The Filling Tree

Old Oak

Ancient Oak © 2013 Bo Mackison

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” ~ Pablo Picasso

This tree, an ancient oak, stands a few yards from the mown path through meadow and a prairie restoration. Solid, deeply connected in the earth, a tribute to time.

Whenever I pass this tree, I stop. Compelled to stop. I seem unable to walk past the tree without pausing, walking through the brambles and sticks of growing sumac, until I stand next to this giant. Rest my hand on its bark. That’s all. Just rest my hand upon it, and connect its pulse with my pulse. Sap beat. Heart beat.

I think. I wait. I breathe. I peer into he upper most branches. I feel my feet grounded on the earth, as the tree is grounded the earth. I run my finger through along the ridges and the valleys of the wood. I see pictures in its wavy trunk lines. I listen the woodpecker’s drumming. I stand in the shadow of the tree, and notice the breeze that swirls around the both of us. The experience fills me.

And then I continue on my walk.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She explores wherever she goes, with and without her camera.

Reflections and Celebrations

IMG_6764

Reflections in Pond

“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.”
~ Angela Schwindt

Six months ago I got an invitation I couldn’t refuse. My younger daughter me asked if I would like to go an a destination birthday celebration. That kind of question only has one answer, as far as I’m concerned — an unqualified YES! And to double to fun, we invited her sister to meet us. And so we are celebrating — reminiscing, laughing, walking ourselves silly as we try to hit the favorites at DisneyWorld, Epcot, and Universal Studios. (10+ miles each day, so far…)

I will resume my more regular schedule of posts once we run out of energy (and vacation days) and return to our respective homes!

Until then, there’s more celebrating to do…

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is still celebrating and will return after Memorial Day.

Gazing Upwards – Barrier # 10

Looking Upwards

Gazing Upwards © 2011 Bo Mackison

This post is the tenth in a series of my story, an intimate exploration of art and healing. See the introduction and complete series at My Healing Journey.

“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.” ~ Pamela Vaull Starr

I love this barrier in the photograph. In the physical world, it’s all bricks and boarded windows. A street address scrawled on a mural. Hinges and the door’s outline give little hint at what might be inside. Yet, the windows and door are covered with a huge print of a woman’s face, her eyes directed upwards and outwards.

Solid barriers. Yet the distance from behind all kinds of barriers to the beyond is never further than a gaze upwards and outwards. The barrier may be limiting thoughts. If I gaze beyond those thoughts, I can see the dreams that unfold into the plans that attain the goals. Step by step, baby steps. Many tiny steps forward and suddenly I’ve walked a mile. I’ve reached what I once believed to be the impossible goal.

“Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.” ~ Carl Schurz

The sky is always visible. The Universe, expanding beyond us in distances of time and space our human minds can barely grasp, is beyond our naked-eye visual capabilities, but it is there. We know the Universe exists, even if it is beyond our grasp, beyond our seeing.

When I get bogged down in present day happenings and the focus on myself, this photograph reminds me to move beyond, beyond what my mind can easily grasp, beyond what I can see clearly with my eyes. Listen to the messages from my heart and spirit. Choose my guides. Move beyond my comfort zone, beyond my preconceived notions of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is ‘look under foot.’ You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.” ~ John Burroughs

Once I have gazed at the stars, the moon, the sunlit sky, even the cloudy gray skies, once I have connected with the divine, then I return to my space and my time. I ground myself in this moment, the place where I stand. The place that grounds me in the here and now. I find the strength and the courage to set my goals for the day or the month or for a life time. And I move forward.

Possibility exists. The sky is visible to all. And as the Burroughs’ quote reminds us, we each have a place under the stars. We each have a place in the world. Opportunity is under our feet, even as we look to the sky and grasp for the stars.

Next: Through the Tunnel

A Riot of Art – Barrier Series # 7

 

Riot Art © 2011 Bo Mackison

Riot of Art © 2011 Bo Mackison

“What art offers is a space — a certain breathing room for the spirit. ~ John Updike

This post is the seventh in a series of my story, an intimate exploration of art and healing. See the introduction and complete series at My Healing Journey

Once I earned the privilege, I worked in the art room every day, often twice a day. The art I created was not beautiful, not worthy of hanging over anyone’s couch. It was dark, often difficult to look at, always meaningful. The art I created helped me deal with the emotions bubbling to my surface so that I did not have to  explain in words. Too raw for words, the art spoke for me – through my paintings, sculpture, and mixed media work.

“Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable,
there we also stand already quite near its transformation.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I was immediately attracted to the woodworking room, a small room divided from the open studio area which was often crowded with other patients working on art or craft projects.

There was a center work table, tools hung from pegs and hooks on the wall, there were bins of building materials. I had no specific goal in mind when I began, but I felt driven to create. El, in her wisdom, always stayed near while I worked here. She’d pull a stool into the corner, and perch there with a pile of her never finished paperwork balanced on a lap board. She both ignored me and kept watch. She answered questions and found supplies I wanted, but otherwise I was on my own.

While many of the clients chose to work on projects they could gift to friends and relatives, diversional projects which fulfilled a need, I chose to let my spirit speak through my hands.

My first project was a sculpture of many layers, and its creation, done over a couple of weeks, was a turning point in my recovery.

I began with several pieces of wood, a saw, a hammer and nails. With great intensity, I cut wood into many lengths. The sawing stage was short-lived. I was anxious to get the hammer in my hands. When I began hammering nails into the pieces of wood, the creation took on a life of its own.

I hammered hundreds of nails into five or six pieces of wood. I made a base, then angled pieces of wood to form a teepee like construction. I pounded some of the nails so many times, only the nail head was visible surrounded by hundreds of hammer-head imprints. Nails protruded from the edges. Nails bent; they were pounded into the wood lengthwise. Nothing was wrong. There were no rules, except those for safety’s sake. Never one who liked to follow rules, I understood the sanctity of the safety rules. I wore safety goggles and aprons. I understood that the misuse of tools or equipment were grounds for dismissal from the workroom. I honored the space, the rules, the tools. I learned to manage my emotions within a set of boundaries.  And I kept creating.

“Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror.
Just keep going, no feeling is final.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

After the hammering and nails stage, I moved into the plaster of Paris stage. The plaster was my sculpting material. I mixed bowls full of the thick white pasty stuff. Then I applied it to my wood structure. Layers and layers of white in globs and streaks. There was nothing delicate or considered in its application. Just the urge to hide the wood and the nails under a volcanic-shaped mass of white.

I added small human figures which I fashioned from bits of clay. I pushed the figures deep into the sculpture. I rolled clay into snakes with open mouths. I pushed them deep into the sculpture.  El continued to quietly observe from the sidelines. Occasionally another patient would use the tools for a leather project, but for the most part I worked alone and in silence.

The sculpture of wood and nails and plaster became the container for my anger, my pain, my wounded self. I asked El if there was paint. I wanted large quantities of black and red paint. El left the room, returned with two 16 ounce bottles of tempera paint – one primary red, one black.

Using a brush more suited for house painting, I slashed streaks of red and black over the white. I again worked in many layers. Paint over paint over paint. I worked in a quiet, self-directed, controlled frenzy. A controlled frenzy, you ask? That is what it was. I could not stop. I did not act out in rage or anger or despair, although those emotions were present within me. But I could not stop. I had to make this wood-nail-plaster-clay figure-paint structure.

For several days after I had finished the painting, I went in the woodworking room and sat with it. Examined it. El eventually handed me a notebook and a few markers – red and black – and asked if I wanted to write a few words. Thirty pages later, I stopped.

We are product of our past but we don’t have to be prisoners of it. ~ Rick Warren

“I’d like to destroy it, that pile of stuff,” I said to El.

“How would you do that?” she asked.

I knew that the act of destroying my art required a safety plan. There were limits and boundaries, there were rules for safety, and there were the other patients to consider.

“What if I did it when there aren’t people around? It might be frightening, the noise and all. I’d put a big piece of plastic on the table so there isn’t much mess. And wear the safety goggles and my apron.” I answered. “I want to take the hammer and smash it.”

El nodded her permission. “I’ll get what you need. You could do it Saturday afternoon, after the department closes for the weekend.”

And that is what we did. I spent several hours on a Saturday afternoon in a cold January destroying my sculpture symbolizing man’s inhumanity towards others. I hammered it into a pile of dust and mangled wood and bent nails. When I was finally weary of the hammering, I hung the tool on its hook and smiled. A very small smile. Then I sobbed and sobbed.

El sat me down, lightly put her arm around my shoulder and sat with me. We sat for a long time.

Finally I stopped crying, found tissues, and cleaned up a bit.

El looked out the window “It’s beginning to snow. Let’s get our coats and go for a walk.”

We walked around the hospital grounds. The new snow-covered the grayed snow in piles on the parking lot. The air was cold and fresh and very clean. I gulped huge breaths.

Art heals. Not overnight. Not in a week. But art, practiced over a lifetime, offers the spirit a path towards healing.

Next: Putting Out Fires

Life is Like a Puzzle

Tree Silhouettes

Tree Silhouettes © 2013 Bo Mackison

“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”
~ Yoko Ono

On my month-long break from the Southwest, I returned to Wisconsin’s winter, and discovered this year’s snow season felt more brutal than in the past. The nearly two feet of snow that fell during the earlier part of my visit has had no opportunity to melt. The snow is as deep as the day it fell, though it has been swept aside from walks and roads to make it more manageable for travel.

Even so, my outdoor explorations were limited to walks around the neighborhood and a few sojourns by car. There is no such thing — for me — as a wander in a forest or a tramp through a field or prairie if I have to plow through depths of snow with each step I take.

And so the photos have been few. They all fall into a single category – trees in snowy winter. I do love the trees in winter, the branches exposed, the skeletal trunks and limbs showing the soul of the tree. Even the conifers have a minimalist feel to them.

This morning’s sunrise  – I’m watching it as I write – will be my last in wintry Wisconsin for quite a while. It’s a pale sunrise this morning, as if the cold has frozen the rays into a cool white light.

The snow is a beautiful sight from my windows, but I miss being in the middle of nature, in the midst of the weather and the breezes, tramping on the land.

There is much I miss when I am away from Wisconsin and living in the Tucson area. There is much I miss when I am away from Arizona and living in Wisconsin.  Life is rather like a puzzle — you fit the tiny pieces in as you find them, not sure of the big picture. Each day is a new puzzle piece, and they all fit together to make one huge whopping, incredible, messy life.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Tomorrow is a transition day – travel, comings and goings, many opportunities ahead. Keeping my eyes open in anticipation.