BACK TO SCHOOL

Coming to ceramics class after spring break there were some nice surprises.

PRAYER WHEEL

The Runes say:"Give Thanks".

BLESSINGS TO THE HOUSE

Peter gave me an idea: to make an equivalent to the embroidered "God bless this house" but with Runes and, for my part, without "God" because I think that word creates confusion.
So this one says:

May Blessings
upon this house
cause happiness
to all who live here
and all who enter
by the virtue of
these Runes

If you try to read it note that there are special letters for 'th' and 'ng'.

DRAMA IN THE WILD

RUNES #3

The Unity of the Great Spirit ties everything together.
The affirmation of Unity is a Love that is equal for all creation.
One can nourish such Love as a feeling but it only becomes real as it translates into compassionate action.
That is when one values the interest of others as highly as ones own.
That is Big Love.

TEAPOT FINISHED

It really came out exactly like I planned with one exception: it drips all over when you pour.
Live and learn!
Many potters make teapots that cannot be used, just as an artistic statement, so that's what this one is.

MORE RUNES

This says:
The Great Spirit is one name for the energy that is the substance of the subatomic particles. This basic Energy contains the seeds of every quality imaginable and thus contains the faculties of awareness and intelligence. If these were not inherent in the basic particles, how could they come into existence by simply adding particles to particles?

I LOVE THE RUNES

It says:
Life has a will that is a force in creation
and goes beyond the laws of the material.
Therefore life shapes its own destiny.
Pleasure and pain are reflections
like shadow and light.
The big bang is the beginning of time and space.
Its origin is the still point beyond space-time.
We call it the Great Spirit.

FROM THE LAST KILN FIRING

The teapot was made last fall but didn't make it into glaze firing. It came out nicer than I expected, but it is very heavy and contains only one cup.

Today I didn't make it to school because I hurt my hand. I dreamed that I was attacked and I punched the attacker as hard as I could, but it was my night table that I punched and my hand was bleeding all over.

RUNES

I am making a bowl in ceramics class and I decided to decorate it with Runes. I love alphabets but never seriously looked at the Runes. It's overwhelming because there are so many different sets of runes: German, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Latinized etc., and the experts disagree, but at least the information is there on the net and I've been studying yesterday and today and can now write two different kinds. I think I'll stick with the Scandinavian because they are my heritage. Here are some of the inscriptions I contemplate using on the bowl.
I also build a fence today to give us more privacy in the back yard. Brian, who lives in the studio in the back, helped me, and he is a pro, so we did it in a couple of hours.

A SCARY MOMENT

ANYONE'S GUESS

A picture says more than a thousand words - but what does it say?

ACCIDENTAL CREATION

I thought I had everything under control, but then I touched the wet painting with my sleeve - and the plans had to change.

TEAPOT

I'm planning a teapot and with my engineer mind I designed it in detail. My teacher was duly impressed!

SATURDAY NIGHT

I watched "Nomad" with the Mexican actor Kuno Becker tonight. It's a highly romantic epic from Kazakhstan. The landscapes of central Asia are something else and the story of friendship, love and destiny called a few tears out of me.
Or was it just the smoke?
This is Kuno Becker in a somewhat different setting!

MY VASE

SAME, SAME - BUT DIFFERENT

I'm exploring this motif, the play of subtle energies.

A BOLT IN THE BLUE

It was a nice rainy weekend and I finished this painting also.

In between painting I read. I just finished 'Famous all over town' by Danny Santiago,a story about Chicano life in LA narrated by fourteen years old Chato. It's a great book and was quite famous when it was published in 1983. Later it caused some controversy when it was revealed that the author was an elderly white man, Danny James, who had worked as a counselor in the Chicano community.
The book is an easy read and funny too, and it seems authentic. I recommend it!

SWASTIKA

For 3,000 years, the swastika meant life and good luck. But because of the Nazis, it has also taken on a meaning of death and hate.
These conflicting meanings are causing problems in today's society. For Buddhists and Hindus, the swastika is a very religious symbol that is commonly used.
Unfortunately, the Nazis were so effective at their use of the swastika emblem, that many do not even know any other meaning for the swastika, and in Germany it is now outlawed.
Can there be two completely opposite meanings for one symbol?

I say no. Even the Nazis used the symbol for good luck in their struggle and the fact that their struggle was hateful does not change the meaning of the symbol.

That's why I want to rehabilitate it in the Western iconography by using it in a way that cannot be mistaken.

AND……

These are the last from my six weeks at John Brown's studio, the blue was a second time in the kiln and the others in the display of the week.

MORE POTS

The ceramic adventure goes on, I actually sold my first bowl yesterday! (Thank you, you know who you are!) Now I'm back in school in the hand building class. It's socially satisfying but I don't have much time to do my own things, so I try to get the best out of the assignments.

IN THE DARK

I took this picture in the dark and changed the exposure afteward, and it made the mood closer to the original than the one taken with flash.

I'VE BEEN CREATIVE

These are my two last paintings. The lower one, the newest, is called 'Nigth falls in the 6th dimension'


and here are some stoneware from the latest firing:


The blue lotus, but the blue is hardly visible:

RAIN

It's good to paint when it's raining, and this Sunday it has been coming down all day. So, I'm back to the watercolors and here is the result.

POTTERY

Click to enlarge.

My six weeks of working at the ceramics studio every day has payed off. The last batch was very satisfying. Several things came out better than expected and it's usually the other way around: bad surprises. I'm also more in command when I throw on the wheel; today I made four bowls without any mishaps.

REVIEW

Here is the whole series with bonus!

BONUS

This is not really part of the series but 12 is too important a number not to be celebrated.

QUOTE OUT OF CONTEXT

The important thing is to realize the least distorted image of the workings of the universe. We are part of the universe; we are both observers and actors. Whatever we do or think or say is part of the ongoing creation. Therefore we need a reasonable framework, a knowledge based on wisdom and compassion that unifies the different viewpoints and celebrates the diversity.
First, let those who adhere to an organized religion follow its message of love and disregard the rest. Trust yourself to recognize your own spirituality if you are seeking it.

NUMBER TEN

Ten introduces Zero and closes the circle, returning to before One. So, in the depiction of ten the Zero is shown as a bud and this bud contains the O from on top of the A, standing for Awareness of the true Self, which is all there is in the transition from life to death.

I also read the cards as the circle of life and death:

1. The Bardo state (Death after the ‘Judgement’)
2. Conception and life in the womb
3. Birth & divine infancy
4. Childhood
5. Youth
6. Coupling
7. House of seven energies, spiritual awakening
8. The “best” years
9. Old age
10. Death & confrontation with the pure Spirit

NINE

THE OCTAGON

Here the Å is incorporated in the octagon itself. The center of avareness is in the center of the cross - and the cross is an ancient religious symbol, older than Christianity.

SEVEN

The house of seven energies is the human body with the seven chakras.

HEXAGON

PENTAGON

NUMBER THREE AND FOUR

I did the Triangle again and then the Square made up of three Triangles

ONEANGLE

In the same way that I got from three to two I now shrink the line, which is the ‘Twoangle’, to a point, the ‘Oneangle’ but a point is only an idea, it doesn’t actually occupy space. How to represent this?
With the sight of my telescope I focus on the Point and here I place the o on top of the A as a symbol of my center of Awareness.
The small Å being part of the Great Å is symbolizing the unification of the individual Awareness with the Universal Awareness of the Great Spirit.
It is both the sight and the Seer.

TWOANGLE

I am doing another series of ten pictures. The theme is figurative expressions of the numbers from 1 to 10.

I began with the triangle – that’s the one I posted for New Years.
You all know what the pink triangle means, but that’s just my personal gay joke. Here the form of the triangle symbolizes Being, the eye in the middle is pure Awareness and the color pink stands for Bliss. This is the trinity of the Great Spirit taught in Hinduism as Sat-Chit-Ananda.
The signature symbolizes the single Awareness of the worshipper floating in rapture because I let A stand for Awareness.

When I was in school in Denmark we had the letter ‘Aa’ which is pronounced like an open ‘O’. Later the Swedish form ‘Å’ was adopted and I used it in spelling my name ‘Åge’.
So, with A standing for Awareness, Å would stand for Double Awareness, that is Self-Awareness, and it is in this sense that I now use it in this series.

Representing higher numbers is simple enough but going back to two and one poses a problem.
If you shrink one side in a square until it disappears, you’ll end up with a Triangle; in the same way if you shrink one side in a Triangle you get a ‘Twoangle’ - and it looks like a Line.
A Line, for example the line between the sunny and the shady side of the street, is a symbol of separation, which again is the basic principle of Duality. So this days picture is an attempt at a pictorial representation of the number 2 with a bit of philosophy thrown in.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!