Seasonal Koan: What's The Opposite of Namaste?

10"x10" Deep In The Forest

It's that time of year when the opportunity to see if you're enlightened offers itself up to you. It's kind of like a little gift disguised as family dressed up in holiday duds. It's our collective opportunity to put our practice where our mouth is, if you care to see it that way. You know that quip, "if you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family." Well here come the holidays. My mother used to say we all have our own "mishigas" (which means craziness in Yiddish) and this time of year brings it out.  Mostly we panic, grit our teeth and fall victim to our old familiar "pain speech".  Here they are, our "famous person(s) ringing the doorbell, all ready to drag us through our personal mishigas.  It's kind of like the reverse of "Namaste", it's "the pain in me recognizes the pain in you", and we're off to the races.  We become the living embodiment of the email that should have been left in the "draft" folder.

16"x16" Crossing The Inner Landscape

But there are other ways, really, I'm not kidding you, not that I'm so skilled, but I'm working on it. This fall I attended several retreats with a Buddhist teacher whose wisdom speaks directly to my heart: Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. He talks about how we are constantly "draining" ourselves, depleting our precious human battery. And it's bad enough when that happens to your car, but we tend to forget  about what's under our human hood. And when we feel our depletion do we know how to nourish and recharge ourselves? Do we think TV or a glass of wine, or a little treat might do the trick? Perhaps temporarily, but then we end right back there in drain mode. Tenzin Wangyal's teachings aim at connecting us with the stillness of the body, the silence of our speech and the spaciousness of our minds so that we might consistently nourish that deep place in us the is the source of our strength, peace, creativity and fearlessness.

10"x10" Notes From The Evening

How do we remember to pause and connect with our inner refuges of stillness, silence and spaciousness when Uncle Henry tells the same story for the 10th time?  Tenzin Wangyal offers us a great little trick. When we feel the tug of that pain that's just the reminder we need.  And mostly we're pretty familiar with those painful feelings, it's just we forget the next step.  We either sink deeply into the pain or reject it completely, or maybe dance between the two. His suggestion is that the nagging thoughts of the egoic mind that are constantly finding fault can remind us to connect with the stillness of our bodies. The nattering of our internal voice or perhaps our unkind speech to others is the reminder to connect with silence.  And our crazy imaginings, run wild can offer us the opportunity to sense the space that is always around and within us.

16"x16" Cloud Mountain

In his attempts to help us bring our practice into the parts of our life that need it the most he suggests we think of it as a game.  Our challenge is how can we win at this tricky, moving, ever challenging game of deinstalling the things that push our buttons.  This can help make our "problems" lively in  an upbeat way that encourages us to work with them rather than lament them or crumple from them into the perfect little Christmas ball.  What's your game this season?  May it be merry and bright. 

ps: with many thanks to technical wizardry of Lynette Monteiro for helping me retrieve this lost post from the ether. Many bows to her.  

Art Is Not For Control Freaks

Kimono Threads 11"x 14" Cold Wax on Panel

For a long time my painting life operated on the Ira Glass principle which you can read about here.  I can't say it any better than he did so I won't bother to try.  Okay, I lied I'll sum it up in case you don't feel like following the link.  Basically Glass says that early in our artistic life our standards are higher than our artistic outcomes and so we feel frustrated. We are kabobed on a skewer between our own good taste and our unskilled hand.

 Along with this I wonder how much "belief" plays a role in this perceived distance between what we love and aspire to and what we create. A study I read years ago suggested that the only variable that set creative people apart from non creative people was (get this) that the creative people believed they were creative. Another study  suggests that "belief" is such an important aspect of mind that it can influence whether food acts as if it has lots of calories or few calories when it hits our metabolic system.  So what beliefs do you hold about your work, your process, your life?  How do they influence (unconsciously or consciously) how you work and what shows up in your work (or life)?  Don't get me wrong, I am a big believer in the fact that sustained practice or the repeated engagement with our medium, whatever it is, pulls us forward in our work.  I think it was Picasso that said "inspiration finds us working." But what is the role of trust and faith in ourselves and our process?

The Secret Life of Dirt 10"x 10"

These questions interest me because I have experienced a lot of frustration with my process.  I think in part it was because I wanted something that wasn't showing up on my canvas (commonly known in Buddhist circles as rejecting what is and recognized as a source of suffering). But curiously that frustration seems to have burned itself up, for reasons I don't fully understand.  It mostly is just not present anymore.  Maybe it was a state I just had to pass through after sustained hours, like the seemingly endless fields of Montana, but I digress into geographical insults.

As I look back on this state of frustration I realize that there is an aspect of "pride" in it.  When I am beseiged by the unconscious thought, "I am better than this ugly painting in front of me, I should be able to create something more pleasing than this" I am not only rejecting what is, but claiming superiority over it.  Ouch.

A Body of Thought 10"x10"

There were many times I thought of just packing it all up and taking those art supplies to the thrift store, kind of like a friend of mine who threw his golf clubs in the lake after a really bad game and never golfed again.  But there is something that keeps me going, a sense that I am looking for something, and that something is just around the corner, kind of like tracking an animal or fishing, to use a carnivorous analogy.  I used to joke with my Zen teacher that there was something very pure in pursuing a goal that I felt I was not very good at.  William Vollman says it this way, " The most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing something that's a complicated, tricky problem that you don't know how to solve."  Wendell Berry says "it's the impeded stream that knows how to sing." (full poem here)

How To Read The News 10"x10"

I am reading "Free Play" by Stephen Nachmanovitch.  He's a musician but his exploration of the creative process spills over into all of life, because isn't life the ultimate creative pursuit?  I like what he has to say about our relationship with our work. This is the growing edge I am exploring these days. "We arrive at this effortless way not by mastering the instrument but by playing with it as a living partner. If I think of the ... paintbrush ...as an object to be controlled then by definition it is outside of me... Unless I surrender my identity, the instrument's identity and the illusion of control, I can never become one with my own process, and the blocks will remain.  Without surrender and trust -- nothing."

Nachmanovitch winds down the chapter on surrender by saying " Unconditional surrender comes when I fully realize -- not in my brain but in my bones -- that what my life or art has handed me is bigger than my hands, bigger than any conscious understanding I can have of it, bigger than any capacity that is mine alone."  Apparently art is not for control freaks.  Or is it that art, if we let it, slowly works away at dissolving the control freak in us?  Really it's all about the mystery of the process, the mystery of life, just the mystery, really.

Creative Encounters

The word encounter makes me think of extraterrestrials or those infamous groups of the soul baring sort from the '60's.  But I had an encounter the other evening that didn't involve aliens or confessions. It was a simple event at my own kitchen table where I hung out with some paper and a few drawing tools.  In the final chapter of "No More Second Hand Art", Peter London offers up 12 creative encounters and I chose one called "Going To The Infinite Well".  You peruse your home for an object that speaks to you, look at it until you feel acquainted with it and then draw it from memory in 60 seconds.  That's not too interesting is it, really?  But the interesting part is what happens next. You assemble another 59 sheets of paper, a timer and every 60 seconds you draw another picture, but always based on the previous drawing, not on your ideas about the object. It's a bit like riffing off the chords of the previous image.

It's a long, slightly tiring exercise (and London has a few more steps he does after this but I omitted them, partly because it was late by the time I'd finished this). During the drawing process London invites us to look at our reactions, both body and mind.  Did we run out of ideas, get stuck, feel frustrated, get a second wind, get fresh inspirations? When we examine our 60 drawings and look back at the process he asks: "did you uncover some very old ways of working? new ways of working? How did you handle fatigue? Did you make time into an enemy an ally, or an opportunity?" He invites us to look at the evolution of our work, did it get more or less detailed, more abstract?  What was our mood and attitude like?  So much richness to consider.  And as always how we work in our art-life is a lot like how we operate in our everyday life of the family and greater world.

This is an exercise to help us unearth some things we may not know about how we work and what we are drawn to to in terms of image and material.  We can make unexpected discoveries about our art and ourselves in a process that zips along quickly with its aims to disengage or tire the thinking mind.  And the thinking mind gets in the way of what we know somewhere deep inside, in some authentic way.  The thinking mind likes to play it safe and clever.  In art we aim for the eternal, that which comes from deep inside us and speaks to that same place in others. This is what makes great art great.

Now it's confession time.  In the instructions he asks the reader to assemble 100 sheets of paper.  So um, for the person who doesn't always read the, umm, instructions carefully, well they might have made 100 drawings.  So this imaginary person was pretty tired by the end of the not-so- imaginary 100 minutes.  But it was an insightful experience.  I found there were materials I preferred. The black conte crayon was the filthy hands down favourite.  And I found I liked the irregular marks made by using my non dominant hand. My body decided I should change hands when my left, dominant hand got sore.  I also resorted to larger sweeping movements when my back and arm felt fatigued.  So it was interesting to see how the body entered into the equation with its own suggestions which actually resulted in some of my favorite marks.

It also reinforced my feeling that both in paint and mark I don't like the predictable rounded or squared marks that I often choose with my head.  I like something that looks a bit freer, more haphazard than my tidy mind would often produce. The mind occasionally gave up, but mostly it was busy checking the timer, watching to see if anything interesting showed up on the page, always thinking that it didn't know what it was doing.  It's a tough customer that doesn't like to take a vacation on short notice. It seemed like midway some of the marks were more interesting, like a little crescendo, after the initial predictable marks and before tiredness set in.

So if you are curious, all it costs is 60 sheets of paper and an hour of your time.  You might discover some things you already knew about yourself or some that might surprise you.

Be Silently Drawn

"Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray" -Rumi

I am using a tiny imaginary wood burning tool to etch these delicate words into my brain before heading into the quiet  heart of fall.  As I sat, nestled in the small nook of a cedar tree the other day, listening to the ravens discuss their fall plans I considered mine.  The cool, still air of fall is one of my favourite things.  Renewal, new work, pumpkin soup; these are the offerings of this new season that I am looking forward to.

I will surface like a diver from the pool of summer that was filled with gardening and visitors and a little travel.  Summer has such energy.  I am tired of it now.  I welcome the quiet, focused energy of fall.  There is a different kind of doing that comes with fall.  A few visitors have noted that fall feels like the real beginning of the new year.

And while my summer was filled with many things, my studio mostly lay silent and closed.  I am taking the approach that things have been percolating below the surface, rather than going down the rabbit hole of regret and self recrimination.  As the weather dampens and the lion's share of weeding and reshaping an old garden are behind me, the garden no longer calls me out of bed in the morning.

So "the strange pull of what I love" calls to me now.  I will follow it, without assumption as much as I can.  I want to sit in front of a canvas with no expectation, with no judgement, with a simple silent presence.  I want to fall quietly into the underground cave of exploration and creation.  I want to move through that space in such a way that hope and fear do not stick to me.  This is my fall destination. It will not take many steps, no planes or trains, but I hope to travel miles from where I am now.  In my little carry on case I will pack some carefully folded trust and wrinkle free faith; trust in a benevolent universe and faith in my ability to learn from it.  Where will "the strange pull of what you love" take you this fall?

How Simple Are You?

Have I posted a picture of my repainted Zendo (which is really code for a living room with no furniture)?  We lightened it up a while ago from a browny, pink colour to a soft green, a testament to how a paint colour can change a room.  But really all this chat stand in for the fact that I don't have any artwork to post.  However I can report that the little outbuilding that will become, at least my summer studio, is almost clean, after removing several vaccum loads of sawdust from it.  Now all that's left is the wall washing and moving in.  I am not convinced the roof holds water, so I  will move in a tentative kind of way.  The old workshop lends a new meaning to "living roof" with it's several inches of moss on cedar shakes.  We'll see.

Meanwhile I have time to post as I twisted my ankle in an act of over zealous gardening around the studio building.  Is this my body restoring some balance to my life?  "If you won't sit down, I'll sit you down."  But then sometimes a twisted ankle is just a twisted ankle.

And so I got to watch myself feeling a bit bummed out about this enforced couch potatoing I've done today. I get to see my busy, agenda setting self, sidelined.  It's not a bad thing to be reminded of your tendency to want to barrel through things, your impatience for a finished product.  It's a good thing to look at habits that are not altogether wholesome and be reminded there are other ways.

 I gathered drawing things and dharma talks and some Shamanic journey things I've been reading but in truth I ended up doing a lot of dozing and not that much else, a couple of small sketches, a half slept through dharma talk on creativity by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche that you can find here.  But by this evening I am letting go of all the expectations of how things "should" go.

On Friday we went to hear Jim Merkel, author of "Radical Simplicity" speak and I must admit all the talk of downsizing and living on $5000 a year made me feel squirmy, guilty and uncomfortable at first.  Oh no I've moved to the country, I need to drive everywhere.  Oh no we wanted a smaller house, but couldn't find one we liked.  After judgmental mind quieted down I realized we do a lot of things Jim recommends to improve your ecological footprint.  We are mostly vegan, we grow our own veg (make that, we're trying to grow our own veg, it's been a bad yr on the coast, no radishes, can you imagine??)  We don't go into town everyday and mostly do a bunch of errands,  and there's not much shopping to lure you in here.  One of the reasons for coming here.  Errands done in 1/2 an hour. Other things that contribute to a simpler life  here are the lack of places to eat out and  a choice to not hook up to TV, that visual crack box.

After feeling guilty about renos that were done mostly to please my aesthetic sense, I realized there are more things we can do to reduce our ecological footprint, mostly small things that constitute thinking before we buy things.  Do I need that soft tie for my tomato plants?   No, I can rip small pieces of an old tea towel to do the same job.  I can make sure we pick more blackberries for the freezer this summer, dry some apple rings.  Do I really need that new sweater?

I like his reminder that when you are buying something, you might consider the life blood of the person that went into to making it (and in "Your Money or Life" style, think about your own life energy that it took to supply the $$ to buy it).  This idea reminded me a lot of the Buddhist idea of interdependence which Thich Nhat Hanh is so famous for describing.  When you look at a slice of bread on your plate, think of all the people it took to make it, the person that planted, cared for and harvested the wheat, the person who took it to the flour mill, the people that ground the grain into flour, the people who baked the bread, the people that transported it to the grocery store, the clerk who stocked the shelf, the cashier who rang it up and popped it in your bag.  It took all these folks to get this simple slice of bread to your plate. We don't often think of this or feel grateful for their part in our slice of bread.

So that's where the Dharma went this week for me.  How about you?

"The Unknown, The Territory of the Creative

I am hoping for rain tomorrow.  Did you hear me say that?  I can't believe I just said that.  But there is an ulterior motive.  If it rains I can stay in and paint all day!  Recently I have been weed obsessed.  I jump out of bed in the morning and race outside to spend time in the company of weeds.

 The definition of a weed is simply a plant growing where we don't want it to.  Aren't we bossy, we humans, wanting plants to grow only in particular places.  We are so not like the natural world that just accepts things wherever they grow.  I aspire to be more like nature but meanwhile I have my own ideas of beauty which doesn't include small green things growing in pathways and filling up ancient herb beds in a helter skelter sort of way.  And this idea of beauty comes with a cost.

I have spent many days working in my yard as a weed tamer, (not as dangerous as lion taming and no whip or chair required) hoeing and digging and pulling until my wrists and finger tips ache and my hands look like those of an ancient peasant woman.  I love it really, pulling weeds.  I love being outside with the birds and the squirrel, the deer.  I remind the quail not to eat the grass seed I've spread on some bare patches and listen to the buzz of hummingbird wings aiming themselves at my sagging prayer flags. I am treated to the strong sound and huge expanse of eagle wings cruising past me as I work.  Sometimes I think about the spiritual aspect of weeding.  As I pull each misplaced green thing, I think of weeding my mind of its less wholesome thoughts, it's worries, it's doubts, it's inclination to manufacture problems and blockages where really there is just open space and situations.

But back to painting and the creative life.  Here's a wonderful talk by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche where he takes a broad approach to creativity.  He talks about living creatively with openness and joy as essential ingredients to this way of being.  He invites us to open to our resistance and fears, to "host" them as he calls it.  He invites us to enliven ourselves by orienting ourselves to what's right in our life.  He teases that this will energize us more than a cup of coffee in a mid afternoon slump.

I also wanted to draw your attention to a great creative resource I have been exploring.  It's a site called the awakened eye created by miriam louisa who has been exploring the ground of creativity for many years.  She has a free 8 chapter ebook of exercises that I have plunged into which are inspirational and packed with years of exploration and teaching.  Her site also offers bios and links of artists that explore the dual path of spirituality and creativity.  She has kindly featured me there in her latest post.  Her list of artists is extensive and a fun place to wander away the hours.  I have discovered many amazing artists with fascinating orientations to their art.  Favourites of mine such as Frederick Franck (her site is a nod to Franck and his book of the same title, "the awakened eye"), John Daido Loori, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche all rub elbows together here.

I will end with a little teaser from the first of  miriam louisa's ebooks.  "Making things provides an opportunity to observe all the strategies we blindly, as well as intentionally use to avoid encountering the unknown.  The unknown is the territory of the creative."  Join me tomorrow at the corner of unknown and openness.  I'll be the one in the tatty sweater with the crazy hair and a rumpled paint brush in my hand.

Paint A Starry Night Again

Does this look familiar? No it's not another slothful, shameless repost of recycled art. It actually is half of a new painting. It's a custom piece for someone who liked the colours and sentiments of the first, similar, but smaller work. This one is done on a 9"x12" cradled panel with more texture than the first work. I'll have to post the right hand side of the Buddha next time! I find myself drawn to work on board these days because I like how it can hold rough texturing of products like sludge and spackle and other mediums.

I feel a metaphor lurking in the sludgey shadows here. Somehow I am finding it is the roughness,craggy lines and bits of pattern that lend a texture to my work, a texture that adds character and richness, something extra to play with. Perhaps life's textured and rough spots do that too on a grander scale. (Forget the botox, kids, those lines add character!)

We often imagine how we'd like things to turn out, just to our liking; every day sunny, everyone agrees with us, we accomplish each challenge we face with ease. But life often has different plans and sometimes that's where we really develop vision and grow. We can become more compassionate, kinder humans sometimes, after we hit a few rough spots in the road. I heard an executive say one time that he never hires any upper management people that haven't had some sort of rough spot or failure in their life.

When I sit down with the empty board I never really know how a painting will work out, how one colour might show through another, how a rubbed off bit will add some interesting shading, how unexpected outcomes can improve the work (or how sometimes I have to wipe off and repeat and repeat, until things seem done). Life is like that too, good at showing us that ultimately we are not in control, that much is left to serendipity, karma and a bigger picture than our little self can imagine. It's process centred as opposed to results oriented. And sometimes it all takes practice, over and over and over.

So in the same flowing creek of thought that says, you can't stand in the same stream twice, so you can't paint the same painting twice. Working on a piece like this reminds me that we can't go backward, that the flow of life is always onward, and I get nervous when someone requests a specific piece. I have concerns about their expectations. And of course my little self worries that they won't like it. But there it is, practice in a nutshell. Just paint. It always makes me think of the Joni Mitchell quip when people are shouting out song requests to her on the live album "Miles of Aisles", "you know no one ever asked Van Gogh to paint "A Starry Night" again. I'm not so sure of that given the nature of our human tendency to go with the familiar, the known! And of course it is a compliment.

So that's what this little painting reminded me of as I worked away at it. It reminded me that it's all good, that I'm not in control and that I just need to do what needs to be done.

Love Your Little Paint & Word Kids

Night Sky

Mixed Media on Paper & Matte Board

8" x 8" matte, image size 3.75" x 4.5"

$25 including shipping in North America

This little piece pleases me.  Is that a shocking thing to say?  In our Western world it is regarded as prideful or worse to say you like something that is yours, perhaps especially something that you've created.  When you stop and think about that, it is somewhat weird.  You are permitted to sing the praises of anyone else but yourself.  Now I'm not talking about boasting or feeling superior, but just the simple expression of "liking" something that is yours, in a down to earth matter of fact way.  In a way it is acknowledging our own "Buddha nature", it is a point of honesty and a mature position of self respect.  We should be able to say yes, these are my strengths without puffing our chests out or inciting gasps of surprise from others.  Yet this seems very difficult for most  of us Westerners.  We stutter and stumble and do the "oh gosh" thing.

The Dalai Lama couldn't understand the concept of "self loathing" that exists in almost every Westerner.  It had to be explained to him and it saddened him to tears if I remember correctly.  It is important I think, to extend credit and kindness toward ourselves.  As with so many things we must start in our own little patch of self.  Can we really love anyone else well if we don't love ourselves?   And when I think about what is helpful and encouraging for others, I know that it is love and encouragement and respect, helping them see where they shine and building on that.  So why would that be any different when I interact with myself?   When I think about it, being kind to myself and acknowledging when I feel I have done something well or worthwhile or kind, makes me feel strong and energetic and positive.  I then have  energy to do and be more and radiate it out into the world.

So those were my thoughts as I wrote the first line that said "this little piece pleases me".  It seemed like something worth talking about.  And why do I like this little piece?  I like it because it is simple and sometimes I can get too complex and overwork things.  Sometimes I think more is more and often more just means a fast track to the garbage can!  With this piece I stopped.  It feels vaguely like a brush painting and I like that.  It is abstract and beyond the thinking mind and I like that.  It has circles that please me.  And most of all it has weird ethereal words from an old poetry book.  They hint at things, but what things.  "The sky crawled into me."  Don't you love that line?  and then there is "I made a choice"  And being an existentialist from way back, it is my belief that even the non-choice is a choice.  We have no choice but to choose.  Man I'm getting twisted.  Someone hit me with the shut-up stick.  Good.  Thank-you.  I needed that.  End of story.  Go out there and like yourself and your creations.

Enlarging The Universe

I'm thinking about creativity today because I was really inspired this morning when I looked around my cyber neighbour- hood and found even more people out there doing creative things.  One of my big inspirations for the day came courtesy of Gallery Juana.  She was writing about her washing machine as suggested by Keri Smith (100 Ideas), a virtual tornado of creativity.  I'd seen her name mentioned before but this was the tipping point for me.  I had to go check her out. She has just published the cutest little book called "How To Be An Explorer Of Your Own World"

As I read the excerpted parts she posted on her website I was struck by how Buddhist it seemed and secondly what good common sense advice  (both her advice and Buddhist practice) for living whether you do art or not.  I think we are all artists ultimately (and this is a conclusion Smith draws)  and that we are our own original works of art, always works in progress. How we live our lives becomes our medium, paint, ink, blood, clay.   I've always thought collage was a good little metaphor for how I create myself, drawing a little bit from here and there and assembling it in new and different ways.

Explore, pay attention to detail Smith suggests.  Well there it is, awareness, mindfulness, whatever you want to call it, a primary tenet of Buddhist practice.  This paying attention reminds us how rich life is with delicious details.  "Everything is interesting," she says.  Paying attention serves to pull us away from our lazy habit of sliding over things, getting caught up in the little soap opera going on in our heads.  Gather things, collect bits.   In her list of 100 Ideas she says "draw your dinner" or " illustrate your shopping list".  It's creative, it's fun and it helps direct the mind to paying attention.  We only get to live this life once, we might as well wake up and appreciate it, the sorrows, the joys.

She also suggests we lighten up which in my mind is an important aspect of Zen training.  We often take ourselves and our little lives way too seriously, mooning, moping and worrying about so many little things.  Someone once told me a story of telling their troubles to a Zen master and he just kept saying, "it doesn't matter".  How much stress do we create for ourselves worrying about things that are beyond our control or really "don't matter" when it all gets thrown into the cosmic soup pot.

"Be open to what you don't know"  Smith encourages and this reminds me that we are always standing on the edge of the unknown.  It also reminds me that we have more options than we think, something my Zen teacher likes to point out to students when we feel boxed into a corner.  If we're open we can see possibilities that otherwise remain in the shadows for us.  Sometimes just saying "I don't know" opens up a world of possibilities.  It's humbling too and that is always a good thing.

"Be a detective" Smith urges.  And Buddhism always suggests we examine Buddhist ideas for ourselves.  See if they are true for us, make them our own.  Does attachment really lead to suffering? Explore that in your life and see if it is true for you.  Examine your daily behaviour, do some of your actions lead to suffering?  What might you do differently?  Think about things like right speech.  How do you feel after you say something unpleasant to someone or about someone?  And all the while remembering not to beat yourself up with the answers you get, that's the hard part sometimes.

As I walk out into this creative and interesting evening I feel grateful to be exploring this wonderful creative online world.  So many wonderful inspiring ideas are flying around and filling my head.  I am encouraged to keep that sketch book active and alive and create little bits of experimental art here and there.  I encourage you to open up to your own awesome creative possibilities.

I will let John Daido Loori have the closing words (from "The Zen of Creativity")  "Through our art we bring into existence something that did not previously exist.  We enlarge the universe."