Buddha Bar...When I discovered it

And how this music has impacted my creativity.
Your comment of that my choice in music was "Muzak or elevator music" brought me to a great memory where I first discovered this amazing Lounge Music called Buddha Bar. In 2003 I was living in Florence Italy. Truly living the dream. I was taking courses in ceramics and Italian Art History. I met a soul sister Gisele (from Brazil) in my ceramics class and we instantly bonded. We traveled to Sicily together visiting the sacred sites. Gisele in Florence had met this artist who knew of this great artist who studied under Dali http://www.bonifazimarco.it/
One night we were invited to meet him. This amazing artist actually had understudies, like the great masters. His flat was mind boggling, ancient cherubs hanging from the cieling and it was featured in a interior design book about Florentian Homes. That you can pick up at Borders.
While we were visiting this amazing music was playing. I asked what it was and they all said it was Buddha Bar. And I could get it off the street for a couple dollars. Ah.... Buddha Bar came into my life and my art.
My muzak has become part of my process of creating art. I play it constantly with the kids that I teach. For me it takes me and those creating to deeper levels
When taking Jeremy Morgan's painting class, I brought my music in and that became our affinity. This is the music Jeremy listens to while he is creating.
The music of Buddha Bar and World Music. I had my students thank me the other day for letting them listen to ballet music... that was calming and soothing.

Thank you, a great memory has been restored.

PORTALS REVIEW

Caol’Ait
Lisa Rasmussen
11/7/08

Lisa poured out The Thin Places for all to see. And in her hand the bending spree, in wistful, flowing, calming traumic interface, the witness be. Thinness of distinction. Thinness of discrepancy. The space between, the space unseen, the space where the twilight and the knowing sheen, find in each other the harmonic mean.

Spices emanating upward from the nestled mandala-savory-space, lubricating the nostrils with memories chased from deeper places sight unseen. Light and scent (!), we enter the scene, diving in towards the hidden seam. Paintings cast in measured care, with wildness constrained by just the bare mounts in the frames ringing evenly the room, holding in each a lingering tune, of the place where spirit and thisness meet.

A lozenge for the eyes and mind. Symmetries nestled in fun-filled calling mysteries bind. Pneuma. Anasazi. Darknesses, incomplete, faint, whistling memories that you barely taste again. The deeper reaches of the mind, trickling away in kind. Lingering whispers haunting so, bartered through the colors claimed in Ka and Bardo, the journey from each piece to another bringing with it a glancing blow. A living, feeling, beautiful, explosion inward away from the evening glow.

Linearity in Lil, shocking still, organized and regal. Containment stressed on that thinness undressed thoroughly saturating the acrylic finesse of boundary and order on yet another sinking beckoning regress. Moving me back and out and around, to touch and caress, the space, the place, my girl’s soft press. The art, for me, is a seeping, see, from hand and thought outward, and in to me. The expressions from you are a simple plea, for a return, a dance, some part of me.

Art that inspires, art that plants a seed, art that pushes and bleeds.


-Cameron Thrash, 11/25/08

SELF POTRAITS

Collaboration--Ups and Downs

Currently, I am working on two collaborations. The first called Art is Moving with Lauren Usher, our vision is to create dialogue in the art world. This so far has been a great success. Lauren and I work at the same speed and put equal energies into it. We have created over 20 videos and over 100 posts on our Blog. This collaboration is great as it is growing we are opening a gallery, and will be doing workshops very soon. I feel satisfied with in terms of a creative relationship being cultivated.
"CLICK HERE" to check out art is moving.

The other Collaboration is the at the Red Door Gallery and Collective. This is a baby project with such potential. The challenge is there are twelve individuals in this project and only half of them show up on a regular basis in terms of communication and being part of the dialogue. It might be less than that. Today after the meeting I felt disappointed and deflated,
We have so much to do as we are opening on September 5th....

"CLICK HERE" to check out the red door


Here is some insights on a healthy collaboration has
very strong communication
each member participates equally
all members show up or communicate that they cannot
through communication each member becomes inspired to propel the vision into reality....

I would love to hear other peoples ideas on artistic collaboration? it is a very challenging mode of art. Any one have some good recipes?

What happens when the lights go out?

We had a black out last night, at first there was a sense of crisis. I am like, what is going on. No Internet. What to do. I must admit I am a blogger (an awkward one, as I consistently miss-leave out words when I write.). Still I am kind of obsessed with the whole thing.
I used my cell phone for my light source and I found some candles. As I was lighting them, I felt that this is the way we are suppose to live in natural light. Candle light sparks my creativity. Maybe this is instinctive. The light of fire, not artificial light spawns creativity. I love the ambiance, the aesthetic, and the mood of candles that stirs up many memories. This experience also stirred up my strange relationship with technology and how it consumes me. The lights went out so I could sit in the dark and remember my connection to the source. Strange how we use same words like power, source, light for technology, creativity, and spirituality.
When the power came back on I decided to turn them off all the lights and revel in my quite evening without technology.I enjoyed not having electricity the web was broken for a bit.
Balance is the key.

-Lisa

Response to Art is Magic

I had to post this comment of Vikrams words, he posted this on my Blog on Saturday. His words are so poetic and ring of Rumi. The web of connection. When I read this I was inspired that I am on the right path. I am so happy to connect with a fellow mystic. Namaste

phoenix said...
Hello Lisa

if I can have your ...a few minutes
Not more than I felt shall I'll express
To express self to selves; I carry the only fear
Of failure, of conflict; Of the lack of divinity
In my eyes, in words; in my visible self

Holding on to 'mysticism', I landed on your land
To find the right themes burnt in bright games
Not surprised I am to find a wandering soul
Wrapped in blue, red,pink brushes; living in the green abode

Burning with a desire to wish you a hello
Believing in words to hear, some skins to tear
I beg you to share your light of a Being
Who seems to be on the path I tend to begin

Why I'll write to you,perhaps, is mysteriously unknown
Like when mirage turns for a thirsty to an ocean of love

Only if the social fabric and the unsure strings be broken or redefined, I'd be much more of myself.
I'm a 23 yr old bachelor graduated (engineering) from the premier institute of India. I'm earning now and I am thoughtful. I am a believer, a traveller who believes in a purposeful living. And thus, extraordinarily attracted, in a dress of desperation, to anything which seems to associate itself with Truth. Though the inner waves have not yet manifested to my exterior domain to the extent I would have liked, a certain chain of events are accelerating its burst.

Your blog (description, about me) had enough life to grant me the breath to explode myself here. Thank you :)


Not a way is what I see here
But the 'light of bright passion' painted in colours

Vikram
PS: Animism is a faith which yields a reason to live

Art is Magic

Ever since I was a child art has been been my magic. I quickly found through drawing that I could create parallel universes of extraordinary imagination. As I mature as an artist I still believe art is about magic. In my site specific installations and my painting I transverse into a voodoo priestess,a neolithic cave painter, or shamanika. This work I took after it was in my show Caol 'Ait (thin places). The show was well received as my audience perceptions were altered by a multi sensory experience. After being in show for a month, this piece was in my studio. One day as I entered my studio there was this amazing light that was streaming through the window, merging and dissolving into my mixed media lotus piece. Magic it is! Thats what art is the merging and the dissolving of the artist and their audience, through the vehicle of their pyschic and physical imprint called Art.
Luckily, i had my camera to witness it all. That ties into what i think photography is, it is the Witness that stands within the artist.

ID

It is really strange what has come up for me with artists, who are exploring their ID as a female, like Hazel Dooney and Heidi Forsell. Art is Moving, my amazing collaboration with Lauren just interviewed Heidi at her M.F.A. show and it was all about her personal female identity in art. It brings up a lot of questions for me.
I as an artist have investigated altered states, social phobia, the shadow, the transcendental, but never honed on the female Id in our society. Yes, I have evoked the Goddess and spit at the Patriarch, but on a personal level never thought about my female Id. Do I want to? Is it to personal....In my early twenties, it was so about the personal, Goth and more about me as archetypal tormented artist. If I were to focus on this single aspect of myself what would that look like??
I am not sure what this bringing up...But I have been having a lot of dreams about sewage and authority.
I have been reading off and on this amazing book that talks about the feminine ID within the context of history "Click Here" to check an interview with the author Riane Eisler of Sacred Pleasure.

Response to Hazel Dooney, Shock Artist

Ciao Hazel
At first your work is superficial, conceptual, as object female, SEX...and then I sense something subtle the Goddess.
let me know if I am wrong or right...As an artist I usually despise shock art... but yours is different , I see myself in it...artist, creator, Goddess, sexual, tantric being. "CLICK HERE" for Hazel Dooney's website.
Resposne from
Hazel Dooney said...
Thank your for your thoughts about my work. No, I don't regard myself as a "shock artist" – the term "shock pop" which is often used to describe my art is actually derived from a critical perspective of Japanese, anime-inspired art (Murakami, among others) which drew relationships between that and my art. My work was also recently included in a touring institutional show that drew analogies between pop and popular Japanese manga and anime.

My paintings and photographs are not about pandering to prurience or trying to confront petit bourgeois prejudices towards sexual subject matter. I am trying to provoke a reassessment of women's sexual identities as they are filtered through diverse media and comment on the way these can, at once, empower and debase. Whether self-empowerment and boldness are aspects of the 'Goddess', I will leave it to others to decide.

JULY 29, 2008 8:53 PM

The "S' word is at MOMA

I was at the MOMA last week... the Dali exhibition was amazing. In the main gallery I was fascinated and I had to take this image of the words written about Abstract Art. For me this signifies the "S" word is not a four letter word anymore in the institution called ART. I personally have gotten, much flack for speaking and creating in that realm, any else ?? I love that the institution is not condemning it anymore or denying it.

Words are unnecessary...My Caol ' Ait, Exhibition

COMMUNION

I had to post this... every time I see it I cry with joy and sadness. This is a beautiful relationship, it is our true connection to the natural world. Christian so reminds me of my childhood dog and mate Kelly, my childhood tree Willy. my cats Maya, Griffen, and Paulo. My cats Lukla and Odin who I had to painfully leave in Chicago after a breakup.

It is an amazing example of Love, that transcends all... my tears run deep... I think of all the humans that feel animals have no emotions or that they do not feel pain and can be killed, tortured, and exploited with no thought. This makes my heart bleed and cry. Also, I think of the chances of Christian surviving from poachers is 50/50. Humans are notorious for our disconnect. On a positive note it is a beautiful moment of communion.

The "Other"-who shares your name

Last weekend I had a very weird experience. I was waiting on a lady in the shoe store that I work at (weekend job). The place was closed and she was stressed and tried to make quick decisions. Her daughter was drawing and I commented on her beautiful use of colors. When she got to the register to pay, Raul my co-worker said you are paying for this? I said no and with curiosity looked at her name. Right before me was Lisa Rasmussen another Lisa Rasmussen. It was such a weird experience. Starring at someone who has you name... they are suddenly not a stranger. It is hard to explain.
Any of folks out there experienced this? Let me know your experience? it is trippy and kind of cosmic.

I saw an amazing Dali show at the MOMA in NYC

To check out the Exhibition "Click Here"

His paintings were combined with his surreal films. It was a dramatic and beautiful exhibition. I love this dream sequence from the movie Spellbound below- by Hitchcock and Dali It was awesome I saw the exhibition in the morning and then in the evening at private reception...My favorite Dali piece is Narcissus. Above.


Check out my dream art from the early 2000's - I feel a total affinity with Dali's work
Title: Social Phobia


"Click Here"

Philosophy -Earth Art

(this is my photo documentation of me experience in 2007 Pu Lao, Hawaii).
I do have to admit, I saw many folks actually running out to this site, pausing then running back. Just to check it off their list. hmm.. My commentary is completely subjective, all art is!

Is there a difference in experiencing ancient art to prehistoric and contemporary art? I think so..
Ever since I was child I had a wanderlust to see sacred sites around the world. I marveled in the archaeology and the anthropology of the ancients. In the Lourve in Paris I was totally immersed in the basement collections, the artifacts of distance cultures and honestly the 15th century portraitures bore me. I am interested in our roots. The roots of our creativity and what was the impulse for the first human spark of creativity to say here I am. Was it instinct? I love to imagine the first shamanic Neolithic painter, creating art on the walls of caves. What shifted as the artist left her mark on the cave wall for others to see? What was she communicating to the other?
I am not an expert. I have traveled extensively around the world to sacred sites such as Stonehenge, New Grange, Knowth, and the Hill of Tara, to the Pu loa, Machi Puchu to list a few.

Yes, I believe there is a different experience in viewing and have researched that ancient sites where built on energy vortexes. That sounds airy-fairy but actually scientifically proven. They are many books about it.
If you are present your will feel a shift with in your being when entering a sacred site. I have only experienced a few contemporary artworks that actually move me to the core.

I think that Contemporary art does not have the same experience, because it is seen as just and an aesthetic or concept. The audience does not really participate in it. Where sacred sites have the residue of ritual and magic, of a spiritual encounter. There are layers of experience and a residue of an event. For the Contemporary artist to accomplish this they have to activate their own form of ritual and hope that some gets it. I am open though...I do know that part of the Earth Art movement in the 70's was holistically based. Hopefully the new Eco art movement will point us to our roots. This is my ideal.. I am proclaiming.

Photography- water obsession

This is a view down the Devils Throat at the Uguazu Falls in Argentina, What a mystical experience













This is taken out a plane window coming back from Brazil



This was taken on the Argentina's side of Uguazu Falls-Truly one of the wonders of the natural world

These Photos are for sale as original Giclee limited prints of 33. Please inquire if interested.

Graduate Show at JFK 2008

This is my work that was featured in the show. The conclusion of achieving my M.F.A has been amazing!

What is my relationship to my audience

What is my relationship with my audience?

My greatest hope is that my audience “gets” my work and my greatest fear is that no one will show up. Does that sound neurotic? Maybe...it is just an ideal.
Although while creating in my studio or in the forest, I never think about my audience or their response. This relationship between myself and the viewer is formed in public space.
In my paintings and installation, I dance between exploring altered states of consciousness, and or ritual inspired by my travels to sacred places, or by my dreams(subconscious.) I feel that my creativity is the evocation of the sublime within myself. This all comes from my personal experience, but through my process my work seems to transcend boundaries into the universal.

When viewing my work I attempt to activate my audiences imagination and intuition. My hope is while looking at my work, they can journey somewhere and find meaning within that experience. When ever I get feedback from my work I am overwhelmed and moved that my work is communicating my intention. As well as I feel a deep sense of connection with my audience that dissolves the "other."

This is a reaction from my collector, who is now living with painting that I entitled “Knowth”

“I really love it. Thank you for creating it. It brings me so many emotions when I look at it. My mind wonders to places that I am afraid to go but at the same time brings me hope and certainty that I will find clarity and light. It is like facing the darkness of the spirit but at the same time, in the background, there's light, there's hope. It is a dark painting, I wouldn't label it beautiful, it is more than that, more like a portal. The textures, the colors and layers are incredible to me.”
-Danielle Molonski.

My site specific Earth Art takes on a slightly different relationship with the viewer. Primarily in this work I am honoring Nature. This work is also temporal. A key aspect to this series is the witnessing and of the interaction of the work by another to activate its potential for the witness to remember something they have forgotten. My intention is for my shrines to evoke introspection and a sense of the sacred for those who stumble upon them in a forest or in a city. Although, I do not know if anyone ever experiences this work. Synchronistical at a party I was talking to my friend’s husband about what I was up to in terms of my art and I said I was creating tree shrines around the Bay Area. He in shock said did you create one in Mill Valley? I did and he found it... ah the Universe.



“ I stumbled upon a sacred moment. My nephew and I went walking on a wooded trail near our home. He is twelve years old and loves the woods. We are glad to be close. But even in the woods we were distracted. Thinking of other things, not particularly present with each other or where we were. We stumbled upon the shrine at Cascade Falls, and it awoke something inside us. What is this? We wondered. Look at these colors…around this beautiful tree, and resonant energy ... this is where people have gathered to honor this place. And so we finally entered into a place where we were, and arrived, home at the falls.”
Bennett Johnston

My relationship with my audience for me on a personal level is about reception and validation. I feel it is a healthy one, it helps me grow as a being in time, as well as in the eternal. For both of us, viewer and artist I feel it is a beginning of a dialogue between object, person, nature, and psychic space. The web of connection is being formed between cultural expression and transformation.
Within this " I celebrate that... Art lives at the edges of life and spirit. and can be experienced by all." PR. PHD.
Namaste, Lisa

My Goals as an Artist

What are my goals as an artist?



This is such a serendipitous question as I graduated on Saturday with my M.F.A. (yes!) and I need to focus on what is the next step and what does that look like.
On my pragmatic page it looks like my need to create a list of goals of what I need to accomplish to “make it” in the art world. I need to put on my business hat and create a website, a marketing strategy, apply to shows and galleries with proper documentation. I have to update my business cards. I have to search for opportunities and it goes on and on. My goals need to be carefully mapped out for me to make it all happen. It is a high-risk business and my product is my art and my grand vision.

My ultimate goal is to be self-sustaining artist creating, selling my work and teaching art. I also want to open a healing arts studio, which I call the Green House Studios. This would be a community space for new paradigm artists and thinkers to build alternative systems in various communities. Ideally it would create an all-inclusive dialogue about art and its ability to empower. This would include art workshops, gallery space, and community outreach art programs. Lauren and I speak about this Blog as the virtual beginnings of such a studio.

For me equally mystifying is my passion for what I am doing.
Pragmatism seems to fly out the window as I create the work that I need to do. I became very comfortable just being a conduit and having creativity flow through me. I have come to believe that I am merely a channel for something greater than me that manifests through my art. As the artist Paul Klee wrote, “the artist does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths. He neither serves nor rules ---- He transmits…. he is merely a channel.”
My personal quest is to reunite art and the spirit. Akin to the alchemist’s work, which is the transformation of gross material into spiritual substance, I see my art as artifacts of my ever-transforming consciousness. My art and its process represent a humble quest to resurrect divination in my personal journey and into the community at large. As an artist my work gives the viewer a personal glimpse of my internal revelations.I speak of divination in its broadest sense, meaning that through my art and process I find myself in a continuum of discovering the unknown within myself and in the world that I live in. The motives and impulses behind my creative process are my shamanistic belief that through the process of creation, I align with dynamism and the divinity that is animated in all life.
Another goal of my work is revelation. I believe the core social issue that I am exploring in my painting, photography, site-specific works, and my teaching is abuse, which plagues society and the planet Earth. My approach to this work is not criticism, but a gentle revelation of what was and what can be. In all my work I explore and reveal the shadow of humanity by facing it, bringing it to surface, and on a personal level, finding a way to transform it.

To surmise, essentially my goal as an artist is the marriage of the paradox between pragmatism and pure creativity. As well as my service to the world at large. On an interpersonal level one could say that my art is my Yoga, the discipline that promotes the unity within myself. Carl Jung called this individuation.
I apologize for this got a little wordy.
Namaste, Lisa
I am interested in hearing what are your goals as an artist? And how do you keep one foot in each world to make Art your life and profession?

Wow! I graduated with honors!!!

HS Student of the Year Nomination:
To Lisa Rasmussen:

Lisa,

Five years ago, you entered the Department of Arts & Consciousness as a student in the Transformative Arts program. As your creative process unfolded, your paintings grew ever more compelling. By the end of three years, you transferred to the MFA program to more deeply engage your artwork. During this period, you continued to develop a program in transformative arts for clients at the Lincoln Child Center in Oakland. Your program bridged the gap between art as a transformative tool and art as a form of cultural expression. Your Lincoln Child Care Center students exhibited their work in a Sausalito Gallery and were the focus of an annual benefit for the Center. Because of your dedicated and creative work with the students at Lincoln Child Center, they have experienced the invaluable joy of self-expression and the all-important process of being seen in their fuller humanity. You have been a profound, transformative influence in their lives.



As an artist, your work has gone far beyond the limits of traditional painting. Your final MFA Exhibition entitled Caol Ait (Thin Spaces) reveals the full scope and power of your artwork, moving beyond the genre of painting into installation and environmental art, as well as movement, ritual and sculpture. In your teaching and in your artwork you celebrate the realization that art lives at the edges of life and spirit. You explore and then dissolve the boundaries between inner and outer, self and other and in so doing represent the highest ideals of Holistic Studies. You are an outstanding individual, and we are proud to nominate you as Student of the Year. Congratulations and best wishes for continued success.



Peter M. Rojcewicz, PHD

Dean, School of Holistic Studies

What an honor an exciting day!

CAOL 'AIT (thin places)

This is an image from my M.F.A. exhibition, which really was a dream come true. I call these triptychs "totems". More later.. hopefully two of these will be selling soon. There is interest. Cross your fingers, they are ready to be out in  the world. 

Anyway..a little bit about me  I am a artist and a world traveler.., I am  obsessed with sacred sites, nature, and the ocean. As well as shamanism and ancient esoteric and mystical philosophy. I will be graduating in June 2008 from John F Kennedy University in the school of Holism, Arts and Consciousness. A cutting edge graduate school (new paradigm thinking) and now under graduate school that produces change makers. What ever that means to you. I found it to be an amazing and transformative experience--eternal as well as external. That was a Freudian slip, I might internal...I like it.

  Currently, my paintings are being represented by the gallery Studio 333 in Sausalito, CA. The other work that I do is site specific, Earth Art which I will show and speak about in a later post. Also, I am a photographer as well as an collaborative artist. 

I am engaged in two very exciting projects with other artists. The first is the "Art is Moving", check out on this blog site! (under that title) Artist Lauren Usher and I are creating a space and face to challenge and hopefully transform perceptions of art and artist, here in our contemporary culture. 

The second project that I am involved in is the name is evolving. I call it "The Hands of Creation," which is an art project with artist/activists Janice Brewster and Nicole Chan breaking the silence of child abuse within our society. We will be doing workshops and Janice's goal is to have those participating to in vision a better world  and to create 1 million hand prints. With intention of what the world should be  for children. 

Lastly, I am a transformative arts teacher for children who are diagnosed as severely emotionally disturbed at a mental health facility in Oakland, CA. I have been there almost three years and seen what art really does it empowers, it heals, it transforms.... more discussion later..

This is my somewhat long intro...As I typing this I am beginning to understand the power of the BLOG it is telling my story ...my mythology. O...I do apologize my writing is very conversational and I frequently miss a connector words. My mind moves faster than my hand.

Please comment ...I look forward to the conversation. 

Leap of Faith 2008

This Blog serves many purposes. The first is it is a diary of my experience as an artist and activist. Secondly, it will be documentation of all the collaborative and individual projects that I am involved in. Thirdly, hopefully it will instigate a conversation with like minds i.e philosophy, metaphysics, world travel, sacred sites, social critique and of course Art.