Peace from All Points

Non-Being

Altarware

20” X 24” colored pencils on paper

The magnetic compass, only lately found in Europe during the Renaissance, was invented in China a thousand years earlier. Each compass point came to be associated with a shape, color, time of the day, season of the year, etc.

North is black, crescent and ribbon shapes, midnight, winter

East is blue/green, cylindrical, dawn, spring

South is red, pointed shapes, noon, summer

West is white, sphere, dusk, fall

12” X 9” X 4” clay and glaze

Together two halves are a single stupa form in positive space, while the negative space reads as a seated meditative figure, present in its absence. The work is suggestive of the northeast in the manifest compass, where we find: the mountain (ken, the youngest son); the location closest to heaven; mounting inner worth; the silence of inner development.

4” each approximately; clay and glaze

On a Buddhist altar one finds water, flowers, candle, and incense. These are the elements of north, east, south, and west respectively. Often when one culture encounters another, there is absorption. Perhaps the earlier practices of feng shui, when they encountered Buddhism, had their principle elements re-defined as objects on the Buddhist alter. I have found it very instructive to make many different sets of altarware, e.g., some in their traditional shapes and colors of each compass point, others to stack up as a sculpture, etc.

Fire and Water

Earlier &
Later Heavens

Nest Egg

18” H, clay and glaze

When you move from the early to the later heavens, the only relationship which is preserved within the trigrams is that between fire and water, which moves from the east west axis to the north south axis. The primary relationship between these energies is also found in the connection between the middle son (kan = water) and the middle daughter (li=fire). Since the element which mediates between these in the creative cycle is wood, (water produces wood and wood produces fire), this piece has flowers and candles floating in it.

12” square painted wood, clay and glaze

This schemata uses the form of the earth (a square faux finished as yellow sienna marble), to show the earlier heaven at the center and the later heaven at the perimeter. This is a very useful teaching tool for helping people to see the movement of chi. The relationships between chi in its acorn form (latent=early heaven) and its oak tree form (manifest=later heaven) is easy to track.

For example, if you want to see the path of the trigram ‘li’ which is fire, you can see that it moves from the east to the south. When you want to see what happens at a given compass point, say in the north, you can clearly see it. (In this particular example, we see that the north is initially occupied by the maximum yin energy of kun, the mother, and then by kan, the yin water middle son.) In this we see the destructive cycle (earth swallows water) the historic association of danger with the north (it is more than invasions and cold winds!) – and the relationship between the middle and the mother.

12″ clay and glaze.

The symbol of beginnings and renewal, the birth of the world, springtime, etc., nest eggs will hold 1,000 Susan B. Anthony American dollars. Full or empty this is an ideal gift for initiating – the newly wed, newly born, etc.