Hypervision -- Spirit of Place

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Images from the same spot through one year. Audio captured at the same place.

Time-lapse speed-up of human perception yields a powerful sense of Mother Earth energies unfolding in a yearly cycle.

Consciousness, Indeterminacy, Reality Models, Shamanism, Psychedelic Medicines - oh my!

Terence McKenna at his best? Episode 426 ("Alien Footprints") of the Psychedelic Salon podcast is one of the most succinct raps by Terence McKenna on his favorite topic of hyper-dimensional reality and our highly evolved monkey mind.

“The truth about reality is that nowhere is it writ large that monkeys should be able to elicit the final understanding of it.”

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:

Happy New Year 2015

Here is my New Years card for this new year...

Forest Goddess Variations

My recent Pachamama series got me interested in playing around more with the emergence of a figure from (within) the positive space of a veil of leaves. Here is a selection of Forest Goddess image variations including some calling upon her guise as animal spirit totem.

But a few of the Goddess variations I played with stand out in terms of 'hidden mystery' and embodied forest spirit energy. Check these out:

Offering Mandala for Pachamama

I've been thinking for quite awhile about Navaho healing sand paintings. As part of the ceremonial process, real objects such as stones, herbs, flowers and meaningful "trinkets" are incorporated into the visual symbology of the mandala. These temporary mandalas can often be built-up via layers, reminding me of a Peruvian shaman's medicine bundle offering (despacho).

Cut flowers are as transient as any ceremonial sand mandala when it comes to making "art", so I decided that I'd construct a digital version of a floral offering... using photos of actual blooms from my garden - in this case, Mexican Sage, Rose and Datura.

This is one of the images I came up with based upon what I had been making for the Pachamama series (showing her hidden spirit face emerging through forest leaves.

Pachamama Offering Mandala

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"

Visionaries Group Show at Blue Door Gallery

Several of  my Plant Spirit pieces are in the current show at Blue Door Gallery in Yonkers.

Sept. 6 thru Oct 11, 2014

Blue Door Gallery

13 Riverdale Ave, Yonkers, NY

914.375.5100

www.BlueDoorArtsCenter.org

New Work: Plant Spirits

I've been working on-and-off on my series of Plant Spirit images for several years, posting some earlier versions previously on this blog. Ultimately, once I have enough "inventory," I plan to produce a set of divination cards from these based upon journey work to commune with each particular plant spirit.

Below is a sampling from the current batch / current versions of images. The latest versions will also get posted to my Shaman Dreaming site under the "Plant Spirit Medicine" viewer link.

Black and Blue Sage

Honeysuckle

Peony

Redwood grove

Salvia Divinorum

Reworking Stuff

Even with digital work sitting around the studio (actually, filed on the computer), there comes a point when one just has to "face the music" and rework images that have grown to be bothersome - not quite what was envisioned, somehow awkward & improperly resolved. The digital equivalent to taking out the palette knife and scrapping away part of a painting...

With that in mind, I thought I would offer up two examples from the Plant Spirit series which show how the earlier work was modified into a better result. Or at least I think so. Mostly this consisted of simplifying the primary colored energy fields. I still haven't decided which version of Mugwort will be the "official" one. (You can add a comment below as to which version you prefer and why, if you'd like. I'd be interested in hearing your opinions!)

Mugwort - current version (?)

Mugwort - current version (alternate)

Mugwort - earlier version

Brugmansia - current version

Brugmansia - earlier version

New Work: Pachamama

While working on new Plant Spirit imagery, I've been listening to some podcasts by Dr. Bruce Damer recounting his new myth about the 'Great Mother' and the evolution of our Earth's biosphere - a hyper-conscious intelligence embodied within and emerging from the neuronal net of plants (root brains), bacteria, and mycelia fungi. (His podcast is called Dr. Bruce's Levity Zone - or you can subscribe via iTunes. Look for episodes from 2013, esp. those recorded at Symbiois festival or at Burning Man.)

Out of this, I began playing with a few elements imaging Pachamama (Great Mother). A couple of examples below.

Rorschach Re-Imagined: Native American GIFs

Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979, Sitka, Alaska) is a conceptual artist inspired by, and extending, generations of Tlingit creativity. His work strikes a balance between the traditions of his heritage and an incisive contemporary approach to manifesting ideas visually.

To coincide with the exhibition "Your Feast Has Ended" at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Galanin collaborated with Seattle-based artist and designer Christian Petersen on a series of animated GIFs that "deal with the ideas of psychology and interpretation" and how ideas (symbols) transform over time. The traditional Native American imagery created by Galanin transforms into the ink blots of the Rorschach test.

Original article: Rorschach Re-Imagined: Artist Nicholas Galanin’s Native American GIF Psychology

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

Mudras

I've started to play around with various iPad graphics apps trying to see what might work for my imagery. I fell in love with 'Percolator.' I've been using it to create starry energy fields / auras around a figure, especially focused on CUs of the hands while in a meditation or yoga pose. Thus, the notion of the current MUDRA series.

I printed a number of them on this wacky silver 'holographic' paper which creates an interesting low-fi visual where black prints clearly but any color becomes a shimmery coat over the silver sparkle, seen best as certain angles. Well, I can't reproduce the effect directly via .jpgs. These have to be seen in person. (They are being shown in 'Photography Takes Over 2014' at the Upstream Gallery in Hastings-on-Hudson - opening Sunday Feb. 2, 2-5pm.)

I have included a few of the 'base' images below (on white background).

And here is a colorful variant on one of these that I particularly like:

Terence McKenna Quotes

Over the last few months I have been collecting a few short snippets from various recorded McKenna talks (as posted on the Psychedelic Salon).

Here are four of them:

#1 - The felt presence of immediate experience is all you'll ever know...



#2 - Reclaim experience. Do not give your authenticity away!



#3 - What is the Primary Datum? Being Here Now!



#4 - The Plant Teachers as a gateway on the Path.

iPhone Case

I got a good discount offer from VistaPrint in my email yesterday so I decided to create an iPhone case. What do you think? Should I go into production?

Planetary Mandala

I recently started work on a new series the I have been thinking of as planetary Goddess mandalas. I suppose this might seem astrologically influenced, but not exactly. More shamanically attuned / intended.

The original notion was to work with a double exposure technique using the Goddess bodies overlaid by sacred flowers, tree branches and leaf textures. In the heart of each mandala appears the particular astronomical body. The Goddesses hold court in each image - 4 in the Solar mandala, 3 in the Gaian mandala, 2 in the Lunar mandala, and 1 in the Venusian mandala. Additionally, various associated birds and power animals appear (Earth -> owl, Moon -> hummingbird, Sun -> hawk, Venus -> bat and rattlesnake).

Gaian Goddess Mandala

Lunar Goddess Mandala

Solar Goddess Mandala

Venusian Goddess Mandala

These pieces are current on view in the "Double Exposure" exhibit at the Blue Door Gallery in Yonkers thru April 27th. www.bluedoorgallery.org

Green Tara Visualization

It's taken me quite a bit of time to finish this series of images for the Tara Self-generation visualization practice. (I took the empowerment over a year ago...) In order to simply present the sequence, I decided to put together a gif animation combining the images with associated textual instructions.

The sequence is based upon my notes from the original empowerment ceremony as well as study of the booklet "The Yoga of Enlightened Mother Arya Tara" from Tharpa Publications. The images present the core sequence - including a "no self" meditation practice at the end, but excluding the ceremony's typical framing prayers and offerings.

Green Tara Visualization