Looking around the blogosphere...

.....this past week it seems that a lot of people have been experiencing some tough times recently. I'm in that club too, and although I would happily share what's been happening, it all feels a bit confusing and hard to explain just now.

Instead I've decided to post a couple of things I've found on two of the Buddhist blogs I follow. The first is from American Buddhist Perspective, a blog which discusses life from a philosophical perspective, mostly Buddhist. Earlier in the week he posted an old Taoist story here. It was quite timely for me, and made me pull up with a start and realize that I don't know what the outcome of current events will be, so I may as well just deal with the present and let the future look after itself.

The second blog is called Monkey Mind and is written by James Ford, who is both a Soto Zen priest and a Unitarian Universalist minister. "Monkey Mind" is a term used in Zen, that refers to the way the mind is always active, jumping from one thing to the next and back again, "chattering" like a monkey. Whether you've ever done any meditation or looked into Buddhism at all, I think we're all familiar with this experience - thoughts just coming at you from "nowhere" and never shutting-up!!

Yesterday James posted this cartoon, and it struck such a chord with me that I just felt that I had to share it.



So I'm off to spend some time updating my blogs and links in the sidebar. I haven't changed these since I first set up this blog and there's a lot more that may be of interest that I could share. And if you are interested in seeing how those beautiful paper-cuts are done by laser, check out the latest post on Book*Art*Object, which has a link to an interesting post by an English student, documenting the making of a lasercut book.

P.S. Don't worry, I have been making some nice progress with my "editioning" and am about to start working on my own cut-out pages, unfortunately not with the assistance of a laser...

Buddhists believe emotions are like clouds

And so do I....

If you've been reading this blog for more than a year or so, you may have followed the process as I put together my first artists book, Like Weather (above). It is a flag book, and explored the idea of "change" by tracking my emotions for a 24 hour period and suggesting that emotions are as changeable as the weather. (If you weren't around the first time through, you can find the first post in the archives for March 2007 and they run through to October 2007. If you'd just like to see some pics. follow this.)

Of course, we can't help what we feel, only what we choose to do with those feelings. In the past week I've seen my emotions fly high, and plummet to great depths in a very short space of time, and it's certainly confirmed for me the fragility of any situation. Our unrealistic desire for things to remain the same is constantly overturned, but it takes a long time for most of us to come to a genuine acceptance of this.

In my case, in the past week I've received the devastating news that my mother is gravely ill. Shortly after hearing this, I heard from the talented Joanna Kambourian who was "on location" at the opening of the SCU Acquisitive Artists Books Award. She had amazing news for me - the judge has selected Like Weather as one of this year's acquisitions! This is the first work I've had acquired by an institution, and as this is a career goal for me, the news is particularly significant and exciting. Later in the evening, a similar email from Sara Bowen gave me confidence that there was no mistake!

At the time, the situation felt quite unreal. I found I was able to "flip" from a sense of incredible joy and satisfaction to deep desolation, almost at will. It even seemed possible to hold these two wavering extremes within my chest at the same time. Looking back, it reminds me of the hope we feel when the clouds part briefly during cyclonic weather and we glimpse the blue sky. It reminds us that after the winds and rain subside, finer days will be waiting for us. This is exactly what I hoped Like Weather might say.

Can you believe...

...I'm still working on this book? (Like Weather)


(inside front cover)


It is so close to finished. In fact, it is finished, apart from the actual printing and construction. The custom colour profiling has worked well, although I have changed my choice of paper. The feedback I received from people was that they really liked the texture of the mock-up, seen here (if you enlarge). The Hahnemuhle photo rag I had chosen is a beautiful paper, but it has a soft, smooth finish. The mock-up was made with Canson 100, a double sided water-colour paper. Coating this with Inkaid, an inkjet pre-coat I mentioned in earlier posts, allows me to achieve richer colours, while keeping the texture.

The difficulty I am having now is getting the pre-coat on evenly. This is only really a problem when you print large expanses of a single colour, and is especially evident on the pages with text which are backed with navy. I really hope I can perfect my technique or I'm going to have to change papers....

As you can tell by the lack of blog posts, progress with my masters work is very slow. I just have not been well enough to really get a flow going, and according to my calculations I am about 2 weeks behind. I have not managed to get any more of my proposal written, although the self portrait in wax (seen here) is back from framing, and looks really good.


This week I "plan" (you know what my plans are like...) to get into my ceramics studio (aka the garage) and set up this installation. It should be fun to finally put all the components together as I have them visualised and see what else needs to be done. Stay tuned....

(inside back cover)

Fruitless

Safe
Originally uploaded by potsrme1962.

This is the last post I will be doing before I head to Melbourne for supervision tomorrow. This work has been troubling me because much as I love it, I did not think it was going to work as part of my masters work.

I had made these fragile,flimsy and translucent boxes with holes. A box is a container - to hold things, to preserve them and keep them safe. I wanted to use the boxes to express how we as humans try to hold onto things, to keep them the same, and to stop things changing. To express "anti-process" and the fruitlessness of trying to keep things the same. In a way, the boxes did this but there were too many other interpretations that could be made, and were probably more evident.

I was thinking about putting different things in the boxes, but what?Then I thought of adding locks. This clarifies the idea of holding something, containing it. But the boxes have holes! And are empty! So something has happened - whatever it was has gone! To me, the work is now about what has happened, a change in state. This seems to work.

I'm not sure if this is conceptually within the bounds of my thesis - I'll be discussing that with my supervisor, but I am a lot happier with these pieces anyway, and I plan to make more.

I'm not sure whether I will be able to post while I am in Melbourne - I may only have dial-up access which makes loading photos difficult. I will be checking out a number of exhibitions while I am down there though, and will be sure to report back as soon as I can. Thanks to everyone who has provided comments and support during the past weeks while I prepared for this trip. Your help has been greatly appreciated!

Flag Book - maquette

This is a rough maquette of a flag book I plan to make as part of my masters. The white concertina spine will be blue sky in the finished book, and there will be imagery on the front and back outside covers as well. The next stage is to write the text, which will be on the back of the flags.

The concept for this book is based on the idea from Buddhist meditation that thoughts, feelings, sensations are constantly changing, drifting across the mind like clouds in a sky. To cling on to our states of mind is as futile as expecting the weather to be constant.

From what I have read, it is typical to make a mock-up or maquette of an artists book to help ensure that things like size and materials are consistent with the artists meaning. After constructing the middle section I realized that it would add to the meaning if the flags were attached to "sky". I also discovered my flags are too far apart for my liking.

I would really love to make this book in a large size (A3 or A2) to fit with the idea of an expanse of sky. That would mean having it professionally printed and to achieve the quality I want, I might have to apply for a grant to fund printing. I spoke to a printer yesterday about offset printing and they said they did not know anyone who would do such a small run - so that means I would have to send it interstate. Hhmm!

Dealing with Dukkah

Steadfast Buddha by Annie Bissett

It's been a while since I posted anything here. I did compose an entry last week-end but did not end up posting it because I felt that what I wanted to write was too negative.

After my big psychological breakthrough concerning BEING and not having to DO, I have slipped backwards. It's not that I feel that I was wrong about existence being enough - it's just there's still a lot of time to fill, and when you don't have the energy to do anything, it becomes pretty boring quite quickly. And it's also hard not to get engrossed in your own thoughts - which seem inevitably to circle around and become negative if you don't really put in an effort to stop this happening. It seems there are only so many times I can tell myself how lucky I am to have my wonderful husband (absolutely true!), that the weather is gorgeous at the moment and so on. I know it is true - I know how much worse it could be - and believe me, I pray it doesn't get any worse - but there is still this overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction.

This is a key concept in buddhist philosophy - it's the first Noble Truth, in fact - dukkah. This is often translated as "suffering" but my teacher has explained to me that it really is broader than that, and that we don't have a true equivalent in English. The thing about Buddhism is that it does offer us a strategy for dealing with this - and it's not about avoidance or distraction, or even believing that it will all be better in another life. It's not even about understanding why this is happening, and it's certainly not about attributing blame.

It's about conditioning. Which is to say, it's about the filters we apply to our experiences, judging them according to criteria we are barely, if at all, aware of.


To explain: The post I started on the week-end was about the two-day trip I made last week to Noosa to see a wonderful exhibition of artists books. How could this have been a negative post, you ask? Well, just wait and see!

Noosa is two hours north of my home town of Brisbane. This is the 10th year that Noosa Regional Gallery has hosted an artists books event and in that time it has grown to be the largest event of its type in Australia. It included an international exhibition, workshops, a day long seminar and an exhibition by two of Australia's leading book artists, Wim de Vos & Adele Outteridge. When I found out about the event about 2 months ago I had hoped to attend a workshop or the seminar, but my energy just would not stretch that far.

Just to attend the exhibition involved a two night stay, in the hope that it won't impact too badly on me. Without my husband's support I would never have made it and I really appreciate the effort he was prepared to go to so that I could see these wonderful art works. The exhibition was so inspiring - it was definitely worth the trip. It filled the entire gallery and about half the space was dedicated to work by the two Brisbane artists and the other half was more traditional artists books, including a lot of printed books with a wonderful range of bindings. Adele Outteridge and Wim de Vos are more sculptural in their approach and in recent years have done a lot of work in perspex. Here are a couple of the pieces I saw but unfortunately you can't really see the detail.












This bottom one is truly amazing - as a ceramic artist, I was enthralled. It consists of a series of perspex pages, displayed as the spokes of a wheel. The pages are connected by three threads which pass from page to page creating the illusion of the vessel forms you see - so beautiful! It looks like something that has been digitally generated.


So, obviously I was not disappointed by the exhibition, although I was disappointed that I couldn't attend more of the program. The problem was the rest of the experience. Apart from a short walk of about 20-30 minutes by the Noosa River, attending the exhibition was all I was able to do. I had to rest the remainder of the two days we were there. The accommodation was exceedingly average - an oversized motel room positioned near a bridge on the main road, so it was pretty noisy. It wasn't cheap, but it was all we could afford - Noosa has become so expensive. I was not able to go out for dinner or lunch or even a coffee because I was so exhausted from the trip.

Ironically, just before I started to become ill with cfs, we had a weeks holiday at Noosa - back in November 1990. That time we stayed in Hastings Street, the main street, right on the beach front - a very different holiday. I remember at the time that we were talking about how we would probably buy ourselves a unit up there for holidaying, when we payed off our house which we thought we would be able to do in five or six years time. Lucky that we cannot see the future....

So because I had expected a very different future from the one I am living, I managed to cast a pall over what was actually a wonderful experience. I knew I was doing it. I watched the thoughts and I knew they were colouring my mood a nasty shade of grey. I tried to stop them and to replace them with more positive, appreciative ones but it has taken me days to get to a point where I feel I can claim even a little success with this.


Buddhism doesn't instruct us to change our thoughts, that is cognitive therapy. All the Buddha tells us to do is live with full awareness - of our thoughts and the dharma. I can recognise that this is a classic example of dukkah and all I have to do is to be aware of it. With time it will change, as all things do. I can see that now I have given the feelings their due attention they are floating away, like wisps of smoke....

On Enlightenment - Mindfulness

Breathing Buddha originally posted by Hanga Girl on Flickr
Original three-color woodblock print
see more at http://www.anniebissett.com/

I've been wanting include some posts about my buddhist practice and how this helps me deal with cfs and other issues in general. However, I didn't want to dive straight in to where I am right now without providing a little background. I've been reading about taoism and buddhism for over 10 years now and meditating regularly for over 4 years. I had attended a two day non-residential retreat on Insight Meditation some years ago and in 2004-5, I went to a Tibetan Centre irregularly.

At the beginning of this year I realized that if I am really serious about making any progress then I needed to make a commitment and find myself a teacher. After looking around at who was in Brisbane, it seemed clear that everything was leading me to Victor von der Heyde. Victor lives between Brisbane and Sydney, and when he is in Brisbane I see him weekly. These sessions have been enormously useful to me and are a very grounding influence in my practice. As well as seeing Victor, I "sit" regularly, usually daily, and read daily.

Over the year, I have found that each day I also have periods of "awareness" quite spontaneously. This is exactly what I have been working towards, and I hope to extend this gradually.

In my writings here, I will sometimes talk about my current concerns in my practice, and also write a little about the books I have been reading. This year I have been working through the recommended reading at the dharm.org site which has included a range of books on vipassana or insight meditation by the following authors: Stephen Batchelor, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Christopher Titmuss and Toni Packer. The range of approaches even within this small group is considerable and demonstrates what an organic creature buddhism is.

Today I want to begin writing about the Factors of Enlightenment. My reference for this is Joseph Goldstein's classic, The Experience of Insight. I used to be quite confused about enlightenment - now I am perhaps, a little less confused...

I have read in Zen literature that we are not to strive for enlightenment, because in striving we are not practising correctly. In (I think it was) The Tibetan Book of Death and Dying, I read that we must strive for enlightenment - because if we do not, then we are doomed to endless reincarnations. So... what to do? Well, I don't know, but Joseph Goldstein has explained the factors of enlightenment, and it seems to me, that if I can understand them, and adopt them, and not worry about enlightenment as such....then maybe enlightenment will "take care of itself" as they say....

There are seven factors of enlightenment, which are seven mental factors and when these are cultivated, they relieve all kinds of suffering. The first is mindfulness, which is "the quality of noticing, of being aware of what's happening in the moment" (p.141).

There are four areas in which we are asked to be aware, known as the foundations or applications of mindfulness. The first is the body - the breath, the posture, sensations, movements.

The second is known as feeling, but I think of it as our response or judgement - whether we judge what we have become aware of as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. This relates to attachment - we want what is pleasant (we are attached to it), we don't want what is unpleasant and we don't care about what is neutral. The goal for us in noticing these feelings is to simply watch them arise and pass away, without clinging to the pleasant and condemning the unpleasant.

The third application of mindfulness is consciousness and it refers to being aware of our mental or emotional states, to be aware of when we are angry, fearful etc while we are in the middle of it, and then, (this is the hard part) not to judge ourselves for that. To simply be aware and to observe the passing parade of emotions.

The fourth application is mindfulness of the Dharma - to be aware of the three characteristics of existence (impermanence, suffering, no-self) and of the four noble truths - but that is for another day.....