The Still Point:

A Collective Visionary Art Project

2024

Photo caption: a bright blue sky reflects onto snow-capped mountains with trees in the foreground; Lake Tahoe February 2018, Elena Solano

For so many, especially those who do not identify as artists, art-making has been cut off from collective meaning-making activities.

Martha Crawford, Elena Solano and Lauren Wilde invite you to join us in developing a group model for collective art making and community arts-based research.  

“The right symbol or name in the right place can break silences and provide new insights.”

- Watkins & Shulman, Toward Psychologies of Liberation

“When the wise man grasps the pivot of the Tao, he is in the center of the circle, and there he stands while  "Yes" and "No"  pursue each other around the circumference.

The pivot of the Tao passes through the center where all affirmations and denials converge. He who grasps the pivot is at the still-point...'“

- The Way of Chuang Tzu, Thomas Merton translation

Photo caption: a cloudy, blue & gray sky above trees surrounding a creek with limestone bed; Austin, Texas, December 2022, Elena Solano

The three of us shared a cluster of emerging desires:

To create a space for a collection of subjectivities, for spontaneous visioning and public dreaming, allowing synchronicity, non-linearity and complexity to lead the way.

To share a process that de-centers colonial communication practices such as argument, persuasion, debate, judgment, case-building, verbal sparring, defining, categorizing and opining.

To engage instead in a process that centers rest, silence, reflection, play, self-regulation, amplification, intuition, meaning making, and imagination and to hold these functions up as forms of power and ways of knowing.  

More about Elena and her artistic process

Lauren’s offerings

Read more about Martha’s work

 


”Visionary art erupts from the collective unconscious with very little conscious intervention.

Visionary art has the capacity to tell us what we do not already know about our society.”

 - Susan Rowland from  Jungian Arts-Based Research and “The Nuclear Enchantment of New Mexico”

TIME/ DATES/DURATION:

This group will meet on Zoom once a month for three months.

Meeting duration: 90 minutes 

On:

Saturday, September 7, 2024

Saturday, October 5, 2024;

Saturday, November 9, 2024; 

At:

1:00p Pacific, 2:00p Mountain,  3:00p Central, 4:00p Eastern

Photo caption: a blue, pink, orange, yellow Central Texas sunset over a silhouette of trees, 2021, Elena Solano

DONATIONS:

There is no charge for this group at this time. We are asking you to gather with us to develop and adapt group and community art-making practices that utilize our current technologies and that address the conflicts of this era.


Photo caption: layers of limestone with trees above. Austin, TX 2022, Elena Solano

  • ·      To engage mindfully in a collective, responsive, creation process.  

    ·      To become artists/researchers together 

    ·      To test our assumptions and access a contemplative creative reservoir through gathering  and periods of shared silence.

    ·      To respond symbolically to the images shared — to make collective visionary art together.

  • Elena and Lauren will facilitate using a modified circle group guidelines. These guidelines will be emailed to participants before the first meeting.

    We will talk together about circle group norms and the structure and visionary art processes in the first meeting, and may alter or refine structures over the course of the three sessions:

    We would like to record these sessions so that we may archive our process. Recordings will only be shared with participants and deleted after they are reviewed.


  • To trouble with structural, elemental, environmental, cultural, embodied, interpersonal inheritances, such as:

    Power

    Enforcement

    Coloniality 

    Supremacy

    Dreams

    Fantasies

    Splitting

    Climate

    Dis/comfort

    Knowledge

    Intuition

    Change

    Meaning-making

    Depth

    Wholeness

    Community

  • Lauren will use Zoom Whiteboard to arrange and view digital images during gatherings.

    Participants are encouraged to respond to visual prompts by drawing, sketching, writing, or using preexisting images.

    You do not need to have a working knowledge of Whiteboard to participate; participants may submit digital images via chat during gatherings.

    Please notify hosts of any accommodations that you may need before, during or after these gatherings. Closed captioning will be provided.