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You are here: Home / Archives for Asian Art

Taking Refuge: An Evening at the Seattle Asian Art Museum

March 25, 2015 by Iskra Leave a Comment

“Thus we live in a world that first existed inside the heads of others, a world built up through innumerable sustained acts of intentionality, a world where everything speaks not of nature and her processes but of its makers in their resistance to those processes. In a very real sense we can be described as living inside the heads of others, in an excess of interiority that obliterates our own relation to material origins, to biologies, to our bodies. In some way, making was intended to override the givens of nature, to create a world; that world has itself become a given whose terms are more limited in their scope for imagination and act. The world is so thoroughly made it calls for no more making, but for breaching its walls and tracing its processes to their origins. “Taking apart” has become the primary metaphor and “backward” the most significant direction: the creative act becomes an unraveling, recouping the old rather than augmenting the new. ” –Rebecca Solnit

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Seattle’s Asian Art Museum sits in a stately Art Deco building nestled among trees in Volunteer Park. Known for its extensive collection of [Read more…]

Filed Under: Meditation & Buddhism Tagged With: art as refuge, Asian Art, being in culture, contemplative art, museum, REbecca Solnit, seattle art museum, Seattle Asian Art Museum, volunteer park

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Yesterday, Memorial Day, I took on the dreaded tas Yesterday, Memorial Day, I took on the dreaded task of shopping for hiking boots for walking the border of Wales and England and roaming around Ireland. I have the kind of feet that were born to complain. I was once on an 8 mile hike in heavy leather boots I had not truly broken in and they did that thing with a crease right on the main joint of your big toe. This was approximately 1 million years ago, with 7 miles to go before I could take them off and I can still feel the throbbing. So I tried to live in slippers for the rest of my life, but this will not work on 7 to 10 mile treks through bogs and scree. There were approximately six suitors in the shoe arena, each of them screaming Ouch! Ugly! Why me and my feet! And then I found these boots and it was a heart throb of love at first sight. Please direct your hearts and prayers that are not being spent on more important things —of which there are many— towards my feet and making it through the first flush of love to actually being able to wear these shoes 10 miles a day. If things don’t go well, I may just sit in my room in Killarney or Hay-and-Wye and paint watercolors of my boots. I will take romance in whatever form it arrives.
New project in the works: Nucor Steel Plant. . . New project in the works: Nucor Steel Plant. 
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#newmediaartists #techspressionism #photographicart #nucorsteel #industrialphitography
WAKING UP WAKING UP
Thank you everyone who came out to Spotlight North Thank you everyone who came out to Spotlight North! It was wonderful to host people in my home and share the garden. Saturday morning a Golden Kinglet appeared. This is a truly magical yellow bird — so fast and so shy that I have never been able to take a good photograph. This bird only comes two days a year, first stopping in the branches of the tree above the pond and then briefly examining the moss. Before I can grab my camera, it has flown. However brief the visit, it always feels like a blessing. 

I was happy to see a range of work go to new new homes, much of it inspired by the garden and the visiting birds. This morning I am sharing images going back 20 years, of my life with birds and the garden. When I bought my home, it sat on a long mangy lawn contained by chain-link and concrete and a picket fence. It is now a wildlife sanctuary: Protect what you love.✨

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