For Chamundi, (Chakra Ascendance) In Mysore, India, there is a temple dedicated to the Goddess Chamundi on the top of a hill, Chamundi Betta, reachable by climbing the Thousand Steps. As they climb the hill, people stoop to leave marks with their fingertips on each step and every step along the way. They use the yellow spice turmeric, and the red pigment kumkum. These pigments are kept in abundance at shrines along the way, encouraging you to participate in the ritual. As you climb, and leave these marks, your journey becomes a meditation and an offering. You leave a trace of yourself in your wake; you participate with a river of humanity in designating space as sacred. The stairs are luminous, covered in these glorious colors; a gorgeous integration of human presence in the natural world. This astonishing canyon in Mill Creek, frequented almost entirely by locals, has been a temple for me as well. I have spent many hours hiking, meditating, healing, and taking photos. Here in this canyon, I feel both grounded and free to be fully and authentically myself. I wanted to do something to designate this as sacred space, and started to make marks with natural earth pigments on the steps that are built into the canyon. I did this as they do in India, using only dabs of pigment with my fingertips, but as I did it here, in my hometown, I felt so lucky to have this easy, and free space so close to home. I couldn’t help but think about all of the effort and intense amounts of labor that was required to build these steps in the first place, and how grateful I am that it exists for all of us. We in Moab, Utah are incredibly fortunate to have immediate escape into nature all around us, which is one of the greatest reasons to live here. What is not always considered is how much work goes into creating these avenues for escape, particularly onto public lands. Many people are involved in the planning and design of these trails and access points: meetings are held, funding must be procured, bureaucratic hoops jumped through, and many hours of hard physical labor are required to create these trails, which are, by design, invisible. They are meant to integrate as minimally into the environment as possible. The piece that I created, For Chamundi, is designed to make this work impossible to overlook, but only for a couple of days. The pigments that I use are Earth-based natural pigments, completely non-toxic and non-staining, and will wear away quickly under foot traffic and weather. I understand if people are concerned, but I would never do anything that would compromise the environment for the sake of making my work. This ephemeral work is intended to designate the canyon as sacred space, to celebrate the people involved in creating this incredible system of trails that give us easy and free access to this sacred space, and to contribute to the unique and magical environment for those that experience the rainbow steps, while they last. I entered this work into the Moab Plein Air competition, in the category of Dry Media. It was an attempt to expand the definition of what Plein Air might be in the contemporary art context. The work has met with some criticism from some members of the community, but many others who have visited the site, have had a wonderful experience, and see what I have done as beautiful. A GIANT thank you to Logan Hansen, who threw the video together for me in the last minute, to Walter Davis for the camera, to my father who gave me the pigment for my birthday, not knowing what it would be used for, (but now approves;) _______ FOLLOW LIPSapp Hits56 Radio _______ FB: r-js/1rlggeQ / TW: r-js/1us3SdS / Listen to LIPSapp Hits56 Radio r-js/1dOIQ18 #thewho #beatles #elvis #jimihendrix #dylan
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 03:38:56 +0000