SPEAKING engagements

Creativity and the Arts as a Path to Awakening

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

I view everything I do as a creative act; the creativity manifests as poetry, movement, or as color and form. There is creativity also in the way I relate to my daughter, or speak to students, or grow an organization.

I am labeled a community artist, for lack of a better term. I came to SF in 1974, after graduating from Pratt Institute in NYC, and have worked with different groups in the Bay Area to give voice to their hopes and dreams, to express their plight and their resilience, and to build community across cultures and generations. You might say the work I do is really about helping to create the conditions where positive action can manifest, whether it is creating images for worthy causes, or reading poetry, or dancing, or helping organizations become stronger so that they can do the work I can’t do as one person, or inspiring others as a mentor. The practical aspects of Buddhism – patience, diligence, exertion, loving-kindness, etc. – are the tools I use do my work in the community.

My artistic method to get out of my own way. Letting go of ego-clinging is my creative process, and the means by which the Buddhist view is infused into my work. The lessons are constant, like in the movie, “Groundhog Day.” I always think I will be wiser and approach my work differently this time; yet every new project has me starting out the same way – with big intentions and preconceived notions of what I am going to do and how, and an expectation of what the outcome will be. I go through an arduous journey, paralyzed to begin for fear of doing something wrong, then furiously trying idea after idea, using different techniques, a whole kitchen sink of approaches, worrying about what people might think of the end piece. The process ends with me in total panic, when all familiar signposts are no longer applicable. Just at the point of despair, when I have no more ideas left and my brain is exhausted, I give up and ask the art or the poem what it wants to be. There is a faltering moment of doubt and anxiety, but if I stay open and still, then images or words inevitably begin to manifest. The result is usually so simple and so fitting that I can’t believe it took so long to come up with it. I am usually in awe, not just at the result but also at the process by which I got there.

How does this relate to the establishment of Western Buddhism? Buddhism in the West is no different from Buddhism anywhere else. At its core, the truth of suffering is the same. And the way out of suffering is the same. To me, it’s pretty much the same practice – getting out of the way. We go about a similar journey as the artistic process I just described – the intention to do something and to do it well, the furious applications of what we think are the best methods, the pondering over definitions and cultural differences, etc. Much will be written and thought about and discussed, and it is a necessary part of this growth. Then, just as in art and in the Buddhist path, we come to the place where we must stop and get out of the way and trust our innate intelligence and wisdom. Then the music and the colors of Western Buddhism will arise, unique in its mixture of sounds and shades but rooted in a deep and rich tradition.

The I-Hotel: A Community Mythology

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The I-Hotel was more than a hotel; for the transient Filipino workers it was a cultural center, clearinghouse, and a place to call home. This sense of belonging was passed on to those who came to the Hotel to help the tenants, but also to find meaning in their lives.

The elderly tenants welcomed us like family, taught values that stay with us to this day – humility, family, honoring our ancestors, fighting for what we believe in, staying true to our sense of justice. For artists and other seekers, the Hotel became a call for our yearning to find a sense of purpose, a source for creative expression.

Many different community groups rallied together to support the I-Hotel – students, activists, artists, labor unions, church groups, etc. It was an intergenerational and multi-cultural effort. I want you to experience the I-Hotel phenomena by engaging you with art, poetry and stories. Al, the Filipino poet laureate and historian, wrote a lot about Ifugao Mountain and a character named Tagatac. He had never been to the Philippines, but he was in touch with the soul of the Filipino, having made it his life work to record and honor these first wave immigrants who lived out their lives in single occupancy hotels.

At Al Robles’ poetry & song event Al had coaxed 8 or 9 seniors to perform with him, by promising to cook them fish head soup. The catch was that they had to sit at tables on stage and eat the fish heads in front of the audience and sing a few songs. Well, these manongs, some 70 years old, some in their 80s and 90s– they loved fish head soup and couldn’t resist the offer.

So Al cooked up a big batch of fish head soup, and the manongs sat at the tables, which were decorated with palm leaves and pineapples. The wonderful aroma of the soup filled the air. The manongs waited eagerly. Then it was ready, brought out by women in long flowing shawls– one fish head per bowl, with a heap of rice, each placed before the manongs. They ate with much relish as Al read poetry about finding Ifugao Mountain right here on Kearny Street. Just listen, he said, to the songs and smell the fish head soup. Ifugao Mountain is here in the hearts of the manongs. So they ate and Al read and Joe played the guitar; his old fingers flying nimbly across the strings.

After the manongs were finished with their meal, they gathered around the mike in a circle and Al started to talk story. “Remember, Freddie, that song you used to sing that made the women cry...how did it go?” And Al would sing a few notes and Freddie, 92 year old Freddie who used to sing and dance and play the banjo for us on Kearny Street– Freddie would start to remember and sing in as beautiful a voice as ever.

Come to me my melancholy baby....

We sighed with memory. A woman got up and swayed to the music; someone played the harmonica and others joined in, urged on by Al’s loving touch and Freddie’s deep voice.

Come to me and don’t be blue....

Towards the end of the evening they wouldn’t stop singing, as the memory of all those songs and all the past came flooding in. Women sang and danced; men crooned, stomped their feet. We closed the place late, with the manongs begging for one more goodbye song, their bellies full of fish head soup, our hearts nourished and fed as well.

A Place of My Own

Fri, 1 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

I can’t believe my name is next to this work. And that it’s really here and not a dream. I came to the gallery last week and the sculpture was still there - didn’t collapse or anything. I looked at it and wondered who did it. It’s so incredible - like the day my daughter was born and I stared at her like I couldn't believe she came out of me. And I got to take her home, as if she were mine, just as my name is attached to this piece. But in a deeper sense, neither my daughter nor my art are mine to begin with. I am a vessel, through which creation flows constantly from a source beyond me.

I am probably best known for the silkscreen work I have done up till 2003. They were mostly done for community events and causes. The themes of my artwork – women, family, culture, protests, and celebrations – are universal. I like to depict various emotional states and to evoke sensuality through curved shapes and fluid lines, with a minimum of detail. I favor the single image in my work, to have one figure or gesture be the symbol for universal truths.

My new piece is a drastic departure in media from the work I have done before; yet the aesthetic core is the same. I still favor a single spare focal point, but I am exploring 3-D mixed media installation work. In the past I have used the face or the figure as that representative image; now I am exploring abstractions. The new journey has led me to very unusual places; space awareness workshops, poetry workshops taught by a neuroscientist, mandala workshops, etc. have all played a part in this transition. The introduction of dance (salsa, swing, blues and improv R&B) in my life over the last 4 years, and the spatial awareness that it has evoked in me, has propelled me to think three dimensionally.

On the practical side, I had to do extensive research and experimentation to realize this project. So I sought advice from many friends and colleagues who have done installation and sculptural work. My Buddhist studies were also useful. Buddhist notions of “Beginner’s Mind” are important here. There is playful exploration and engagement with the raw materials. I had to be willing to try new things, and practice non-attachment to fixed ideas or outcomes. Besides dance, I had taken space awareness workshops with one of my Buddhist teachers in Seattle, which gave me a sense of place in 3-D space.

The question posed by APOHO is a very profound one. If you had a place of your own, what would it be? Even though I had been one of the originators of the project, I had no idea how to respond. The process of contemplation on this question took about 8-9 months, with me first just sitting with the question and not even consciously trying to shape it into an art form.

Eventually, an intuitive feeling of a gesture grew inside me and wanted to come out in physical form. Then I was ready to seek a community of support to midwife it. But there were other trails on this journey, which I pursued before paring my ideas down to this one image.

I started contemplating on the question by thinking about my own physical space and what it would be like. I never had a physical place of my own – I was always living with people. A Place of My Own is one where there is no other sound other than what I want to hear, no other voices but my own. What would be in this space, what would I bring in? There’d be flowers, fountains, plants, sunlight, jewel-toned colors, art, etc. Lots of bookcases and warm wooden decor. Much less machinery and cold black things.

In the contemplation of the physical place I also thought about where I come from – the place where I was born and how I got here. I started a series of key remembrances, called Colors of Memory. Each memory is a color of a memory.

The psychological space is a place where I am nakedly facing me, before a mirror that reflects everything back, the pleasant and the not so pleasant. It’s a peeling away of layers of judgments and conditioning put on me by myself and others. It involves dragging things out of the darkest corners and bringing them to light, then blessing them and letting them go. It’s a hard and painful process. Having my own place in this context means to embrace all that I am – physical scars, psychological wounds, and all – and to love myself as is. My artwork is the expression of this ever-evolving journey of longing for acceptance and love from the inside. My depictions of joyful affirmation are really a prayer.

The spiritual aspect of the journey is to find my place in relationship to the world, and to the natural order of the universe. I am not I alone; we are all interconnected and interdependent. The quest for a place of my own has to also be a quest for a place where I am not taking myself too seriously, where my ego is not made stronger but more transparent as I delve deeper on the path.

Icons of Presence: The Art of Jim Dong, Nancy Hom & Leland Wong

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Jim Dong, Nancy Hom, and Leland Wong are three Chinese Americans whose work was part of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Asian American arts movement during the ‘70s and ‘80s. Exhibit, Icons of Presence: Asian American Activist Art. Curated by East Coast professor of art and art history Margo Machida, this show is the counterpart to “Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900-1970,” Since the de Young show does not extend through the ‘70s or beyond – the period that witnessed the rise of the Asian American movement and cultural politics – Margo proposed the Icons of Presence show to the Chinese Culture Center. There is a catalog available for sale.

All three of us were part of Kearny Street Workshop, the oldest Asian American arts organization in the country. Jim was a co-founder, Leland was part of the early years and comes to KSW events occasionally. I came in 1974 and continue to be involved. Will also show the work of a younger artist – Rick Godinez.

Common upon the three of us:
• We saw the social changes brought about by the post-civil rights, women’s, counter-culture, Black power, and Third World liberation movements of the 1960s and ‘70s.

• Our working class parents and ancestors had a common history of discrimination, economic exploitation, and racism, faced by immigrants.

• In the time of opposition to the Vietnam War, of domestic and global struggles for social justice and human rights, and of cultural organizing in African American, Latino, and Native American communities, the art we were creating sought to reclaim and affirm the histories, identities, and achievements of Asians in a society that had stereotyped them through mass media and popular culture (Charlie Chan, Fu Manchu, Keith Carradine, etc.).

• Seeking to foster new creative expressions and to create a distinctly Asian American culture, we started forming new arts organizations such as Kearny Street Workshop.

• We used artistic forms that were accessible to a wide audience – especially silkscreened prints (aka serigraphs), posters, illustrations, and public murals.

Nancy Hom: Chances and Choices

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dependence is part of being a community artist. We don’t create in a vacuum. If you see yourself as dependent upon others, you will develop an appreciation and humbleness toward them, for without them you can’t do the work you do. You see that they need you, too, in order to do the work they do. There is a mutual dependence, an interdependence that is at the heart of who we are as a community – we need one another and we work together to bring forth into the world beauty and positive affirmations, to build solidarity so we can fight injustices, to discover our commonality so we can live together harmoniously on this planet. Activism starts with individuals and organizations that understand this interconnectedness between them and the world around them. It’s a reciprocal relationship.

That is what I’ve been trying to do for the last 35 years – working with different groups to give voice to their hopes and dreams, to express their plight and their resilience, and to build community across cultures and generations.

INSPIRATION
The community inspires me, feeds my art. The vibrancy of neighborhoods, the colors, music, dance, poetry, celebrations, the friendship and support, the down-to-earthiness of the people, the struggles and how we bond together because of our common oppression, the joyful resilience of communities, the outrage we feel when wronged.

My art and the orgs that I choose to work for take into account all the different aspects that make up both the public and the private me - as mother (although some of the images that I created of mother and child came before I became a mother - it's more the nurturer in me), as activist, as dancer and lover of life, as community builder, as writer, as a shy demure person, as a sad person with longings to take flight, even as a theater person - all aspects of me real and fantasized are in the artwork. Yet these feelings and roles are universal, so many of the posters also speak for a collective community. Since women everywhere have similar yearnings, the depictions resonate with them, especially women of color. They then take on an iconic role and become a universal symbol.

INFLUENCES
Artistically my work was informed by Matisse (especially his cutouts but also his drawings) and also old Japanese prints, especially the floating world prints. Several Japanese artists influenced my work - Tadanori Yokoo and Koichi Sato, to name a couple. Emotionally I was influenced by Kathe Kollwitz, Georgia O'Keefe, and the great muralist, Siqueros for his dynamic gestures.

Other influences include the Chicano muralist movement and artists from the Mission district, like Juan Fuentes and Rupert Garcia. Also Rene Castro and Jos Sances from Mission Grafica - they taught me a lot about art and politics and they taught me how to really silkscreen (I was self taught and learned the rudiments at KSW). I lived in the Mission when I first moved here and met a group of strong Latina artists. I was influenced by the strong bright colors of the Mission art, and the sense of community, and the use of symbols, ancient and modern. Interestingly, I move very easily among communities - my art has been shown in Filipino, Japanese, and Latino art shows and panel discussions, often the only one of a different ethnicity there.

THE PROCESS
I mostly use single images in my work, to have a single image express emotions. I have a process I call “cherchez l’image”….. I try to ask the piece of paper what it wants to be, as opposed to me having a fixed idea in my head of what I am going to do. But that’s easier said than done. Most of the time, I do it the reverse way. I have an idea of what I am going to do, and then I try and I try and somehow it doesn’t come out right. Then I get frustrated and panicky and give up. Finally I relax and ask the paper what it wants to be. Then the image comes to me. I sketch it on paper; then erase most of it. Then I use the exacto knife to cut out the lines.

SEARCH FOR SELF
When I was growing up, I was not encouraged to be an artist. We never had a crayon in the house. My parents were not too keen on art because they didn’t know how I would make a living from it. They were very poor, hardworking folks who didn’t understand the art world, viewing artists and performers as persons of loose moral values. So I majored in visual communications and started out as a graphic designer and illustrator, just to show them that I could support myself through my art – they were respectable art forms. I was a lonely child, who had to take care of my two younger brothers. I hardly went anywhere or did any of the fun things that my classmates would do. But I had a rich inner world of my imagination, which manifested in poetry, storytelling, and art.

ACTIVISM
To me activism grows out of a deep compassionate love for all people. Something triggers your heart. For me it was seeing a lot of body bags from Vietnam and Cambodia on TV, seeing that the people my country was killing looked a lot like me, and have cultural similarities with me. My heart insisted that I try to do something about it. I joined Asian American contingents to protest the Vietnam War, and in the process I met a variety of people. I found a niche where I could use my skills – in cultural work.

For a lot of us, the values of those early movement years informed our choices for the rest of our lives, even though we each went a slightly different direction based on our unique experiences. Throughout my life I’ve followed my passions, listening to what my heart insists upon, and expressing it with my art and my writing.