On Aug 10, 2013, at 4:40 PM, One Heart Zen wrote "Pulse":
Robyn Ellenbogen is a visual artist working in a
broad range of media and disciplines including silver-point, egg tempera,
artist’s books, photography and sculpture.
For the past few years, Robyn has been discussing her work with John
Bailes, a poet and Zen priest. These
conversations have included a practice of passing words and images back and
forth between them. Several of these words and images were published in the journal
“Zen Monster 4.” They hope to share even more of these close encounters in an
upcoming collection that will be published later this year.
The following is a portion of a conversation, while
discussing “Pulse”, a recent drawing in metal point and watercolor by Robyn
Ellenbogen. These conversations suggest a snapshot of what it is like to
practice Zen Buddhism and attempt to assimilate it into one’s life and work.
John I am
struck by the commitment of the pen, hand and body, to the line rather than
using a ruler or a digital operative that’s going to make it exactly what we
think we imagine to be a straight line.
The drawing suggests that there could actually be a straight line with
some waver in it and the waver is an expression, an exposure, a display of
vulnerability or fear or love and a relationship with the person who made the
line. We can feel our own wavering and
own breath. We can meet a mind here.
Robyn And
once you put the brush or anything to the paper, this is the beginning of a
commitment. This word is a powerful trigger in so many ways. I often feel that finishing a work is a form
of abandonment.
John It’s like the full commitment to the left
foot standing and that commitment into that one step is what gives the next
step. Similarly that first commitment of the brush gives the flow to the brush
or drawing implement. Unless we can
completely give that commitment we’re distracted, we stutter, we vacillate, or
we go straight forward. Whatever it is we share it. That's it. No better no
worse. What is. What we are.
Robyn I
translate what you’re describing as having a sense of embodiment in my
work. This is how I readily shift from
Zen practice to the practice of making my art.
My personal sense of phenomenology is all about how my breath interacts
with what I am doing and working on and how each nuance changes what follows. I
do sometimes start out with an idea, something that emerges from my mind, often
a memory. I can end up a long way from the initial idea and one of the things I
have noticed over time is that I am more able to accept this change and
transformation.
John When you have a certain amount of paint in
your brush and a certain type of paper with a particular surface, you put the
brush to the paper and you already have an idea of what to do, but the feeling
of the brush on the surface and the feeling of your hand and breath, even if
you draw the line to complete your preconceived notion is different. It’s
changed by that feeling and that relationship. It doesn’t necessarily fulfill
that preconceived notion. What we are
talking about is fully giving over to the relationship of feeling the brush,
hand, arm, heart and breath in the relationship to the paper and the surface
with the movement being all one and informing another.
Robyn This is exactly so and this gets into the
extraordinary/ordinary sensory awareness that can go through you while you’re
making a work. It is as if something is
being transmitted, from where, to whom?
This is everything that is not taught nor can it be taught in a formal
setting such as school. I am often asked
questions regarding formal training and how it plays out in my work. Even initially, I was less interested in
skill and more interested in something else.
This something else is infrequently addressed in a skill-determined
culture.
John If we look at a Chinese calligraphy
apprenticeship situation, somebody will draw with that brush and ink on a blank
piece of paper a straight line a million times.
Then they know brush, ink, paper, straight line and all of the
idiosyncrasies and variations of straight line and the possibilities. Then there’s a freedom. They are free of their
concept of a straight line.
Robyn This
is where the true sensibility emerges from it is rooted in the body’s sense.
When I was an art student, I worked for Louise Bourgeois and I am often asked,
“What did she teach you or what did she tell you to do? I have to laugh because
she was, in a way, my first Zen teacher and her most often repeated direction
was, “Stand up straight!” This amounts
to the gift of nothing.
John There are countless stories in Zen history
about this gift of nothing and that’s the biggest gift. It relates to what we were
talking about before, the importance of difference. As your relationship grows with art or with
your teacher, the clarity of difference and the uniqueness of each of you come
to the fore . You cannot be your teacher and you cannot be Zazen, some idea.
You can learn from Zazen, applying yourself to this idea. But when you do Zazen
it is so much bigger than your idea. You
do Robyn and Robyn is so much bigger than Robyn. We feel like we fall short of
Zazen our idea but we cannot fall short of Zazen. You can't fall short of
Robyn. In being totally confident in our self as we are 100 percent without
being right or wrong, short or tall, the best or the worst, we are
complete. That is communicated
throughout history and it’s identified in Zen art. That’s what we are meeting in Zen art; that
is what is exposed, displayed, opened, our heart, our vulnerability, our true
strength.
Robyn Yes,
we are meeting somebody’s world. This term Zen art is not limited to just
eastern art because I am thinking of how there are many western artists that
come to mind, that seemed to capture a totality of some world, Blake, Klee,
Giacometti, Morandi.
John And
their total presence in that world complete with neurosis, shortcomings loving
and enmity.
Robyn And
one of my favorite topics failure.
John Failure
is incredibly important. Until we
totally and completely realize that everything is a mistake, nothing fulfills a
platonic idea or an objective.
Robyn Most of the objectives are so culturally
ingrained and forced on us from the moment we start school and are acculturated
into society. It is painful to think
about this …and the myriad ways it manifests
throughout our systems
John And
this is remarkable because on a certain level, these are socially, culturally, ingrained,
transmitted and habituated objectivity;
and we like to think the objective has no subjective or weighted quality that
is intended to benefit ourselves or someone else, that it’s an objective
measurement. That very objectivity is a political and social statement. And what is a political and social statement
but an extension of our own fear and protection?
What is considered objectivity? The remarkable thing is to be totally comfortable
in our subjectivity, to recognize to what degree each of us is entirely
subjective. Entirely exposed our subjective projection no longer gets in the
way. Fully broken open our vulnerability reaches hearts And we can dance with
whatever is.
Pulse: A response
to Robyn Ellenbogen’s Painting
If I were a cloud
or a section of skin, lung, follicle or an ocean or a dream or a planet or a
star or universe expanding and breaking apart, a worm hole or a black hole, the
black of black so bright and luminous yielding all of what we imagine to be
color, apart not separate, an entirety of expansion contraction of being a
breath riding a dragon, unsui. A fire or ice deep blue red yellow orange the
density of this space omnivorous devouring peacock transforming all poisons:
Raquel Welch on a Fantastic Voyage...what we imagine can't even touch it let
alone what we say.
Kotatsu Roko
06:VIII:13
Prospect Hill
