Artist, Dreamer=Heartbreak

Being an artist is really a tough job. It takes lots of idealism, resilience, and persistence. Today I got punched in the stomach by failure. I want an easier life. Why is there always so much struggle? Maybe if money was not involved it would be so much easier. 


For me being an artist swings from the pendulum of hope and ecstasy(creating,experiencing and reflecting) to heartbreak and despair (the drudgery of the art world and trying to make a living off my art). 
 "I pray to be like the ocean, with soft currents, maybe waves at times. More and more, I want the consistency rather than the highs and the lows." thanks Drew Barrymore that sums it up nicely.

The Broken Drum is Transformed with my ART!

Looking for something to do this Friday in the Bay Area? Fourth Street in San Rafael is becoming an ART Hub, this coming Friday they are hosting their Second Fridays San Rafael ART Walk. Danielle from my representing gallery Terra Firma asked me if I would be open to hanging my work in an alternative space. I said Yes! and this Friday at the Second Fridays San Rafael ART Walk you can go view my Art and have some brew at the Broken Drum on Fourth Street right next to Terra Firma, Danielle installed the work today, she said that "the place got a face lift and it looks fab, the owner loves it so much!"

Please check it out this Friday in San Rafael and if you get some beer goggles and fall in love with one of paintings. Go next store to Terra Firma and Danielle will wrap it up for you!

Support Our Amazing Cause!!

Painting of the Day! Raramuri @ Terra Firma Gallery

"Raramuri is very impressive."

Artist, Vikalp Evolving

I began this piece three years ago. I was inspired by a sacred trip I took to canyons of the Sierra Tarahumara in Mexico. The Raramuri are the indigenous peoples that live there. I created a "tree shrine" there and I felt really connected to the land. You could peel the layers on this painting like an onion. The first layer is a green color field. It is really an exploration of time and space.

Raramuri is exhibiting and ready for a good home at the Terra Firma Gallery in San Rafael.

Please stop by and say hi to Danielle, the Galleries Director and my work!

As always!!! Thank you Danielle for your continuous support!!

Caol Ait!! Painting of the Day

The word Caol Ait (thin places) is a Celtic term that describes space and time.

In certain places like sacred sites or in nature, the veil from this world to the next is thinner.

My paintings are an exploration of Caol Ait or the in between. In the creative process time and space merge and hours can pass with the blink of an eye. Another of my great passions is traveling to sacred sites around the world. In 2008, I went to Ireland (my ancestral homeland) and visited New Grange, Tara and Knowth. True inspiration for my work.

Caol Ait is showing and is looking for a good home in San Rafael at the Terra Firma Gallery.

This amazing painting have perfect companions, the very meaningful,Shona Sculptures and the phenomenal Ethiopian painter, Wosene Kosrof.

Please stop by and say hi to Danielle, the Galleries Director and my work!

As always!!! Thank you Danielle for your continuous support!!

Re visit from 2008 "What are my Goals as an Artist"

This is such a serendipitous question as I graduated on Saturday with my M.F.A. (yes!) and I need to focus on what is the next step and what does that look like.

On my pragmatic page it looks like my need to create a list of goals of what I need to accomplish to “make it” in the art world. I need to put on my business hat and create a website, a marketing strategy, apply to shows and galleries with proper documentation. I have to update my business cards. I have to search for opportunities and it goes on and on. My goals need to be carefully mapped out for me to make it all happen. It is a high-risk business and my product is my art and my grand vision.

My ultimate goal is to be self-sustaining artist creating, selling my work and teaching art. I also want to open a healing arts studio, which I call the Green House Studios. This would be a community space for new paradigm artists and thinkers to build alternative systems in various communities. Ideally it would create an all-inclusive dialogue about art and its ability to empower. This would include art workshops, gallery space, and community outreach art programs. Lauren and I speak about this Blog as the virtual beginnings of such a studio.

For me equally mystifying is my passion for what I am doing.
Pragmatism seems to fly out the window as I create the work that I need to do. I became very comfortable just being a conduit and having creativity flow through me. I have come to believe that I am merely a channel for something greater than me that manifests through my art. As the artist Paul Klee wrote, “the artist does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths. He neither serves nor rules ---- He transmits…. he is merely a channel.”
My personal quest is to reunite art and the spirit. Akin to the alchemist’s work, which is the transformation of gross material into spiritual substance, I see my art as artifacts of my ever-transforming consciousness. My art and its process represent a humble quest to resurrect divination in my personal journey and into the community at large. As an artist my work gives the viewer a personal glimpse of my internal revelations.I speak of divination in its broadest sense, meaning that through my art and process I find myself in a continuum of discovering the unknown within myself and in the world that I live in. The motives and impulses behind my creative process are my shamanistic belief that through the process of creation, I align with dynamism and the divinity that is animated in all life.
Another goal of my work is revelation. I believe the core social issue that I am exploring in my painting, photography, site-specific works, and my teaching is abuse, which plagues society and the planet Earth. My approach to this work is not criticism, but a gentle revelation of what was and what can be. In all my work I explore and reveal the shadow of humanity by facing it, bringing it to surface, and on a personal level, finding a way to transform it.

To surmise, essentially my goal as an artist is the marriage of the paradox between pragmatism and pure creativity. As well as my service to the world at large. On an interpersonal level one could say that my art is my Yoga, the discipline that promotes the unity within myself. Carl Jung called this individuation.
I apologize for this got a little wordy.
Namaste, Lisa
I am interested in hearing what are your goals as an artist? And how do you keep one foot in each world to make Art your life and profession?

ART=EMPOWERMENT! I was Quoted in the SF Chronicle!

Summer Learning Gives Kids Lessons in Fun!

Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Third-grader Elaine Ma sat at a shady table in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza dipping a paintbrush in pink, gold and green paint.

All around her some 800 children spent the first official day of summer hula hooping, playing board games, experimenting with bubbles and baking soda, hanging out in a bookmobile, drawing pictures, making bedazzled princess crowns and riding ponies.

"I'm painting a house," she said as she brushed a gold swoosh on the paper. "This is magical grass."

This, said organizers of the city's Summer Learning Day at the plaza, is what summer is supposed to be about: playing, thinking, creating, and ultimately learning outside the classroom in active, fun ways.

Researchers call it the summer brain drain. It affects all children, but especially those who don't actively fight it.

That's not the experience for too many children, particularly low-income kids, who spend their 10 or so weeks of summer vacation doing nothing, said Sheryl Davis, director of Mo' Magic, which helped organize Tuesday's event.

Without structured activities that stretch their minds, they "tend to gain weight and fall behind," she said. "They lose the summer. They come back to school two months behind."

Overall, most students forget two months worth of math over the summer. But low-income students also lose two to three months worth of reading skills. As a result, the achievement gap between white, Asian and wealthy students and their Hispanic, black and low-income peers, each summer increasingly widens.

On Tuesday, most of the students at Civic Center Plaza were participants in nonprofit and city-sponsored summer camps and programs although some families stumbled upon the event and joined the fun, too.

There didn't appear to be a single child at the event who, given a choice, would have picked a couch over the petting zoo, art project or bouncy houses.

Students who take part in summer enrichment activities, ranging from science camp, sports, family trips to museums or other programs, can boost their achievement levels, according to the National Summer Learning Association, which supported Tuesday's Summer Learning Day activities across the nation.

And the students tend to avoid packing on the pounds as well, more likely avoiding the obesity epidemic plaguing the country's youth.

In San Francisco, hundreds of primarily low-income children participate in nonprofit and city-sponsored summer programs, many featuring academic components. Those types of community programs can be critical to preventing summer learning loss, according to a study released this month by the nonprofit Rand Corp.

"They are often less expensive than school district staff, and they offer enrichment opportunities that are often similar to those experienced by middle-income youth during the summer - such as kayaking or chess, for example - that encourage students to enroll and attend, both of which are critical to program effectiveness," said Catherine Augustine, a senior policy researcher at Rand, in a statement.

At Civic Center Plaza, with her paper filled with a pink and gold house with magical grass, Elaine appeared to plugging that drain in her brain. Her paintbrush and imagination were running wild. A green stick-figure man appeared on the paper. He had just arrived home, she explained.

Lisa Rasmussen, who had set up her Art Cart for the event, listened to Elaine's story line and smiled.

"When children have art, they just swim in it," Rasmussen said. "They just thrive."

E-mail Jill Tucker at jtucker@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/22/BAUI1K0RD1.DTL

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Photographer: Me from an amazing day at the Civic Center Plaza!

ART-EMPOWERMENT!