True Seeing

Art that has power can be arresting, amazing, mystical, shattering. But art of our own time requires that we get inside the head of the artist and figure out what she was thinking first, so we can process it mentally and arrange our reactions into tidy platoons of ego-reinforcement. What I mean is, that even looking at art today requires that we spend at least as much energy defining ourselves in reaction to it, as we do actually experiencing it.

I want to experience art the way Annie Dillard describes running into a weasel in the forest:

Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key. Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright
blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied out our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don’t.

- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974

Here is what happened the first time I actually saw a piece of shamanic art.

We were arranged like an audience, waiting for a surprise. Our eyes were closed. They took a black piece of cloth off a painting. It was as large as a big window, rectangular, painted on a canvas. The image was benign, symbolic, talismanic, simple. It was quite a pleasant image of the symbol central to the spiritual tradition in which I was being trained.

I continued looking. We sat there quite a while. My eyes did not leave the painting. I kept looking, but not really thinking. I would look as long as they expected us to.

There was a tension and then the spring let loose. All of a sudden, I SAW it. I saw it with my hidden eyes, the eyes that can see beyond, that can see in the dark. I FELT it. I felt a wave of all that it contained: all the intentions, the traditions, the materials, the vision of the artist, the LOVE with which it was painted, the incredible LOVE, the gift that it was: the time and the effort and the persistence.

It blossomed in front of me, it caught my breath, and left tears in my eyes. I saw the details that seemed specific to me, personally, but for all the world otherwise simple and pleasant embellishments—a hidden message, another layer. I saw and felt the materials that went into it, how they had been spiritually-aroused to the task of its creation. I felt it’s numinous self, how it embodied an entire history and intention that had poured through the artist during its making. I was deeply stirred, but if I had not had eyes to see, it would have just been hiding in plain sight.

This is How They Remind Me

In art school, my first professor pretended to be offended when he showed our class his senior thesis painting of twenty years before (red acrylic rhythmically globbed on a vast canvas) and I said it reminded me of frosting on a cake, and I wanted to lick it. It was a compliment, but he didn’t seem to take it that way.

The good thing was, he taught us over and over that in a composition, the negative space is as important and must be considered equally to what is shown. This is one thing that I’ve often thought of, since. Shamanically, we know that the reality beyond the veil of spirit is equal to and as important as the reality of everyday that we see. Or, that one’s shadow struggles to be revealed equally to one’s high-minded intention. Or, that reasons-against are as significant as reasons-for.

This blog is about what shamanic art really is, what it really means, who makes it, why and how. There are so many conflicting definitions of shamanic-anything that I will narrow this down. I will begin by exploring the negative space. What shamanic art isn’t – according to me.

• Art isn’t “shamanic” just because it includes feathers and bones or because it looks similar to tribal talismans or amulets or because it uses natural materials or because it looks like American Indian or African or native art or objects. These things do not make a piece of art “shamanic.”
• Art isn’t “shamanic” just because the artist actually calls himself a shaman.
• Art isn’t “shamanic” just because the gallery or exhibition owners hint or say the artist is a shaman.
• Art isn't “shamanic” just because the artist claims to have partied with, or been initiated, abducted, or rescued by actual shamans or native indigenous people.
• Art isn’t “shamanic” just because the artist says she travelled far away and studied with real shamans.
• Art isn't “shamanic” just because the artist claims to have native genetic heritage.
• Art isn’t “shamanic” just because it mimics indigenous or traditional shamanic altars, costumes, ceremonies or rituals.

None of these make shamanic art.

The current state of the adjective “shamanic” in the realm of art amplifies a desperate ego-wish for coolness which overlies a soul-ache for authenticity.
It doesn’t help that the established, market-driven, so-called real “Art World” – at it’s worst – has appropriated the word “shaman/shamanic” cynically and ironically to lend a sheen of mystery and a whiff of power to often blown out, exhausted, ego-bloated exhibitions and works whose shock-method clichés really should be documented until we all fall down, laughing. Yet it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

My blog isn’t about that stuff.  Forget all about that.

Now, for the positive space.

Authentic shamanic art is made by Spirit,

coming through the artist.

Art is only shamanic when...

The artist designs and creates the piece

in a state of communion with The Spirits.

The artist may shamanically travel to where The Spirits speak to her, and integrate their counsel and visions and messages and symbols into the resultant work. The artist may open himself to receiving messages and visions from The Spirits while working. Yet the decisive factor is when...

The artist creates and develops the work in a

spiritually-aroused, poetically-resonant state of being.

To create a piece which contains power, the maker of it physically, emotionally, and spiritually invests the piece with power using shamanic/sacred/traditional methods which originate in the Spirit world. After its creation, the piece must then either be consumed or used ritually/ceremonially or remain as a working object, to develop and continue its resonance with the sacred power with which it was created.

(This has all been very mental, but necessary.)

I would prefer to skilfully lead anyone who reads this in a subtle and roundabout and poetic way to the truths of shamanic art. I will certainly be skilfully led in oblique and mysterious ways by The Spirits themselves to learn about shamanic art myself. I will share what I know and what I learn. But if it is to be kept quiet, then you will have to find it out for yourself.

True shamanic art illuminates and makes material what The Good Spirits want us to know or remember, and lets us keep the stuff around in our world to remind us.

To this end, they have more mysterious ways of speaking through the hands and minds of people than I will ever know...surely most artists don't define themselves as shamanic who receive guidance from the other side of reality. But nevertheless I will seek magical art and share it with you, here.

This is how you remind me of what I really am.--Nickelback