The Arts in Healing

Tags

aesthetics, architecture, art, healing, Mayo Clinic, public spaces

This summer my brother took me on an art tour of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and I captured a few of my favorites in photos.

I was impressed with how well they integrated art and music and places to rest and contemplate into their public spaces, recognizing how beauty, harmony, balance, and color comfort and inspire and enhance healing.

I think of all the people who go there experiencing pain and suffering and fear, for themselves and their loved ones, and how they are silently, gently, uplifted by the soaring ceilings, comforted by the richness of the marble walls, inspired by the light flowing through windows and the gracefully curved spaces, perhaps without even being aware of how these visual and spatial elements give solace.

These elements could be found both within the clinic and in the plazas and streets surrounding it.

Below is the view from one of the plazas surrounding the Mayo buildings.  Here you see a glimpse of the Plummer Building, one of the oldest and most beautiful buildings in the area, sandwiched between gleaming modern towers.

Here’s a view of the Plummer Building from inside the clinic, a long wall of glass with comfortable chairs for visitors to sit and view the city below.

Here are the bronze doors, created by Charles (Carlo) Brioschi, leading into the building.  Each door is 16 feet high and weigh 4000 pounds.  The doors are beautifully detailed, as can be seen in the following photos.

Across the plaza from these doors are on the side of the Mayo Clinic building is a sculpture relief titled “Man and Work” by William Zorach.

One of my favorite artworks on the tour was a magnificent seven-foot bronze statue by Auguste Rodin.  It was a study for his most famous sculpture “The Burghers of Calais,” which tells the story of how six citizens during France’s Hundred Year War with England volunteered to sacrifice themselves to save the town. The sculpture shows the pain and suffering, self-doubt and determination of the men as they are led away to captivity.

What’s remarkable about this study is how open and accessible it is to
the public, placed where it can be touched and admired all around.

Some of the artwork was delightfully whimsical, like this series of lithographs by Joan Miro . . .

. . . or this cat made of tiles called “Off On His Own” by Maggi Giles . . .

. . . or these wonderful glass chandeliers by Dale Chihule.  Looking up at them from the ground floor, you have a sense of being undersea, looking up at fantastic sea creatures.

Looking out at them from the second floor you can see how complex and brilliant they are.

Art inspires and comforts, and often does so by recognizing and depicting both the tragedy of human existence as well as our capacity for spiritual reconciliation and joyful rejuvenation. As one artist puts it:

“We artists must be reconciled with life, and passing through sorrow and pain, know it in all its forms. Upon the ruins of our life, we must build for others the temple of hope and faith: this is our duty.”  – Marrianne Werefkin

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Riffing on Roses

Tags

aesthetics, beauty, flowers, photography, roses

Lately I’ve been playing with roses, photographing them at different stages in bloom, at different times of day, against varied backgrounds, just to see what I could capture.

I love this first one, the delicate color, the fat soft petals, open, exposed,  framing the center. The way the gentle light catches the edges of the petals and swirl in toward the center where the deeper shadows lie. 

The eye moves from the edges spiraling ever inward, round and round toward the tight bud.   This is where the eye rests, at that center, probing the inner depths, where the spiralling continues past where we can see. 

The spiral is a symbol of infinity, an inward eternal flowing.  Water spirals, wind spirals, dancers spiral, galaxies spiral. Thought spirals round and round, ever inward, toward a place past knowing.

This next one stops my heart, I don’t know why. 

The color is so tender, the center so closed, the outer petals so utterly open, leaving the center defenceless.  There’s a feeling of vulnerability, a careless disclosing, an utterly unstudied becoming.

Here it is again from a different angle.  See the way the light flows upward through the petals?  It breaks my heart. 

And the one below . . . I have no words.Now we go outside to where I pluck the roses from the only bush that has survived the deer and gophers.  It’s a tall, gangly bush that grows outside our bathroom window where we see it every morning, watching the roses burst and bloom from one stage to another. 

I cut only the ones that grow below and above where we can see and bring them into our home–orphans, offerings, honored guests, gracious gifts.

This first one is stunning.  The contrast between the deep rose and deeper blue.  I’m thinking flags flying, sails billowing, kites dancing across the sky. 

Hotdogs? Baseball? Blasting trumpets?  There’s something heroic, cheering, utterly wholesome and deeply comforting about this photo. 

That shade of blue in contrast with bright colors heralds all our summers, all our bright hopes, all our pride and enduring optimism.  Endless summer.  It lives like a flame in our hearts, in the faces of laughing children, in the roar of jets, in  fireworks bursting against a twilit sky. 

This deep blue sky is the background for all our hopes and dreams and unites us wherever we live in the world.  The whole rounded globe is cupped in this blue.

The next is especially sweet and hopeful.  The way the light shines through it conveys a sense of innocence, purity.  There’s a freshness here.  You can almost smell the sweetness.

The following seems more serene, mature, even though it is the same rose against the same sky, but the light is different,  There’s an intensity here, a romantic allure.  I’m thinking candlelit dinner, silk stockings, love letters strewn on a bed.

The one below is pure happiness.   I can only smile and smile.

What more can I say?

The following photos evoke something else.  The rose and the clouds seem to drift across the sky, lightly as feathers. 

 We sense movement here, of passing time, fleeting moments.  

There’s a dreamlike quality with the soft focus, the soft petals, soft as the clouds they float upon.

I’m thinking of a rowboat rocking gently on a pond, fingers trailing in the cool water, eyes gazing at the sky above, clouds gentle as a breeze gazing downward, stroking soft skin.No we go indoors again. 

These roses are shot against a gold wall. I like the way the pink  and gold play against each other. The contrasting colors startle each other, but they do not clash.  The boldness of the gold deepens the warmth of the rose, releasing its sweet aroma. Can you smell it? 

There’s a tropical feel here.  It reminds me of a conch shell I have sitting near my bath, the deep rose at the center of its hollow, the broad lip curling outward turning shades of gold, the whole sculpture a study of pink and gold, of curls and whorls and crowns.  The smooth inner lips reflecting the light, the rough and rugged shell absorbing it.

This following was shot out of focus against rippling water. I filtered it to see what would happen. 

It’s hardly a rose anymore, hardly water, it’s all melted together, water and rose. 

There’s a surreal quality, what a rose might look like painted by Van Gogh, underwater, floating among the seaweed.  A still face just below a rippling surface, holding you with its gaze.  Trying to tell you. You strain to hear.  What is it?  What do you hear?

The next is also filtered, shot against the travertine tile. Romanesque, don’t you think? An old world quality.  Ivory and old lace.There’s a coolness and stillness here, yet the light still brightens. 

I’m reminded of ancient statues, the way the light wraps around them, tempering the cool marble with its warmth.  The skin of the rounded limbs, the muscled thighs, the bent elbows, broad shoulders, soft and silky to the eye’s touch, the embracing gaze.

Can you feel the cool, soft petals?

The following is one of my favorites.

She’s just past full bloom, just a shade before fading, still buoyant, full faced, gracious in her giving, nothing hidden, nothing withheld.

The sepia tones capture that inner light, the golden glowing, the gracefulness and graciousness. We know where this ends. But the end is not here, not here at all, not in her, not in this elegant awakening, this gathering awareness, this full-throated opening to all there is.

Here are my lovely ladies, gathered in a crystal vase, growing old together. See how the petals sag ever-so-slightly?

You want to cup them and hold them up, you want to feather your face against them, you want to say, it’s okay my sweets, I love you still, I love you ever more, I love you just this way.

Never has your beauty been more achingly tender than in its fading, its falling away, it ethereal effervescence.

Your beauty is past knowing, it’s all past knowing.

Walking Among Flowers

Tags

aesthetics, art, beauty, flowers, French Polynesia, human consciousness, Nature, poetry, sailing, Tao, writing

Landfall in Nuka Hiva

Out of the dark blue sea rose a lush-green mountain ribboned with cascading waterfalls.This was what we saw after 29 days at sea, our first tropical landfall on our round-the-world journey–the Marquesas Islands

Walking through the village on Nuka Hiva down narrow, winding roads, past pastel-colored houses surrounded by gardens overflowing with flowers and dense tropical foliage, melting in the heat and humidity and the perfumed air . . . . . I felt physically and mentally assaulted, overcome by the intensity of the colors and the abundance of the beauty that surrounded me.

EK Photo & Art Layers of Blue

Perhaps it was because we’d been so long at sea, or because this was our first glimpse of a tropical paradise. Or perhaps it was for me as it has been for so many artists and travelers coming to the South Pacific for the first time.

Colors exploding all around me, shattering the senses—sight, smell, and sound washing together. Undulating waves of color, wrapping around me, streaming through me, carrying me away.

EK Photo & Art Luscious Pink

This sense of being awash in, or assaulted by, color, stayed with me and revisited me often on our travels through the South Pacific. Sometimes it was a soft, sensual immersion. Sometimes a harsh, brutal slaying. It knocked me off my feet and broke me open. I swallowed it whole.

It all came together one day in Moorea in the Tahitian Islands. La Gitana was anchored at the end of a deep cove, with green mountains walls on one side and a valley opening up between them.

Anchored in Moorea

On the other side was a bluff with a small cottage surrounded by a flower garden that trailed down the rocks toward us.

EK Photo & Art Magnolia

Each afternoon magnolia tree blossoms would drift down into the sea and our daughter rowed among them, gathering the sweetly scented flowers.

As beautiful as it was down here on the water, I kept wondering what it would be like up there, in the garden on the bluff, walking among flowers.

At the time I was reading Creativity and Taoism – A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry by Chang Chung-yuan. He writes of the “interpenetration of Nature and Man” by which ”the artist reveals the reality concealed in things [and] sets it free.”

One of my favorite drawings in the book is Flower in Vase by Pa-ta san-Jen(1626-1701). There is nothing beautiful or delicate or uplifting about the drawing, but it affected me deeply, physically, like a punch in the gut.

Chung-yuan explains the drawing this way: “No attempt is made at beauty or refinement of form, merely the primary essentials of the object are given. Here we see innocence or the quality of the uncarved block at its best. What is within is manifested without.”

EK Photo & Art Orange Tulip Painting

The “uncarved block” is elsewhere identified as “original simplicity,” “simple, plain,” “obscure and blunt,” “unattached and depending on nothing.” It has “no artificial efforts” or “ intellectual distinction.” It is “not self-assertive but disappears into all other selves” thereby “moving within the forces of the universe.”

Heady stuff. All I know is that the drawing affected me much the same way I felt when being “assaulted by color”: something in me is shattered and released at the same time.

The poem I wrote that day in Moorea captured something of that.

EK Photo & Art Poppy to the Sky

(Robinson Cove, Moorea, French Polynesia)

Walking among flowers

Drowning in scent

Petals assault me

Cool and bent

Pistils are pounding

Stamens stab

Colors exploding

Stun and grab.

Walking among flowers

I die a keen death

Bloodied and trampled

Bourne by my last breath

I lay like a light

On the garden wall

Then swooping, swallow

Flowers and all.

Beauty is not always gentle and soothing, or sweet and sensuous, or uplifting and reassuring. Sometimes it can be blunt, brutal, shattering. As “red in tooth and claw” as the untamed wilderness Tennyson wrote about.

I doubt beauty is meant to simply sooth or sate or inspire us, but to break us apart and open us up. Much like all great art must do.

Think of Van Gogh’s starry nights, or Picasso’s abstracts, or O’Keefe’s flowers.

EK Photo & Art Fiery Sunflower Painting

Was Monet’s impressionism or Seurat’s pointillism pretty ways to put paint on canvas, or ways to reveal how light and color and shapes and all manner of things break apart and open up and take us in. Ways to become immersed in the stream of things.

“Walking Among Flowers” is my way to revisit again and again that shattering into the stream of things.

[Many thanks to EK Photography & Art Gallery for use of the beautiful photographs and paintings. More can be found at http://ekphotoartgallery.wordpress.com/ ]