Stone Voices Loses Theresa Sweeney

I just received word of the recent passing of Stone Voices columnist Theresa Sweeney. Her mother phoned to tell me that Theresa fell in her home and died from her injuries the next morning. 

Theresa Sweeney
1962 - 2014

A huge shock. A terrible loss. Indeed, the world has lost a voice of wisdom. Theresa's insights into the interconnections between art, nature, and spirit were truly remarkable, and she had a gift for communicating the secrets of these interconnections in a way that was clear and accessible. Her wisdom would sneak up and gently take hold of you while enjoying a story about her grandmother's garden, a trip to Wal-Mart, or paintings of teddy bears. 

Theresa wrote a column for Stone Voices from the very beginning of the publication's history in fall 2011. Her column always offered a powerful message tucked inside a simple, but eloquent, story. Though I never met Theresa in person, I could always feel her radiant personality and vibrant energy when I read her work. So, thinking about her many contributions to our publication over the past few years, I went through her columns and extracted a few paragraphs that I particularly like. Theresa will indeed be missed by the entire Stone Voices community.

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from "Child's Play,"  Summer 2013

It amazes me that in Nature, though every being has a job, no creature appears to work, and yet everything is accomplished. 

from "True Colors," Fall 2013

I remember learning in grade school that when leaves change color they are actually reverting to their original hue. Trees decrease the green chlorophyll in their leaves as they begin to pull energy inward for the coming hibernation of winter. Contrary to what many believe, the vivid shades that hold us spellbound each autumn are really the true colors of leaves. 

The season of fall calls us to reflect upon our own true colors. Like trees, we spend a lot of internal energy creating an artificial chlorophyll-type mask of our own that hides our authentic nature. Many of us grow up feeling insecure in who we are, and in an effort to fit in we sadly stifle our uniqueness. We become attached instead to a false sense of self, dependent upon other people and things to define us. Just as our attention to trees is heightened each autumn when they show us their authenticity, other people's attraction to us is strengthened when we drop our facades and show them who we really are.

Trees have no problem taking self inventory each year and shedding that which no longer serves them. They know that new growth is just around the corner.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving we can be appreciative for the lessons learned and be assured that our letting go will become food for our own greater nourishment.

from "The Art of Patience," Spring 2014

While it may benefit us in certain areas of our lives, I do not believe patience is such a virtue when it comes to creative pursuits. In fact, I think it can actually thwart creativity. Your best art comes through you, not from you. When you start to feel the need to summon patience to pull you through, it's a signal that you are blocking the flow. When your art begins to stress you and you start criticizing it and noticing mistakes and flaws, when you start hating it and wishing it were something other than it is, when you feel the need for patience to persevere, you've hijacked the bus. You've fall our of sync with your muse. 

Art is a voyage of discovery. Leonardo da Vinci advised us: Do not be tethered to your expectations. By wanting something to be good, by desiring a particular result, we jeopardize what wants to have life. Artists must be cautious not to super-glue themselves to their initial vision, but rather to alway live in new beginnings. That way we leave the door open to all potential.

from "The Goldfinch and the Teddy Bear," Winter 2013

Life. Full of meaningless, random coincidences? I think not! There are signposts all along our path. Everything that happens has a purpose; everything that happens helps us in some way. Everything. Pay attention and see what magic unfolds.


Christine Cote
Shanti Arts

Jack-in-the-Pulpit

It is not colorful, it has no sweet flowery scent, and it can very easily be missed as one strolls through the woods, but the Jack-in-the-Pulpit is quite possibly my favorite plant. When I moved to Maine twenty years ago, I found a few of these interesting plants growing in my woods, and I have carefully transplanted, protected, and nurtured them so that I now have several dozen growing and blooming in my gardens and plenty more still in the woods behind my house.

I think of Jack-in-the-Pulpit as the quintessential New England wildflower, though I'm told it can be found as far west as Minnesota and as far south as Florida. It is most certainly a plant found in the moist coniferous woods of the northeast, much like two of my other favorites—the Trillium and the Lady's Slipper. But Jack is so adorable—the cute little guy standing tall in his pulpit covered with a stunning purple and green striped hoodie.

From Jack-in-the-Pulpit, edited by J. G. Whittier, 1884

Jack in-the-pulpit
 Preaches to-day
Under the green trees
 Just over the way. 

Squirrel and song-sparrow,
 High on their perch,
Hear the sweet lily-bells
 Ringing to church. 

Come, hear what his reverence
 Rises to say
In his low painted pulpit
 This calm Sabbath day.

Christine Cote
Shanti Arts

Genuine Silence

It took a long time this year for spring to arrive in northern New England. But, finally, it is here. The leaves are mostly out, the forsythia is in bloom, and a few hummingbirds have zipped by me while out in the garden.

When spring arrives, we head north to our cabin in the woods. Our cabin is near the end of a six-mile long dirt road, so we have to be absolutely certain that the mud has dried up before we start the trip. We’ve gotten stuck in the mud before, about half-way in, and had to walk the rest of way to get an ATV to go back to pull out the truck. You only do that once and the lesson is learned—wait until the end of mud season.

This year, we had no such trouble. We arrived at our cabin on May 23 for a long weekend. The weather was gorgeous and the pesky black flies, generally out thick on Memorial Day weekend, were still nowhere to be found.

So, on the morning of May 24, I stepped out the front door of our cabin to walk down to see the lake and I was immediately reminded of one of the most wonderful things about the woods up north. Silence.

C. B. Cote, Silence.

No traffic. No machinery. No voices. Nothing.

Silence—genuine silence—is hard to find. It’s not easy to get away from the sounds of society. But when you find it, it’s like experiencing cool water on a blistering hot day. Silence is refreshing, soothing, joyful. It feels unbelievably wonderful as it washes over you. Like water, silence flows over your body, following every curve and seeping into every pore. It surrounds you like a soft blanket.

Contrary to what we might be led to believe, silence is not nothing. Silence is not a lack of something . . . a lack of sound. Silence is something all to itself. Genuine silence can be felt. It is thick and full and rich. It is fresh and pure. Silence is life-giving.

“In some places, silence can be an emptiness that is paradoxically, full. You do not occupy this silence; it occupies you.”

Mark C. Taylor, Recovering Place

Christine Cote

Shanti Arts

Away by the Pond

I want to go soon and live away by the pond, where I shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds. It will be success if I shall have left myself behind. But my friends ask what I will do when I get there. Will it not be employment enough to watch the progress of the season?

~ Henry David Thoreau

My Heart Rests on A Drawing Lesson

It finally felt a bit like spring yesterday. The temperature was near fifty and there was no wind, so it felt warm and hopeful. There is still quite a lot of snow and ice in our yard. It softens and melts a bit during the day, and then freezes hard during the night when temperatures fall below freezing. But there was a promise of spring yesterday, and I took some time to enjoy it.

I made a trip to Portland to run some errands and see the exhibit Fine Lines: American Drawings at the Portland Museum of Art. The exhibit features one hundred drawings from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. In this era of color and multi-media creations, we don't often have the chance to look at drawings made simply of graphite or charcoal on paper. 

My favorite was A Drawing Lesson (1865) by Constantine Hertzberg. The museum provided magnifying glasses with which to look at the pieces, and I used one to examine and admire this beautiful piece. The subject is charming. The detail and technique is spectacular. The composition is perfect—notice how the large lush tree with all of its precisely-drawn leaves reaches around the top right of the scene and shelters the three people during their lesson; on the opposite corner, the stone walkway leads the viewer to the top of the ledge on which the women sit for their lesson; the focal point is the outstretched arm of the gentleman meeting the upward look of the woman, and this gesture guides the viewer to look at the bright background scene that the women are presumably drawing. The scene is genteel. The execution is dazzling. On a day when spring was in the air, this piece felt utterly delightful. 

On another day, I might have been entranced by something entirely different, perhaps something minimalist in execution or something abstract. The exhibition has tremendous variety. But on this day, my heart found a resting place with A Drawing Lesson. I think I might have to return to see what my heart enjoys on another day.

Christine Cote

April 4, 2014

 

A Beautiful Surprise

Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, said of Thoreau: "He always insisted that his whole life was one of extraordinary luck, and he could have said, as Picasso did of a similar life, 'I do not seek, I find.'"

I do not seek, I find. For a long time, I had these words scrawled on a piece of paper that was pinned to the bulletin board above my desk. The greatest things in my life haven't been things I looked for, they were things I stumbled upon. What I provided was the willingness to see them and draw them into my life. It would have been so easy to pass them by, but my passion for discovery and my drive to not be limited by what is possible led me to places and opportunities that have shaped and defined me. Some times I feel as if I move along on a kind of moving walkway, never knowing what lies ahead, always being surprised, and, like Thoreau, feeling that every moment is one of extraordinary luck. 

In the current issue of Stone Voices (Spring 2014), columnist Vincent Louis Carrella writes about the beautiful surprise. "I'm not looking for anything in particular, only the fascinating discovery I've come to call the beautiful surprise." With camera and notebook, Carrella takes off on vision quests, walking through nature, listening, watching, waiting, discovering. His camera bears witness to his discoveries; it documents the gifts that present themselves. Carrella knows too that his life is one of extraordinary luck, for he sees himself as a " . . . child watching God's magic show, an endless array of jaw-dropping tricks."

Choose not to seek. Choose to find . . . a beautiful surprise.

Read Carrella's entire column here.

Christine Cote, Publisher and Editor

Shanti Arts Publishing

Patience, Why?

Over the years I've made a number of quilts. I learned about quilts when I lived in Indiana, and I quickly discovered that the whole process was more enjoyable and relaxing when done without a sewing machine. So I starting making quilts by sewing all the pieces together with nothing but a needle, thread, and a thimble, and then I stitched the pieced top to the batting and the back—again entirely by hand. Obviously, it took a long time to complete a bed-size quilt, but, for whatever reason, getting it done quickly wasn't the point. For me, I loved the process. 

One day someone was looking at my work and said, "I would never have the patience to do something like this." The comment confused me; it didn't make sense. I never thought that I needed patience to make these pieces entirely by hand. And now, thanks to Theresa Sweeney, columnist for Stone Voices, I understand why the comment didn't make sense to me. 

In the spring 2014 issue of Stone Voices, Sweeney begins her column, "The Art of Patience," like this:

As an artist I work in all media, but drawing with pen and ink has always been my first love. When people look at my intricate and detailed images, they often say, "Wow, I would never have the patience to do something like that!" I tell them that it really has nothing to do with patience. Patience is what you need when you're standing in line at the register and the salesclerk calls for a price check for the woman in front of you . . . . Times like those are when you need to willfully summon restraint to cope with the gap between what is happening and what you wish were happening. 

So I understand now why the comment about patience didn't make sense to me; patience is not what's needed when making art. In fact, Sweeney says that if you need patience when engaged in an artistic endeavor, walk away. It's quite possible that you are tethered to your expectations, fixated on the outcome. 

Art is a voyage of discovery. Leonardo da Vinci advised us: Do not be tethered to your expectations. By wanting a certain outcome we jeopardize what wants to have life. We endanger the passion and joy and flow of the process—and that is art. 

Hope: The Last to Die

Sometime last week I received in the mail a complimentary copy of Indie Spiritualist: A No Bullshit Exploration of Spirituality. I've been spending a bit of time every evening watching the Winter Olympics, but I still have to have a book in my hands, and this seemed like a good choice.

The work of Chris Grosso, the book starts like this:

"Hope, it's the last to die," said an elderly man sitting across from me some years ago on a bus in Rome at 2:00 AM. He'd just read the word hope tattooed across my knuckles, and I have to say that, in my own personal life experience, man, was he right. Life is full of terror and beauteous rapture, and I've experienced both on numerous occasions. From a life filled with despair, jail, emergency rooms, detoxes, and rehabs, to one of hope.

C. B. Cote, Beyond (8)

Hope . . . I remember telling a therapist many years ago that I had a lot of hope and a good amount of faith, but I struggled with love. I've always been very hopeful . . . an optimist, a dreamer, focused always on what is possible, fully convinced that good will always overcome evil and light will always pierce the darkness. During the very lowest point of my life, when I found myself gripped by the emotional and physical pain of depression, I still had hope; the darkness was thick and dense, but I could sense a tiny, dim light. Eventually the light grew stronger and I was restored to full life. From my experience, I have to agree—hope is the last to die, perhaps because without hope, we would die.

In this way, hope is like art. Without it, we have nothing. It occurs to me that art may actually be a physical manifestation of hope, and hope, I now realize, is what I manifest every time I work as an artist; hope, I now realize, is what I feel every time I connect with art. Art centers us, holds us in the moment, and in that moment, with everything else have fallen away, we experience hope.  

The Big Picture

I'm captivated by small things in the natural world—leaves, seedlings, flower buds, snowflakes, tiny baby birds pointing their wide open mouths toward the sky. I watch them, examine them, touch them, collect them, and photograph them. But I'm also mesmerized by the big picture, the part of the natural world that I can't get my arms around—the landscape. Landscapes may well be my favorite subjects for art.

So I decided to show landscapes (see our current exhibition), but with a little bit of a twist—landscapes by day and landscapes by night. The exhibition is wonderful—many amazing images of the world by day and by night. A few need special mention, and I'll talk about some of these special images over the coming weeks. (The exhibition closes April 30, 2014.)

The nighttime landscapes of photographer Bob Avakian are nothing short of stunning. They illuminate the unique color palette, the rich shadows, and the glowing warmth of the night. These landscapes do indeed show a part of the natural world that is big—too big to get your arms around, but not too big to sink into and absorb into your pores. Look at these images and be mesmerized.

Winter Blues

Living in Maine, I truly have the opportunity to enjoy the seasons, and in Maine, we have more than just the traditional four seasons. We have spring, summer, fall, and winter, but we also have mud, bug, fishing, tourist, lobster, harvest, hunting, shrimp, shoveling, and sledding. They each have their unique characteristics and customs and . . . colors. Yes, colors. 

I associate each of the seasons with certain colors. Staying with the traditional seasons, I associate fall with orange and rust, gold and deep red. I connect spring with green, the kind of green seen in new leaves and fresh grass. Summer, for me, is bright, hot, blazing red . . . an uncomfortably hot red. And winter, my favorite season, is blue.

There is a kind of blue we see in winter when everything is covered in mounds of pure white snow, the sky is clear, and the sun has just set. Dusk settles in, and a beautiful blue cast fills the atmosphere  . . . spreading out like a blue fog. I know blue is considered a cool color, but, for me, blue has a way of adding warmth to the cold of winter. 

Still Point Art Gallery's current show is Winter Splendor. Here are a few of my favorite images from the show that feature the beautiful color of blue. (Be sure to see the entire show before it closes on January 31, 2014.)

The High Peaks, Eleanor Goldstein

Morning Frost, Leslie Parke

Northern Lights, Bob Craig

Winter Cold, Marie Dancy-Brennan

Snow and Ice Floes on the River, Michael Welch

The River Rests in Winter, Margruite Krahn

Sea Smoke and Ice, Dave Clough

Practice, Practice, Practice

I am standing at the front of the classroom, leaning on the podium as thirty-three high school students stare at me. Some eyes are alive with interest, others were glazed with boredom when they entered the classroom and have not changed. My tattered copy of Don Quixote flops in my left hand. The mad knight has fought windmills, puissant Biscayns, troublesome sheep, and now, with dreamy persistence, searches for the golden helmet of Mambrino. The eyes stare. A hand from the back rises. "Who cares?" asks the young inquisitor. "Why do we need to read this story?"

I pause, because this is the most important question of the whole school year. If I fail this question, the whole year is easily lost. "We tell stories to convince ourselves that our lives have meaning."

(excerpt from "Before He Melts Away," by James Hanmer. Shambhla Sun, January 2014.)

We tell stories to convince ourselves that our lives have meaning. This is the essence of art making. Convincing ourselves that our lives have meaning. Trying to make sense out of the ups and downs, the craziness, the complications. 

I realized some years ago that this is why I make photographs. Everything seems to fall neatly into place when I make pictures, and, for a time, it feels like my life has meaning, purpose. 

Art making is a practice, like prayer or meditation or yoga. As artists, we practice being open to what art tells us about ourselves. We seek those moments when everything falls into place. We practice finding out who we are. Be it painting, writing stories, dancing, or acting—it's really all about discovery.