door partially opened

showing Medicine Buddha and emerging lotus

the shrine with all outer doors open
showing hands making offerings (multiple panels) and
Protective Dakinis dancing on the doors of the inner-most realm

the doors of the inner sanctum opened to reveal
the meditating Medicine Buddha flanked by flaming lotus flowers

Buddhaverse Variations: Chod Dakini Tara Portrait

As my last "before and after" posting showing a source / reference "static" image used as the basis for a video haiku, I chose to offer one of my favorite Buddhaverse Variations to serve as a catchy lead-in to this batch of posts about my new series of short video animations.

The source image (from 2014-15) is a diptych showing Tara (on the right) and a Chod Dakini (on the left). 

Chod Dakini & Tara 

haiku 100

Buddhaverse Variations: Vajrayogini

This post is a "before and after" showing the source image and one of the haiku animations inspired by it. The "before" is a Thangka from 2008 showing Vajrayogini drinking blood within a 6 pointed yantra (3d merkaba) surrounded by protective entities and other symbols.

Vajrayogini Medicine Thangka

haiku 87

More Glitch Tests

I wanted to play around with a larger, more complex image to apply the various glitch processing upon. I chose a Jewel Tree image as the base with the following results:

This is the original unmodified image:

Vajrayogini Glitches

Been playing around with some glitch FX techniques in Photoshop. Here are samples applied to a Vajrayogini image from my library of composited Buddhist figures.

The original composit image:

Bill Tavis has performed his fractal halftone mapping on my Tara / Dakini diptych resulting in a wonderful GIF animation. Thanks again!

You can read about the source artwork here: Tara Variations.

See more of Bill Tavis's stuff on his Tumblr.

Buddha Self via Dreamscope

More art images passed thru various Deep Dreaming filters. Interesting results.

Tara Variations (Dual Portraits)

These most recent Tara variations are created as actual dual portraits in one panel, rather than like the previous post describing side-by-side diptych panels.

Tara Variations

For the new year, I began a series of Tara portraits and variations. Here are a pair with floral offerings.

When output and installed for a show, one of the panels would be reflected (reversed) so that the figures are looking toward one another, like this:

Fractal Ocean of Being

OK, so I renamed this series from when I worked on the first image... As originally posted last January (1/30/14), I had been playing around with a new fractal generator (for iPad from Kai of Kai Power Tools fame) and got very intrigued by the idea that the infinite froth of space / edges within a fractal map might be a great visual metaphor for the for the unseen particle froth of the quantum realm. From that, it was a short step to thinking about the infinite expression of Tara throughout space & time as being like the quantum foam.

Below is the original image from this series and a follow-on images using essentially the same elements ('deity particles') but a different space/time foam.

Green Tara Emerging From Ocean of Being #1

Green Tara Emerging From Ocean of Being #2

This image (below) from the fractal series is a "close up" of Tara's energetic self-manifestation and blessings for all beings.

Green Tara Self-Manifestation

Dakini Redux

Early in December I had my 60th birthday. One thought that bothered me concerned what would happen to my artwork when I'm dead and gone? Would anyone really be able to trundle through endless directories of work on my computer to discover everything? True, a lot of stuff is posted on my various websites, but... So, over the holidays I printed out a bunch of my images and organized them into presentation binders.

Well, some older images bothered me greatly and I decided to go back in to rework them. Below is an example of the before and after state of one of my Dakini images. By removing a lot of the background (photo of a golden geometric pattern from a ornamental door) and remixing the figure's layers, I think the newest version is much more dynamic and allows the Dakini figure to be read better.

Dakini "before"

Dakini "after"

Fractal Foam of Being

I started playing with a fractal app for the iPad. Shades of 1980s! As I fooled around, I happened across a few interesting rendering settings that made me think of quantum energy fields. That got me wanting to create an image of emergent space filled with manifestations of Tara, Medicine Buddha, Mahakala, Dakinis and other protectors.

So this is the first image I came up with. At low rez (screen rez) it's hard to see the fine detail in the various "atoms" of Medicine Buddha who follow the sweeping curves of the fractal spaces. But there is a sense of pattern and energy exchange / flow in any case.

Can't wait to get this printed out LARGE (30"x36") to reveal the full details!

Green Tara in Field of Self-Manifestation

The Magic of the Spirit Realm

I periodically meditate on the issue of iconography (physical/visual form) and how this relates to the Buddhist notion that everything is MIND, everything is ONE (and so forth) according to deepest Buddhist teachings. Within these traditions, there is an understanding of the surface (apparent) truth and of deeper (hidden) esoteric truths. In the case of a figure such as Tara, she is seen as a female embodiment of the Buddha. Of course, ultimately, there is only one Buddha MIND such that everything is encompassed. To speak of Tara as a differentiated figure is thus somewhat misleading. Although she presents herself that way to the practitioner/meditator, deep down, it's all mind energy of the ONE (voidness)... Likewise, when the Buddhist teaching of death and rebirth are examined, the Bardo teachings, it is explicitly said that what you experience after death is based upon your expectations. The demons and protectors of the Bardo realm are a mental construct. Self projection of the mind's delusions.

Read more ->