digitaldeities

elementalangels.com - launched in time for holidays!

My new website elementalangels.com is up and running for business!  Check it out.

ELEMENTAL ANGELS ...for the holidays

For the holidays.. hugs + messages from nature... just made a store at big cartel... where one can purchase them... it will be soon connected to ELEMENTALANGELS.COM but for now you can find them here:  http://elementalangels.bigcartel.com/ 

I will be selling these little wings and the medium and small gold leafed messenger sticks on Prince Street in SoHo Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  Come visit, if you are near!

Cable Drawings

An unusual fireplace frame made with Wire flex, Cable fixings, and a Lamp.

Cable Drawings, a simple and funny idea by www.maisiebroadhead.com

dragon's blood tree

On my Hampton Jitney bus ride conversation yesterday, I learned of these fabulous succulent trees that are related to the agave plants.... wild looking. I was describing my love for agaves and my conversationalist friend mention these Dragon's Blood trees.  I had never heard of them before.  They are amazing looking.

original image here

original image here

original image here

original image here

The Dragon Tree is related to Agave and Yucca and makes a spectacular accent plant that blends well in either tropical or arid gardens.

The Dragon Tree is a rare subtropical tree that is endemic to Canary Islands, Madeira & Cape Verde, where only a few specimens can be found growing naturally on the islands of Tenerife and La Palma, in dry bush at the low elevations of the islands' rocky mountain ranges. Many ancient examples are 20 to 30 feet tall and believed to be up to a thousand years old.

Also known, as the Dragon's Blood Tree because when the trunk or branch is cut or scarred it produces red sap that resembles blood. The processed "Dragon's Blood" was believed to harness mystical powers and was used in the mummification process and other rituals. Because of its various medicinal and magical properties, it was sought by various cultures around the Mediterranean, Europe, and Africa. Today the Dragon's Blood is still in use to produce a hard, shiny furniture polish.

Dragon trees

• Dracaena americana - Central America Dragon Tree
• Dracaena arborea - Tree Dracaena
• Dracaena cinnabari - Socotra Dragon Tree
• Dracaena draco - Canary Islands Dragon Tree
• Dracaena ombet - Gabal Elba Dragon Tree

 

more scissor mandalas in SolidWorks

20 - 30 foot in diameter drawings of proposed installation with thousands of scissor recycled from airport excess

bigger better SolidWorks scissor sketches

My very last presentation at Parsons will be Petcha Kucha style this Sunday afternoon 11-3 with some excellent critiques to get final feedback.  I decided to put in the extra effort and do a few more digital sketches for helping myself promote a BIG mandala made with confiscated scissors for an airport someday.  THERE IS A COMMISSION COMING MY WAY!

Scale is 20 feet across with the scissor each being 8 inches or 5 inches in size.

PARSONS SYMPOSIUM EXHIBIT PHOTOS (MAY 1,2,3 2009)

Here are the visuals from my thesis display exhibit at Parsons Design + Technology 09.

(just in case someone is seeing this work for the first time - it is all made with confiscated scissors from airport security measures.  I purchased them from ebay from someone who bought that them at an airport auction...)

I re-post statement here:

What brings people a feeling of safety and protection?  Do security measures at airports or spiritual connection?

Confiscated weapons of mass construction questions how protection manifests in our current cultural epoch.

Sculptures, wearable art, and large-scale installations (proposed for exhibition in an airport) are constructed with thousands of scissors recycled from confiscated airport security procedures.

Just like a pure resonant note shatters a glass, a visual imprint of beauty and perfection changes a viewer.

These circular sculptures hold an essence of the macrocosm and microcosm bringing harmony on an archetypal level.

more images coming soon of my classmates.. some amazing and inspiring work!

MFA DT symposium postcard

Email me your address and I will send you one .. I have extras!

the front
 

the back

the text

What brings people a feeling of safety and protection?  Do security measures at airports or spiritual connection?

Confiscated weapons of mass construction questions how protection manifests in our current cultural epoch.

Sculptures, wearable art, and large-scale installations (proposed for exhibition in an airport) are constructed with thousands of scissors recycled from confiscated airport security procedures.

Just like a pure resonant note shatters a glass, a visual imprint of beauty and perfection changes a viewer.

These circular sculptures hold an essence of the macrocosm and microcosm bringing harmony on an archetypal level.

bracelet of scissors

bracelet made of recycled confiscated scissors from airport security. 
WEAPONS OF MASS CONSTRUCTION SERIES

 

old cell phone mandalas

Once again the lovely Web Urbanist blog has shown me another gem of an artistic project.... mandalas made from old cell phones.

re-blog from Web Urbanist:
Even old cellphones can be beautifully repurposed.  This gorgeous precision display by artist Rob Pettit consists of 5,000 cellphones destined for the landfill. Rob’s early work utilized more traditional mediums; however, in his more recent works he has relied heavily on used and discarded wireless and cellular telephones to make his mark.

PANTHEON - old school data visualization MANDALA

The great Roman Pantheon, built in 126 AD, was an immense 3D architectural mandala that could have been a map of the planetary orbits, read below ... old school data visualization at it's very best!!!

re-blog from: bldgblog.blogspot.com

"A testament to Roman architecture and engineering," NASA writes, "the Pantheon's dome is said to symbolize the vault of the heavens."

[Image: A "celestogramme," looking up from within at the dome of the Pantheon, by Wolfgang Wackernagel].

Seeing that, of course, makes it impossible for me to resist referring you back to BLDGBLOG's interview with Walter Murch, posted two weeks ago, in which Murch postulates a possible connection between the physical structure of the Pantheon itself and the heliocentric astronomical theories of Nicolaus Copernicus.
In other words, does the dome of the Pantheon "symbolize the vault of the heavens," as NASA writes, but in an unexpectedly literal way?
In the interview, Murch explains how he "superimposed Copernicus’s drawing [of the planetary orbits] over an image of the Pantheon’s dome – and found that the ratios of the circles in his drawing and the ratios of the circles of the Pantheon line up almost exactly. Seeing that alignment was one of those wonderful moments where you suddenly feel a strong current of connection with the past."

[Image: Superimposition, by Walter Murch, of Copernicus's diagram of planetary orbits over a celestogramme of the Pantheon by Wolfgang Wackernagel].

So is it just an interesting coincidence?
Murch goes on:

The circumstantial evidence [for a real connection between Copernicus's drawing and the structure of the Pantheon] is compelling, but there is no reference to the Pantheon in any of Copernicus’s correspondence or in the various manuscript versions of de Revolutionibus – so we will probably never know for sure.
Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating thought: that this magnificent temple, built 1400 years before Copernicus ever saw it, designed by a pagan, Sun-worshipping Roman emperor, and later transformed into a church, may have had secretly encoded within it the idea that the Sun was the center of the universe; and that this ancient, wordless wisdom helped to revolutionize our view of the cosmos.

If you haven't seen the interview yet, be sure to check it out. It's worth the read.

[Image: Inside the Pantheon; via].

Ball-Nogues installation

This is an image of an incredible temporary outdoor installation that the Californian duo Ball-Nogues Studio had installed in the courtyard of Materials & Applications in Los Angeles.

It is titled Maximilian's Schell.  They have an amazing beautiful array of installations you can view on their website ball-nogues.com.

re-blog from: we-make-money-not-art.com

Constructed in tinted Mylar resembling stained glass, the vortex functioned as a shade structure, swirling overhead for the entire summer of 2005. The interior of the immersive installation created a space for social interaction and contemplation by changing the volume, color, and sound of the courtyard gallery. During the day, the canopy cast colored fractal light patterns onto the ground while a sound installation by composer James Lumb lightly rumbled below the feet of visitors. When standing in the center or "singularity" of the piece and gazing upward, the visitor could see only infinite sky. In the evening when viewed from the exterior, the vortex glowed warmly. The piece paid homage to a character played by actor Maximilian Schell in 1979 sci-fi movie The Black Hole.

premier of the confiscated scissor necklace

Last night I made my first confiscated weapon necklace with collapsible scissors and blue twist ties.. with some of the small scissors that I have in my growing collection of all sized scissors purchased from airport excess.  I made an D.I.Y. (do it yourself) instruction video that I will post on instructables.com and here.. when I finish piecing it together soon. My necklace model is Tzumei Hsiao. 

More necklaces to come... this is another foray into wearable art.. armor... a more intimate expression of the same theme of protection.  A wearable mandala!

 

progress ... the Van Alen Fellowship project proposal

Tying together many of my previous posts and research .. I was able to complete and send off a Fellowship Grant to Van Alen Institute on March 6, 2009.  We will see.. what opportunities my future holds!

The project area I focused on was CULTURE AND POLITICS here is what questions they ask.. that I tried my very best to explain below in my proposal!

This project area refers broadly to the ways social forms, norms, identities and institutions are constituted by and through spatial practices in the public realm. The Institute seeks a range of investigations that engage the following questions:

How is public architecture alternately constructed and occupied as a site of freedom, exclusion, resistance, control and uncertainty? How are public spaces made and unmade through social struggles over rights and access? How are they shaped by cultural conflict and political debate over representation? How does design in the public realm variously operate as a vehicle for historical, social, cultural and political meanings and values? What space do different kinds of bodies, behaviors and emotions take up in public? How do they belong or not belong in public life and how might we imagine alternative forms of belonging?

Topics in this project area may include monumentality, collective memory, propriety, property rights, everyday urbanism, identity politics, biopower, homeland security, defensible space, civil liberties, citizenship, geopolitics, multiculturalism, spectatorship and tourism.

Project Proposal – Culture and Politics - Carrie Mae Kreyche

Confiscated Weapons of Mass Construction is an installation of large Yantra symbols, geometrical combination's of circular diagrams used in meditative practice, made with thousands of recycled scissors confiscated from airport security procedures. Constructing these Yantras out of confiscated airport items and placing them back into public spaces, blends together the layers of ancient ritual and modern culture, bringing to the public realm reflections on safety, protection and the role of security measures.  This proposal illuminates how valuable the visual environment is to either soothe or disrupt the emotional and spiritual state of a viewer.     

Public spaces such as shopping malls, airports and motorways are what author Marc Augé calls ‘non-spaces’.  They are public space where individuality is left behind and everyone, especially after passing through security procedures at airports, is on the same level of identity because these public spaces are both everywhere and nowhere.  The public spaces of airports were redefined when the FAA began searching people in airports in 1972 and since 9/11, security measures have been tightened even more thoroughly.  The need for security and the public’s fear of attack makes current airport spaces fertile ground for stringent rules and regulations.  The accessibility and process of national and international travel has become an uncomfortable inconvenience or struggle for many passengers.  The lines are often long and personal space is invaded with random body searches and the confiscation of personal items.  

Most airports are built as spacious urban palaces, with high ceilings, modern materials and cutting edge architecture.  Many cities take pride in the architecture of these high traffic centers and more and more, numerous airports have also begun to hold art exhibitions and rotating shows in glass cases around the terminals.  John F. Kennedy, San Francisco and many other smaller city airports have commissioned artists to build provocative installations in the spaces.  Design in this public arena can operate as a vehicle for social and cultural dialogue. Whether immigration law, ecology or reflection on security regulation, the topic of an installation can bring cultural values to the forefront.  Barbara Kingsolver once wrote that the artists’ role is to be the canary in the coalmine, and when art is silent it means trouble. It is my goal to design an art installation for these public ‘non-spaces’ that will engage people in a deeply moving way. 

When people travel through airports and other busy public urban environments, they are often rushed and stressed.  In a group discussion about airport security lines, my research discovered the metaphorical comparison that the ritual many current day passengers experience while preparing for traveling is similar to the spiritual and cultural rituals that some ascetics have.  As an example, Gandhi owned only 12 items when he died.  (See Image 1 below).

Image 2 – The twelve items Gandhi owned before he died and a modern day suitcase 

The mental process of getting ready for a flight can parallel the preparation for your own spiritual journey (special packing, special clothes/shoes). There are also many traditions of ancient cultures that send deceased ones to the grave with special swords, weapons and other sacred items to ward of evil spirits. Our culture would strip away everyone’s ability to hold these items sacred.  We have even taken it to the absurd extreme as to take away craft and cuticle scissors. Blending the common set of scissors into ancient symbolism offers a playful and provocative (upon closer inspection) visual cue piquing the viewer’s awareness of modern rituals and rules, while offering a moment of harmony to a busy public space.  This project engages one to see and possibly imagine a myriad of other alternative forms to help feel a sense of belonging and to reclaim the materials they once lost in a security search. 

Placing a large symbol that is an archetype of unity in the collective memory of most cultures, touches people on a subconscious level.   Just like a pure resonant note can shatter a glass, the imprint of the beauty of perfection changes the mind and thoughts of a viewer.  Buddhist monks create large sand Mandalas, sacred geometric circular patterns, believing that as a result of viewing them, an imprint will be left that may help one to find greater compassion, awareness, and a greater sense of well being.  These symbols hold the essence of the macrocosm and microcosm, taking the viewer both inside themselves and outside to the world at large.  Circles bring harmony on an intuitive primal level and this is the language and depth this project speaks and creates from. 

The Confiscated Security Symbols Project uses scissors that were confiscated from passengers and then sold at auction to sellers who re-sell them on e-bay (See Image 2 below).  Currently, seventy-five pounds of recycled scissors from airport excess were purchased for this project from e-bay sellers and it is planned to attend an airport auction for direct purchase of larger quantities of thousands more scissors.  

Image 2 – Bulk confiscated scissors purchased from e-bay 

The two main goals of this fellowship are to complete a solid body of work to exhibit in the gallery during the final weeks and to complete more research about sonic theology, historical use of sound with Yantras and in sacred temples, from both the use of Mantras and older temples designed as acoustic resonators.   I would also continue researching the reoccurrence of sacred geometry and circle shapes in ancient cultures versus and today.  Advertising, pop culture and modern political times have changed the spiritual and ritual value of art.  In Walter Benjamin’s famous essay ‘The Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ he speaks of this shift where ‘mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.’  Today, modern art critique’s first evaluate the quality of a piece of art on its exhibition value.  My project hope to reverse this function back to Walter Benjamin’s observations and first view the role of art as an instrument of magic and second as an work of art with high exhibition value. 

A larger collection of scissors will be purchased with part of the stipend, along with other materials used to build smaller prototype sculptures.  Gallery size sculptures and installations, which will test and explore different materials, attachments and styles.  These sculptures will be exhibited in the Van Alen exhibition gallery.  Below are some of the current prototypes of construction I have worked on this year. (See image 3 below).

The long-term goal of this project is to build a large-scale installation of thirty feet or more for an airport commission, an airline terminal or another public space.  Building these installations and eventually installing them in modern public spaces, such as airports, would allow a visual dialogue with the symbols that could touch thousands of people.  The result of this fellowship would also allow me to present my iterations, ideas, and prototypes to architects and engineers for collaboration to seamlessly install these works into a final chosen space.   Included below are some digital sketches I drew in 3D with the modeling program SolidWorks and a diagrams to scale in Adobe Illustrator. (See Image 4 below). 

 

My own artistic exploration began with creating mandalas out of found objects and sculptures that reflected my own personal need for boundaries and self-protection.  This focus has shifted away from my personal needs and now looks at these issues on a much broader scale - the scale of our entire nation and even our collective world memory. The concept of how protection has infiltrated our culture now interests me. What makes people feel safe? Security measures at airports? Spiritual support? Something else? What service do physical boundaries provide? 

My research answers this question: What brings a feeling of safety or protection? My own meditation practice profoundly changed me, giving me the ability to heal and to create my own personal definition of protection and boundaries.  Bringing these symbols to the public has a healing affect and helps people feel more uplifted, safe and centered in public spaces.   

Another deliverable, besides the scissor sculptures, is a well-formatted talk or panel discussion.  This discussion covers the historical uses of Sacred Geometry in temple building, Yantras, Mandalas, visual meditation tools and how symmetrical forms in nature all touch upon the universal mystery of perfection. A concept that recently inspires me is how the architecture from the Cistercian Order achieved its visual beauty through designs that conform to the proportional system of musical harmony.  These churches were acoustical resonators that transformed a human choir into celestial music and the founder St Bernard of Clairvaux said of their design, ‘There must be no decoration, only proportion.’  As much of my artistic pursuits have been about decoration, discovering the fundamental template with which the building of temples and Yantra symbols are organized, brings me a new level of understanding of their depth of perfection.

The Yantra comes from Vedic and Hindu cosmology and signifies the cyclical forces in nature, astronomy, and the worship of deities that are given abstract forms.  These forms and their meanings center and ground my current research and life work.  I am passionately drawn to the symmetry and perfection that the circles visual offer. 

Image 5 – Picture 1, Sri Ganash Yantra from http://www.artoflegendindia.com/details/HJAAB003_Shri_Ganesh_Yantra – Picture 2, Mark Pottenger’s planetary mandalas made by tracking with computer algorithm the planetary movement of Jupiter and Uranus from http://www.ccrsdodona.org/m_dilemma/mandalas.html - Picture 3, a diagram of the true stars which are aligned within the Jewish symbol titled ‘Star of David’ from http://www.jesus-kashmir-tomb.com/YantraStarofDavid.html. 

The studio space, publicity, and support of the Van Alen Fellowship would bring the artistic advantage of focus, clarity, and freedom.  A twelve-week residency would allow the necessary space and time to experiment further with different materials and construction options.  This experimental freedom is the foundation for the further success of this project. Through giving a workshop or public talk about this project, the public would be invited to look at the work in progress and dialogue about these important topics of homeland security, monumentality, and collective memory.  The publicity through Van Alen would bring valuable attention to this project to help me reach my professional goal of future collaboration and installation.

Virginia Fleck

Crafted from used plastic bags imprinted with familiar logos and slogans, beauty is created in the form of these mandalas by Texas artist, Virginia Fleck. Flying in the face of temporary Tibetan sand mandalas that last only a few days, these mandalas are virtually non-biodegrabable and will last forever. Created as commentary on the ecology of everyday life as garbage is transformed into beauty.

she has tons more variety and visuals on her website  www.virginiafleck.com