Unveiling Our Maiden Migration

I discovered this incredible book of maps at the home of a friend.
It is an awesome source of endless inspiration.

The moment of truth had arrived. The boards were blank. As an experimental artist who refuses to plan everything in advance, putting the first mark on the painting surface is a moment of huge discomfort. I know that whatever I put there will be “wrong.” It is simply the tiny “bindu” spot from which everything else will evolve. Knowing it will later have to be changed, I must nevertheless mar the surface and initiate the creative process. It takes courage to err!

I had already spent two months in preparation and still I did not know what I would be putting on the configuration of boards that will represent our human migration from Ethiopia into Southwest Asia. Two months of preparation? Whatever for?

The answer is two fold. First, shifting from one region of the world to another is almost like beginning a whole new body of work. It is so overwhelmingly complex that I hem and haw and fiddle with odds and ends, procrastinating as I attempt to remember how I started on the last region. Secondly, it takes enormous research in order to begin conceptualizing a creative way to express multiple levels of information and emotional content.

Maps reveal the ever-changing human perception of the world.
They are a very old form of art. 

Overcoming Inertia

There are to be twelve alcoves when Eve’s Imprint is completed. So far I have done three of these: African Origins, My Ancestral Journey, and Southeast Asia (completed this winter). I began the Southeast Asia paintings in 2012, but interrupted them to do pieces for My Ancestral Journey and one of the eight environmental banners that will accompany the twelve alcoves. After over three years of toil, finally completing Southeast Asia meant I had to decide what region of the world would be next.

My final piece for the Southeast Asia alcove of Eve's Imprint is
Ecosystems Stick Map, a riff on a navigation tool used in the Marshall Islands.

Since 17% of my DNA matches that of persons in South West Asia and I lived in India (the eastern edge of SW Asia) for two years, I figured that gave me a leg up on some of the other regions of the world. Three India paintings in my Pilgrimage series had mined my personal experience of living in rural villages. This alcove of Eve’s Imprint would require that I put my personal experience into a larger historical and geographic context.

I like to use maps from Doctors Without Borders because they help me
distinguish contemporary countries. Here I delineated South West Asia.

In May I began studying maps and rereading material on the migration of homo sapiens beginning around 73,000 BC. I checked out a world atlas from the library and copied maps of various regions with which I will be working, using this exercise to work myself back into the overall project. I also checked out resource materials on SW Asia, including a video on the disappearing Bengal Tiger.

The Bengal Tiger is on the list of endangered species.

What if?

Ideas began to percolate. What if I focused this region, the first migration site out of Ethiopia, on the environment and animals they met there? What if I used a large tiger head to represent India, elephants for Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh; and camels for Saudi Arabia? What if I made the large tiger head out of old maps of the area?

Soon I was enlarging maps of the region to figure out the sizes and configuration of boards that could best represent its geographic contours. Not only do I love maps, I see using them in my compositions as a means of lending veracity to what I am presenting. That is also why I plan to use images of art and artifacts from the region. I’m not just making this migration stuff up; there is real scientific research (genetic, geographic, archeological, anthropological, environmental, and geological) that has produced this contemporary understanding.

After experimenting with a variety of board sizes and configurations,
I arrived at this arrangement. The smaller boards are for islands.

Once I had the configuration of boards plotted and had put gesso on them, I backtracked to do some research on Persia (present day Iran), since that culture had a big impact on India. When I found some marvelous photos of ancient art of the region, I had the idea of creating a multilayered area of 4” x 4” artifact tiles on the Himalayan area of the India board. These could dramatize the power and impact of the Himalayas on the Indian subcontinent. (More on this in a later blog.)

I began creating a “test” model of the large tiger head that will cover most of India. Meanwhile I perused a book on Persian potsherds that I found at the Oriental Institute in Chicago. I thought I might use transfers of the potsherds for Iran (Persia). To test this, I tried laying photocopies of some of these on the Iran section of the Arabian/Iranian board. Oops, not so sure.

My first test model of creating the tiger head out of old maps of India.
Enjoy this funky version; the final one won't look like this!

Moment of Truth Arrives

Once I had a “test” model of the tiger’s head, I faced the moment of truth – actually making a mark on one of the boards. I decided that the parts of India that would not be covered by the tiger’s head should be the red-orange that you see everywhere – in clothing, architecture, magazines, films, and all paraphernalia. It’s a good color because India has a very fiery culture. But before I mixed and painted that color, I thought that if the tiger is made out of “positive” map images, then it should be surrounded by the sort of “negative” images that one gets by doing transfers. Plus the porous texture of transfers gives a sense of being from a long time ago.

This led me to an Internet search for ancient cave art of India that I had stumbled onto in an article in Wikipedia. I was thrilled when I found just such images. Of course these were small, so off I went to FedEx Office to make color enlargements for my transfer process. With these in hand, I confronted my insecurity about the best way to do the transfers. Do I put the gel on one surface or both? Do I put it on with a brush or a pallet knife? How long do I let it set before I remove the paper backing? Am I going to use a wet toothbrush to remove the paper or roll it off with my bare fingers?

Just do it, LiDoña! Stop procrastinating and do something! Be willing to be wrong! Nothing is final but you have to start somewhere. Ok, I’ll start with Pakistan and Afghanistan because being on a smaller board the transfer will be easier to work with. Fussing and fiddling as I tried to remember how I had done this in the past, the first transfer went down and I left it to dry.

This is a transfer of Indian cave art depicting animals I do not recognize.

Unveiling Our Maiden Migration

As I was sorting through my Indian cave art images, now spread all over the studio floor, a thought crossed my mind. If there is ancient cave art in India, I wonder if there is in Iran? Wouldn’t that be more genuine in terms of the time period of the first migration than potsherds from several thousand years later?

Sure enough, an Internet search turned up prehistoric Iranian art. Well, what about Saudi Arabia, the first stop on the migration path out of Africa? More searching brought up Arabian rock art and Pre-Islamic stone writing. Even more exciting was the discovery of the Palaeodeserts Project begun in 2013. This international multi-science research project is turning up evidence of a Green Arabia that comes and goes when the climate changes. The first homo sapiens to leave Africa and set foot in Arabia found a land of lakes, grasses, and animals. It's hard to imagine that now but as we are beginning to experience the effects of climate change on agriculture in California perhaps we can empathize with the flux and flow of flora and fauna in Arabia in response to shifting levels in the water table.

Scenic countryside in Hail, Saudi Arabia. This is to become part of the
largest eco-park in the Middle East.

My wall of ignorance about the migration into SW Asia was beginning to crack. I was beginning to generate a variety of ideas about how to symbolize our maiden migration. Back in the studio, my excitement carried me through disappointment with the first cave art transfer I did for Pakistan and Afghanistan. Indeed, what I had put down was wrong in relation to what I tentatively visualize for the India board. It has to be removed. But I’m ok with that because it did its job. A trickle in the creative process has started to flow.

For more about Eve's Imprint go to my website www. lidonawagener.com.

Centered and Sane: An Alternate Universe

The small university town of Lecce captured my heart.

Breaking the Mold

My first six months after leaving my job were focused on an Italian adventure that was designed to shift my attention away from my previous work life. I immersed myself for four months in learning a bit of Italian, planning my adventure, and figuring out the art I would do while in my Assisi residency. Then, Bellisimo! I gloried for two months in the delights of Italy's Mediterranean culture. When I returned to Eugene in early December the university felt long ago and far away, just as I had hoped it would.

Once back, I began embracing life without an external job - the adventure of being my own boss again. I started with the obvious – daily exercise to keep me healthy and fit and regular social interactions. I decided to do yoga five times a week and figured out that the cheapest way to do that was to join the Downtown Athletic Club. If I break down the monthly fee in terms of a daily class cost, it’s about the cost of a large coffee or chai tea, maybe a little less. The trade-off is more than worth it.

Every day I see gracious yogis opening up around me.

Jaw Drops & Belly Lifts

I know I’ve shared before how yoga improves body health in small incremental steps that take awareness even to notice. Definitely doing it five days a week (instead of one or two) speeds up the process. The most startling event so far was the day my left jaw dropped. Yep, I was in down dog and the teacher said to relax your mouth. I did and all of a sudden my left jaw dropped. It took a few seconds to realize that it wasn't broken; it was relaxed. How many years of tension do you think fell off that day?

I’ve been doing yoga and Pilates for over ten years. One of the reasons I got into these was to develop some core strength that would hold up my sagging stomach. Well, it never happened, until just recently. After six months of doing yoga five days a week my belly is beginning to lift. I still have a long way to go, but I finally have some abdominal strength. It feels great.

The scent of Jasmine greets me each time I leave my home. 

Obvious & Not So Obvious Elephants

As I approached what it means to be a fulltime artist, I confronted former ideas of what this would mean. An old dream of opening a creativity center near downtown re-emerged and I took the steps of looking for a site, preparing my place to sell, getting preapproved for a mortgage, and exploring available sites. After several months of searching, I realized that nothing I could afford was available. This “reality testing” brought me to my senses.

I backed up and took a different approach. If I could clear stuff out of my current home, perhaps I could open up enough space in my art studio for painting large pieces and to be able to hold art classes. It would require serious clearing. I began tackling the obvious with vigor: clothes and books. Professional jackets and pants went quickly to working friends. Books were more of a struggle, but something had to go to make room for my burgeoning Eve’s Imprint library so I could get it out of the studio. I hesitated over the shelf of Shiatsu books. “Okay, I am not going to do Shiatsu again or write a book about it.” Out they went to a friend who can use them.

There are still two shelves of Eve's Imprint research binders
and sketchbooks in the studio closet, sigh. 

The not so obvious elephant blocking the attainment of more space sat where no one but me knew about it; shipping crates for my Pilgrimage paintings consumed both studio and bedroom closets upstairs. This was forcing me to clutter my studio with finished work and supplies that limited my workspace.

An epiphany happened when I took the paintings out of the crates to hang in a show downtown. I realized that the paintings themselves do not take that much room. It’s the padded shipping crates that hog space. I did some backward domino thinking: if I cleared old magazines (collage material) and house paints from the storage unit in front of my home, then I could move the gardening supplies there and clear space in the back storage unit for the shipping crates.

The narrow storage unit in front of my home that
blocks the view of my parking space.

Hauling away boxes of magazines and old cans of paint require a vehicle so I enlisted a neighbor’s help. I planned to request his assistance with moving the shipping crates down the stairs and into the back storage unit. Of course, the day everything was ready for that move, he was not home. Brain over brawn, I figured out how I could move the crates using leverage and gravity. Fortunately for me, there were no snags as I allowed the boxes with their heavy interior padding to slide down the stairs toward me and then maneuvered them across my living room, out the patio door, and into the back storage unit.

The hardest part was figuring out and executing a configuration
that put the widest and longest crate on top of two that were the same height.

Now for the Fun

To make more space available in the studio closet, I tackled boxes of supplies that I had packed for moving. How many of these do I actually need? If I haven’t done watercolor painting since I shifted to acrylics over ten years ago, do I really need to keep all of these supplies? If I have never used the silk-screening materials, how likely is it that I will use them? Now another friend has supplies to aid her artistic journey. With the help of shelving units and hanging storage bags, all of the large supplies and Eve’s Imprint reference binders went into the closet.

As I moved finished work from the studio into the now more spacious bedroom closet, I found two items from my former office: a gold table runner from Thailand that used to cover my lateral files and a Mexican mirror that hung in every one of the many offices I had at the university. Intuitively, I took the table runner into the studio and placed it over the top of one of my rolling cabinets, along with a Cambodian statue that I acquired on a trip in 1968.

A rolling cabinet that holds paper, matt board, and backing boards
now features our human migration journey and a place for my mandala in progress.

The Mexican mirror stumped me. Was I ready to give it up? If not, where would it hang? Every room in my home had a mirror except the studio. What about the studio? I carried it there and looked for a space - maybe behind the easel? Not sure, I left it propped against the wall. When I hung it a few days later, I had another epiphany. I looked around my more spacious studio, smiled and said, “This is my new workspace!” The table runner and mirror had migrated from the old to the new workspace.

I love the way two doors open and a solid mirror appears.

I’ve discovered that some retired people are offended by my delight with my new workspace. They cannot grasp that I have not retired and do not intend to retire. I have repositioned from being focused on income generation to doing the work that I love and that therefore is play. Yes, I need to bring in a little income to keep my head above water, but that needs to come from doing the things that I love to do: painting, writing, and teaching. So for those who may be offended by the idea of a workspace, think of my more spacious studio is my new play space.

The writer part of me will have her day soon. I have begun clearing file drawers in the downstairs home office to make room for new projects. Ten years of financial records have been shredded but there are files of book drafts, etc. yet to be examined. Clearing is slow but necessary work. And even though this work is invisible to visitors to my home, it is opening up space inside me to move forward into my new life.

Centered and Sane

During the last six months, I have come to recognize that I am living in an alternate universe that I did not know existed. It is amazing to awake without stress and tension. It is refreshing to shift from a daily “revving the motor” gear into an energy-conserving “cruise control” gear. I enjoy releasing old “desires” for a new jacket/necklace/whatever, indulging instead in my deep passion for sharing my vast international experience in new and innovative ways.

Kendra's memorial garden beside my patio.
She continues on the journey with me.

One Step At A Time

Cross section of a kiwi.

Mandalas exist in nature and in every culture of the world. Based on the circle, they symbolize wholeness. Painted mandalas often tell a story. If you have heard about mandalas, most likely it would be the sand mandalas created by a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks who, after completing their mandala, destroy it to emphasize the impermanence of all things. The symbology of these Tibetan mandalas is based on traditional Buddhist teachings.

Tibetan monks creating traditional Buddhist sand mandala.

My work with mandalas began thirty years ago when I first read Carl Jung's work with mandalas in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Jung's research led him to the discovery that the mandala is a symbol of the self or soul. After making spontaneous unstructured mandalas for ten years, I was introduced to the structure of Tibetan Buddhist mandalas and a Chinese tradition of painting with gouache, an opaque watercolor paint.

For over twenty years I have been painting mandalas based on the Tibetan Buddhist structure but using contemporary personal symbology. I found that following the Tibetan Buddhist structure - concentric rings from the outside to the center - leads to a journey inward that can be transformative. One moves from the fire ring to a transition ring, narrative ring, sea of life, four portals, one's inner garden/the self, and ends the journey by painting a final outside rim to contain the entire inner process.

After experiencing the power of the mandala in my own life, fifteen years ago I began teaching Mandala Journey classes. I now teach two: one that is based on visionary dreaming and one that is based on exploring a person's ancestral heritage. This year I am teaching a Dream Mandala Journey and I hope to share snip-its from this class in a series of blog posts.

LiDoña Wagner Heritage Mandala tracing ancestral journey from
Ethiopia to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe.

Looking at the sand painting and heritage mandala above, one cannot imagine how it is possible to create such a complicated piece of art. Without going into all of the details of our process, I want to share an example of the one step at a time element of this form of mandala creation.

Often it is persons with little or no painting experience that want to take a Mandala Journey. They may be at a point in their lives where they 

• want to explore new life directions,
• are seeking greater meaning, or 
• know intuitively that their deepest wisdom lies within rather than in the external world. 

For this reason, I begin each journey with introductory sessions to acquaint them with using a brush, the role of water in interaction with paper and paint, the basics of color mixing, a simple form of meditation, and trusting intuition. The result of this introduction is the completion of their first mandala, a color wheel that they can use for making color choices as they create a dream mandala in gouache. 

My most recent color wheel. 

Although I make recommendations, I allow each student to choose her/his own set of red, yellow, and blue gouache paints. By the time they have completed their color wheel, they have acquired basic painting skills and are ready to create a dream mandala in gouache. One of my basic teaching principles is to go on the journey with my students. Thus, I also create a color wheel with the basic red, yellow, and blue gouache paints that I will use in my own mandala.  

After drawing a basic Tibetan Buddhist mandala structure in pencil, we begin with the ring of fire. Since time immemorial, humans have used fire as a form of protection. In painting a ring of fire, we surround ourselves with protection as we begin our inward journey to the center of the self. Below are student examples of beginning and completing a fire ring.

This student has done a marvelous job of laying in her base color, finding her flame form,
creating a scaffold of flame forms in white, meditating to find the color of the form,
 and painting over the white scaffold with her chosen color.

Another student has completed her fire and transition rings.
Her progression is described below.

Unlike Tibetan Buddhist monks, when we begin our mandala none of us knows, or needs to know, what our finished mandala will look like. Too often in our lives we try to jump ahead to conclusions or hesitate to begin a process unless we know where it will end. But life is lived one moment at a time and our mandala journey process requires staying in the moment rather than goal setting and accomplishment.

We always work in a clockwise direction, going completely around the circle before taking the next step. To give you a sense of this one step at a time evolution, below is a progression of my own fire ring. 

One step at a time, I did my white scaffold, painted my flame form with a shade of red,
added orange (barely discernible), and added purple that looks like black.

One step at a time,  I added the blue triangle, refreshed and added to
the orange, and put in dots with a lighter shade of my base color.

The whole form cried out for cool colors. I surrounded the blue triangle with white.
I doodled to find an addition to my flame form. I meditated and found a shade of green
for the added stroke (my base color plus a touch of black).

After changing the teardrop to green to go with the new green stroke, to see the
negative space around the entire form, I placed white paper on either side of one form.

I added a green reverse comma and changed the orange blob above it to green as well.

Now go back and look again at the completed fire ring of the second student above. Working one step at a time, going all the way around the circle with each step, she originally painted an orange stroke around her blue flame form. After meditating, she removed the orange around the blue form and replaced it with a shade of green. She darkened her original base color - an absolutely awesome accomplishment for a beginning student. Her examination of the negative space led to connecting lines above and below, an addition of red, a shade of brown, and a sun shape in the brown, each one step at a time going clockwise around her mandala.

One step at a time each of us will paint our way to the center, incubating and working with our dreams, maintaining contact with nature (fire, water, obstacles, gardens), and arriving at a symbol of the self at this moment in time. It is like watching a seed become a stem, become a bud, become a flower, become a seed, etc.

This way of working is not for everyone. For some people the quickly done spontaneous mandala is enough. For myself, I have learned that taking one step at a time is an effective way to move through life transitions and allow the future to unfold. Whenever I am faced with an overwhelming task the mandala reminds me that I don't have to know all that must be done before I can begin. All that is needed is to meditate and find one step that will move me along the journey. And even that is mutable. In meditation I may discern that the step I took needs to be removed and another step taken. Welcome to the journey of life!

The Value of Art

Origins of Western Art

Gallery of the Lions in Chauvet, France from 38,000 years ago

30,000 to 38,000 years ago, humans entered a series of caves in what is today southern France and, using charcoal and ochre, painted multitudes of animals of that era. It is believed that the art was created for use in rituals since the caves, rediscovered on December 24, 1994, give no evidence of occupation and are not suitable for living.

What led these ancient humans to undertake, over a series of years, the development of an animated environment of energetic animals? What reward, if any, did these original artists receive for creating their monumental work of art? What did viewers experience as they entered this dimly lit environment and confronted life-like images of animals that they followed, hunted, killed, devoured and revered?

The April issue of Smithsonian magazine carried a feature story about the recently opened replica of Chauvet Cave in France. After the 1994 discovery of the cave, it was closed to the public to prevent the sort of deterioration that occurred at the Lascaux Cave in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. Creation of the $62.5 million facsimile of this Paleolithic art from the Aurignacian period has been the occupation of hundreds of scientists, simulators, artists, conservators and more.

Some people conjecture that the art in Chauvet Cave represented an evolutionary leap for humankind. Certainly it demonstrates the power of the human imagination, a power that has been used for both good and evil. Though we will never know or fully understand what led to the development of representational art, the replica provides an opportunity for contemporary humans to meet and converse with our ancestors.

Reverence and Distain for Feminine Art

Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1979, Collection Brooklyn Museum,
Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation

When Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1979, five thousand people attended the opening and 100,000 viewers saw the show. However, the power of this monumental installation celebrating 1038 women's contributions to Western Civilization created such controversy that the scheduled tour collapsed as the American art establishment shunned it. It took a grassroots movement of feminists to locate nontraditional spaces, raise funds, and mount The Dinner Party in venues across the United States and the world.

Entry Way Banners heralding the darkened chamber where
The Dinner Party is installed.

It was my privilege to experience The Dinner Party in an abandoned and renovated warehouse in Chicago in the early eighties. Viewing this incredible installation of tapestries, ceramics, china painting, needlework, heritage panels, and multi media documentation of the hundreds of volunteers who assisted Chicago in creating The Dinner Party was a knockout moment in my life. It coalesced my angst and struggle with the male-dominated culture in which I was born. It confirmed what I had intuitively known, that women are so powerful that it frightens men to their core.

Primordial Goddess and Fertile Goddess
place settings in Wing One of The Dinner Party

After over five years of personal research, Judy Chicago's evolving conception of a visual feminine history coalesced into a vision of a triangular table with place settings for 39 women who have primarily been written out of western history. It was female archeologists such as Marija Gimbutas who began to uncover the buried  history of goddesses that preceded contemporary male gods and Judy Chicago enshrined some of these ancient goddesses on the first wing (From Prehistory to Rome) of The Dinner Party.

In addition to the once obscure reality of goddesses, many of the women selected for Wing Two (From Christianity to the Reformation) are likely unfamiliar to many of us. Are you familiar with Theodora, circa 500-548, a Byzantine empress who made it possible for women to study in Salerno, Italy? Or with another Italian woman named Trotula di Ruggerio who wrote extensively on gynecology and obstetrics?

Place setting in Wing Two of The Dinner Party - Trotula di Ruggerio,
professor of medicine in Salerno, Italy, died 1097. 

Heritage Panels containing brief history of 999
women included on the heritage floor of The Dinner Party

It took a team of researchers working with Judy Chicago for a couple of years to find and curate the 999 women whose names appear on the porcelain tiles that make up the floor of the triangular table. Arranged around each place setting, the names of these women remind us that we stand on the shoulders of those who went before us.

Sojourner Truth place setting in Wing Three
of The Dinner Party

Virginia Wolf and Georgia O'Keefe place setting in
Wing Three of The Dinner Party

Some women on Wing Three (From the American Revolution to the Women's Revolution) may be familiar. But others such as Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to graduate from medical school and become a licensed female physician, are hardly household names.

Judy Chicago after the installation of The Dinner Party in the Elizabeth A. Sackler
Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York. 

For a long time it looked as though Judy Chicago herself might be written out of history. After touring in six countries, The Dinner Party spent a long time boxed and stored before finding a permanent home at the Brooklyn Museum in 2007. While not the 30,000 years it took for the art in Chauvet Cave to be rediscovered, through the intervention of Elizabeth A. Sackler, The Dinner Party is now accessible to new generations of people. It has its own ritual space where humans can give respect and reverence to the feminine principle in western civilization.

From: www.judychicago.com

The Dinner Party (1974-79)

The Dinner Party is a monumental work of art, triangular in configuration, that employs numerous media, including ceramics, china-painting, and an array of needle and fiber techniques, to honor the history of women in Western Civilization. An immense open table covered with fine white cloths is set with thirty-nine place settings, thirteen on a side, each commemorating a goddess, historical figure, or important woman. The table rests upon an immense porcelain floor comprised of 2304 hand-cast, gilded and lustred tiles on which are inscribed the names of 999 other important women. These names are grouped around the place settings to symbolize the long traditions of women’s achievements.

Through an unprecedented worldwide grass-roots movement, The Dinner Party was exhibited in 16 venues in 6 countries on 3 continents to a viewing audience of over one million people. The Dinner Party - which has been the subject of countless books and articles - is now permanently housed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum where it draws thousands of visitors from all over the globe.

Photo Credits

Chavet: Stephane Compoint

Installation: Donald Woodman

Panels, Judy Chicago: Through the Flower