Artwork
I was commissioned to design a logo by an organization that provided homemakers and home health aides throughout the northern Berkshire area. It was to denote the sense of support and structure available with the help of a home care professional. The roof over three people sitting at a table succeeds in communicating security , community and care. The basic mandala design communicates a sense of wholeness that can be restored to a household.
When I was teaching drafting and design in the industrial arts department of a high school in Long Island NY, ’68 thru ‘71, a fellow teacher asked me to design a logo for his friend’s association of hockey referees.
This is a plaster casting of a clay bust I did in 1968. In my adolescence I was interested in Greek and Roman mythology and this was an attempt to conger up the classic hero within, complete with a Brooklyn hairdo. It was time to turn away from tradition and look elsewhere for answers. The conflict was great and the levels of excitement and promise were as intense as the level of frustration.
I did this self portrait in 1968 at the end of my senior year at Pratt Institute a few months before Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The world I was about to enter professionally was not an attractive one. Trained to solve design problems I set out to find an alternative, a new perspective that could make sense of the chaos and somehow reveal an underlying order to it all.
These two self portraits in ink were obviously done at a time of introspection. My training taught me the importance of identifying the problem when designing a solution. I applied my newly acquired design techniques to answer the question “What’s happening”? I explored many how-to books on the subject of awareness from Emerson and Thoreau to Black Elk and Suzuki Roshi. I practiced disciplines that cultivated mindfulness. I researched the matter for many years and eventually began to intuit an underlying design making sense of it all.
Understanding the structure of something is a wonderful experience. These three exercises I did at Pratt survived long enough to take some pictures. They are merely exercises in structure using elements of compression and tension. The “tensegrity” in the middle is a structure made up of beams being held together by tension rather than compression. The partial remains of a two foot pillar on the left resembles the “Double Helix” model of the molecular structure of DNA. They were all exercises in perceiving patterns and common denominators.
I was an amateur photographer when I began looking into mandalas as a common ground to compare various belief systems, sciences, religions, disciplines, philosophies and schools of thought. It’s amusing that my journey of introspection began by literally peeling back layers and locating kernels and cores.
What followed was an effort to compile a collection drawings I made of various mandalas from cultures past and present. Carl Jung’s research into dreams reveals the recurring role of the circle as a symbol of psychic wholeness. He calls these mandalas “archetypes “ of collective consciousness. This, and all the numerical divisions of the circle was the common denominator that I was looking for. The unity of one, the duality of two, the stability of three is repeated everywhere. Four symbolizes the elements and four directions, and five the senses. These symbols reflect a basic human need for order and a sense of wholeness. They are graphic representations of our commonness.
I eventually began designing mandalas of my own. On the left is a seven inch watercolor I painted in 1972. The sun gear and bicycle wheel are prints of wood blocks I carved in 1973. The logo I designed using my initials symbolized my arrival at my intended destination. Though I had not achieved enlightenment I had gained insight and a sense of wholeness. The activity of delving into the mandala was a centering experience. Like the Buddhist monks who create mandalas with colored sand only to sweep the masterpiece away afterwards, I learned it is the process and not the product that is the prize.
This is 2’ by 4’ oil painting I did in 1978 of Cape Cod Bay. It was an anniversary gift for my brother and his wife. A rowboat waits at the shore to take someone out to a sailboat anchored in deeper water. The sun setting promises new horizons and beckons a voyage to the light starting at the shore in the bottom corner of the painting.
