Galaudet Gallery presents
The New Medicine Art Exhibit Catalog
Part Three of the My Medicine Art Series:
In his encounters with the Sacred, man experiences nces a reality that does not belong to our world yet is encountered in and through objects or events that are part of the world. world —Mircea Eliade
The New Medicine
Art Exhibit Catalog Galaudet Gallery
Galaudet Gallery presents
Part Three of the My Medicine Art Series:
The New
Medicine
Galaudet Gallery Published by Galaudet Gallery
2223 West Hubbard Chicago, Illinois 60612 &
618 South Farwell Eau Claire, Wisconsin 54701 715-513-9994 galaudetgallery@gmail.com @
http://galaudetgallery.wix.com/ggllc Galaudet Gallery copyright 2015 All Rights Reserved Organized and Designed by Vicki Milewski Michael Milewski
Published for Part Three of the My Medicine Art Show: The New Medicine Art Exhibit
Held at Galaudet Gallery, EC, WI June 18—September 5, 2016 Participating Organizations
Galaudet Gallery Mike’s Building and Construction Jules Heffe Inc All My Relations Sundance Memorial Nature Fund, Inc. Participating Individuals
Xin Obaid—Chinese Ceremonial Tea Rita Simon—Native American Flute Concert Michael Milewski—Native American Prayer Tie Workshop and Ceremony Vicki Milewski—Sutra Prayer Flag Workshop Participating Artists Emma Connolly Serena Laborante Yuri Hyun Penny Alexander Rebecca Key Elizabeth Benoit Q T. Oa Daryl Akash La Farge, Robert Freeman, Oscar Howe Vicki Milewski Wang Hui Ansel Adams Vittorio Sella
Galaudet Gallery’s My Medicine Art Series curates art that has the power to heal and aid in self discovery and discovery of worlds beyond our day to day lives. Great art transports the viewer to another place and time, another space and moment, a new way of seeing life, an affirmation of life.
The curators wish to thank Oscar Howe for his amazing art and his belief in the powerful medicine art holds and transmits.
New Medicine Art Exhibit Part Three of the My Medicine Art Series Artists Vicki Milewski, American Artist Emma Connolly, British Artist
Serena Laborante, Italian Artist Yuri Hyun, American Artist
Penny Alexander, British Artist Rebecca Key, British Artist
Elizabeth Benoit, French Artist Q, Turkish Artist
T. Oa, Canadian Artist
Daryl, American Artist
Akash La Farge, Indian Artist
Oscar Howe, Native American Artist
Robert Freeman, Native American Artist Wang Hui Chinese Artist
Ansel Adams, American Photographer Vittorio Sella, Italian Photographer
Our difficulties lie in the fact that we are always worrying about the symptoms—we should be attacking the root cause. —Ansel Adams
The New Medicine Art Exhibit Part Three of the My Medicine Art Show Exhibition Catalog Contents
The Essay The New Medicine: Practicing Eternity Part One: Introductions: Mircea Eliade, Oscar Howe, Vicki Milewski and others The Physical Side of The New Medicine Story Artists: Emma Connolly, British Artist Serena Laborante, Italian Artist Rebecca Key, British Artist T. Oa, Canadian Artist Akash La Farge, Indian Artist
The Essay The New Medicine: Practicing Eternity Part Two: The Artists and Eliade The Metaphysical Side of The New Medicine Story Artists: Oscar Howe, Native American Artist Donald Montileaux, Native American Artist Yuri Hyun, South Korean Artist Penny Alexander, British Artist Elizabeth Benoit, French Artist Vicki Milewski, American Artist Q, Turkish Artist
The Essay The New Medicine: Practicing Eternity Part Three: The Questions The Essay The New Medicine: Practicing Eternity Part Four: Afterward
One is devoured by Time, not because one lives in Time, but because one believes in its reality, and therefore therefor forgets or despises eternity. ― Mircea Eliade
The Essay The New Medicine:
Practicing Eternity
Part One: Introductions Introductions: Mircea Eliade, Oscar Howe, Vicki Milewski and others
The New Medicine:
Practicing Eternity
Part One: Introductions: Mircea Eliade, Oscar Howe, Vicki
Milewski and others
Artists have long been the visionaries into new ways of living and Galaudet Gallery is bringing that to life in a four year themed series of exhibits under the name My Medicine Art Series1 choosing the transition of Spring into Summer for each installation to show art which visions a new way to view medicine and healing. An exhibit title is given for each year with this third year being called The New Medicine organized as an internationally juried show for artists to continue the dialogue begun in 2014 about new ways of viewing medicine and healing. Three mystical thinkers assist in informing, inspiring and acting as a natural force for this year’s exhibit. The first is Mircea Eliade2 whose profound explorations of sacred and profane moments inform The New Medicine art exhibit. Eliade’s book The Myth of the Eternal Return (Eternal Return)3 was used to focus the judges’ selections and curatorial decisions. The second is Oscar Howe4 whose artwork and sense of connecting cultural ties to healing through art making is an inspirational source. The third thinker is Vicki Milewski5 seen as the natural force behind this exhibit and whose rejuvenating art collection The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes establishes a new sense of space, time and what lies beyond these contemporaneous entrapments that can deny or support healing. These three ostensibly incongruent thinkers have more in common than not with their use of myths and eternal returnings and are joined by 14 internationally juried artists from a complement of 200 submissions from 32 countries. Galaudet Gallery curators connect ideas about past and present healing techniques and medicines to new ways of seeing through these 17 artists seeking to reconnect spirit to healing, to Galaudet Gallery’s My Medicine Art Series will run for 4 years: 2014 was called Part One; 2015 was called My Medicine Art Show; 2016 is called The New Medicine and 2017 will be called Part Four. 2018 will begin another four year series called All My Relations 2 Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) a pioneer in the systematic study of the history of religions as the study of the sacred and its manifold manifestations, not an exercise in comparisons between religions; as such he is credited with helping to establish the academic discipline of the history of religions. 3 The Myth of the Eternal Return or Cosmos and History by Mircea Eliade translated by Willard R. Trask from a 1954 printing of Eliade’s 1949 essay Le Mythe de l’eternel retour: archetypes at repetition 4 Oscar Howe (1915 -1983) was an Yanktonai Dakota artist from South Dakota, who became well known for his casein and tempera paintings. He is credited with influencing contemporary Native American art, paving the way for future artists to express their individual experiences and visions without having to follow accepted ways. 5 Vicki Milewski is a contemporary abstract experientialist whose works are internationally exhibited, held and awarded. Milewski’s art rebels against the boundaries of canvas, film, paper, words and music mixing mediums in artworks and in compelling art collections which pursue experiences expressive in healing potentials. 1
view our physical state through new eyes and to offer the mystical moments when healing takes place. It is these mystical moments which metaphysically connect all the artists of The New Medicine with the informative Eliade. Eliade’s Eternal Return is mainly a “Philosophy of History” as Eliade points out in his Foreword since he traces the fundamental concepts of time and history from archaic societies to modernity or rather from cultures that “revolt against concrete, historical time” 6 to the person of modernity who fashions an identity through living within history. It is this modern sense of history that Eliade takes issue with and it is this issue which informs the judges and curators of The New Medicine. Eliade sets out to upbraid Western philosophical thought as being too restrictively linear and tied to a Cartesian grid system since it does not examine or try to understand other views of time and space such as Eastern philosophical solutions or the sense of time archaic or “primitive” people had. But the conclusions he offers are not merely based in creating a more global philosophical anthropology because his real concerns are with solving metaphysical problems through a renewal that includes “knowledge of archaic ontology.”7 This renewal will also need knowledge of new levels of our reality, “inaccessible” to Eliade in 1949 but “starting to be communicated” as Galaudet Gallery curators see it in 2016. Galaudet Gallery proposes that the techniques of healing are part of the metaphysical problems needing renewal and one way to bring about this renewal is through Eliade’s proposal to examine archaic ontologies. The New Medicine also offers other ways this renewal can take place: through original thinking about time, space, reality and a viewing of history and our place in it as new foundational places to launch out from into a more enlightened sense of medicine and healing.
Of the two main artists and 14 juried artists in The New Medicine, Oscar Howe can be seen as the show’s inspiration. Howe began his artistic career painting Native American scenes in a two dimensional, linear style until revolutionizing Native American art by incorporating his tohokmu (spider web) construction that introduced connection points between his modern life and the cultural stories, ceremonies, legends and activities of his tribal people who chose to live without time; and instead based their histories on “situations” and “seasonal movements” that upheld, as Eliade defines it, an eternal returning consciousness. In placing his culture within a tohokmu construction, Howe was not only creating a web of life sensation or a framework to cause his paintings to have literal movement; but Howe was also connecting to his tribal heritage and in doing so connecting with archaic ontologies on time and space. Howe’s contribution to 6 7
From Ibid Forward Ibid
American Art is still being written since he largely worked and exhibited in the isolated area around South Dakota, so he is mainly considered a Native American artist and not also a great artist who “expressed human responses to spirit and beauty” using “the aesthetic points of the tohokmu and the lines that connect them in seemingly infinite variations.” 8 Galaudet Gallery seeks to remedy Howe’s anonymity by widely showing his works so that people are able to see the wealth of his artistic vision.
Vicki Milewski is the other side of the two main visual artists shown in The New Medicine and can be seen as the show’s natural force. Milewski began her artistic career painting flowers, some real and others seen in dreams and visions. It was B.K.S. Iyengar9 who recognized Milewski’s visionary flowers to be chakras and this led to her first internationally acclaimed art collection: The Chakra Collection which contains seven paintings and seven drawings for each of the seven consciousness chakras. This has now led her to continue meditational study into the ontological chakras. Her work with the Chakras has shown Milewski that her visions are a reality that needs to be communicated through art. She also sees some of her visions as tied to archaic ontology through archetypal patterns. Awakened by Howe’s tohokmu, Milewski recognized her own patterns seeped in the symbolic embroideries and stitching of her American, French and Polish heritage. After learning from a Lakota elder, she also began to research Native American designs and has found more similarities which is creating a belief that these designs may be global archetypes of archaic ontologies which transcend time. The Lakota elder introduced her to Eliade and based his teachings on Eliade’s belief that we should not “compare” religions; but instead, we should study sacred and profane manifestations found everywhere; Milewski sees these global designs as shared manifestations from the spiritual side of art. Milewski’s work often makes precise references to sites, history, metaphysics, ontology and pop culture while also recognizing the influence sacredness has brought to her and the continuing connections between her visions and physics. It is in these connections that she explores new healing modalities and seeks to further Eliade’s work in solving metaphysical questions through a renewal of ideas about space, time, archaic ontologies and reality.
Oscar Howe Artist: Paintings and Commentaries by Oscar Howe from the Essay on Howe by John Day B.K.S. Iyengar, was the founder of the style of yoga known as "Iyengar Yoga" and was considered one of the foremost yoga teachers in the world. Vicki took classes with Iyengar in his Master Teachers of Iyengar Yoga. 8 9
Of the 14 artists juried into The New Medicine the best introduction for them is from one of the judge, Jules Hefe an international business owner and art collector who explains the judges’ decision making process, “Powerful artworks were chosen for their dynamism. Works that spoke to us with vitality were the most discussed. Some works seemed to disqualify themselves simply because we had seen something similar elsewhere. We looked for pieces that spoke of a new reality for medicine that only artists acting like shamans 10 can propose. Reading Eliade’s Eternal Return also focused our selection process into telling a story that included both the physical side of medicine and healing as well as the metaphysical side.”
Jules Heffe Vicki Milewski Eau Claire, WI August 2016
Eliade preferred the term “shamanism” which to him equaled technique of religious ecstasy. For our purposes here we define shaman as a person who acts as an adjudicator between the natural and supernatural worlds who then uses techniques like art to communicate what they are seeing or have seen. 10
Encounters ncounters with the Sacred, are experiences in a reality that does not belong to our world yet is encountered in and through objects or events that are part of the world —Mircea Eliade
The Physical Side of The New Medicine Story tory
Emma Connolly, British Artist Artists Statement
My work explores the theme of the internal body and the beauty of organic form. I primarily work in oil and watercolour paints, the oils give a depth in colour and an abstraction of form, whereas the watercolours have a fragility and delicacy to them.
My work is influenced by scientific diagrams of the human skeleton, medical journals, the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and animal carcasses. The intricacies of the internal workings of a body form a jigsaw of shapes which I can manipulate into an abstracted plane.
My current series ‘Skin and Bone’ is a collection of oil paintings and watercolours, all of varying sizes. My work is now beginning to evolve into the Organ Flowers series, looking at organic forms that have floral aesthetics. http://www.emmaconnollyart.com/
mmaconnolly49@yahoo.co.uk
Detail of Skin and Bone #5
Skin and Bone #5
Emma Connolly
Skin and Bone #5 (2016) 10� X 14� Oil Painting Mounted on bespoke white wooden frame
Serena Laborante, Italian Artist
Artist Statement
My artistic focus is upon how and where we store up our memories, how we select emotions and thoughts and how we conserve them. My aim is to develop works that stir emotions and move collective memories through a spiritual process. Through my anthropological studies and my fascination about anatomical drawing, I rated the bones as a personal and a historical memories keepers, as every culture has conferred to them a spiritual worth. The memories fill our bones which form the skeleton and our identity, in the same way the collective memories give a contribution in the society’s forming process. I look at this matter also in a peripheral overview through drawings of clothes representing the external part of body in opposition with bones which constitute the deepest part of it and its support. Clothes are directly connected with the bygone presence: images that look back to the owner of the object.
In relationship with that attitude there is my strong interest about the study of religions, in particular the Christian one and the many hues emerging from the transformation of pagan religion in Christianity. These images represent a rituality arising from collective memory and folk traditions, turning in celebration while it becomes personal memory in a cyclical way. Artwork Narrative
Inspired to the religious movement incorporated into numerous American Indian belief system, Ghost Dance – Spirits circle represents, in five little square wooden tiles, a circle composed by different natural elements, such as: Achillea, Poplar, snake's vertebral column, spike and a mix of those elements.
By practising the ritual called Ghost Dance, the American Indian believed they would reunite the living with the spirits of the dead, bring the spirits of the dead to fight on their behalf, make the white colonists leave, and bring peace, prosperity and health. This practise was spreading throughout the regions among the Indians and the white colonists were worried about it.
Within the work this ancient Indian ritual is reproduced many times amplifying it sacred sense of health and peace. In each circle the spirits of the dead are held inside the elements and they dance in honour to who is looking at them by transmitting force and prosperity. All the elements represented in the tiles were considered sacred by the Indian. https://serenalaborante.wordpress.com/
serena.laborante@gmail.com
Ghost dance - Spirits Circle
Achillea
Poplar
Mix of Elements
Spike
Serena Laborante
Ghost dance - Spirits Circle (2016) 4” X 20” (total measurement) 4” X 4” (each tile measurement) Watercolor on five wood tiles
Snake's Vertebral Column
Rebecca Key, British Artist Artist Statement
Using objects to examine the relationship between artist and gallery space, spa character and narrative, I explore myths that surround the creative process within the institution and other specific sites. Erewhon is a wall all based sculptural work which addresses the Victorian resurgence in natural history as a form of healing the intellectual curiosity, to consider the humanity of experience and our relationship to the natural world. The title refers refer to Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon,, and the influence of Darwin’s Origin Of the Species Spe on Butler's novel. http://www.re-title.com/artists/rebecca title.com/artists/rebecca-key.asp
Details from Erewhon
info@rebeccakey.com
Erewhon
Rebecca Key
Erewhon 7” X 4.7” Magpie wing, in cast metal frame with sealing wax
T. Oa, Canadian Artist
Artist Statement
All living things store genetic information using the same molecules — DNA and RNA. Written in the genetic code of these molecules is compelling evidence of the shared ancestry of all living things. Many mystical peoples feel that even the currently inorganic things had or even still have DNA. I collage to make connections with ideas, materials and feelings.
Trained as a traditional Metis leather craftsman, I have found each hide inspires me about how we are all connected. Being a Particle Physicist has only enhanced this thinking. Each tree, each horse, each deer, each human—we all contain within us the same building blocks that make up life—DNA which looks like a rounded carnelian bead and so that is what I used for the double helix in this piece. http://www.metisnation.ca/
oaoaoa@outlook.com
Detail from DNA’s in Everything
DNA’s in Everything
T. Oa
DNA’s in Everything (2016) 8” X 10” Collage of Deer and Elk Skin with carnelian double helix and metal heart
Akash La Farge, Indian Artist Artist Statement
Mars is retrograde once every two years or so in 2016 it will be retrograde from April 18 until June 29 2016. The red planet was also quite close to earth in mid April so it looked quite red as it tracked close to the moon. The rotated crops in the fields below this scene made me think of the health of our planet, ourselves and our soil. My country is working hard to make our soil healthier and I think this will also make our lives healthier, but many of the farmers have told me they need a ‘brave heart’ to do the work necessary to put health back into our food system. I asked what they meant by Braveheart (since more than one used the term) and they referenced the movie Braveheart and how it was the peasants uprising that the movie focused on which is how the healing of the soil has begun—through small farmers implementing sustainable practices that have been improving the soil. I thought of how small Mercury is in relation to the other planets in our solar system and how on that night it was larger than the moon. I took it as a good sign. akashla@gmail.com
akash.la.farge.net
Detail from Transforming the Brave Heart with the Mars Retrograde
Transforming the Brave Heart with the Mars Retrograde
Akash La Farge
Transforming the Brave Heart with the Mars Retrograde (2016) 5 ¾” X 4 ½” Watercolor, Acrylic Paint on paper
If we pay no attention to it, time does not exist. — —Mircea Eliade
The Essay The New Medicine:
Practicing Eternity
Part Two: The Artists and Eliade
The New Medicine:
Practicing Eternity
Part Two: The Artists and Eliade
There are fourteen artists in The New Medicine. Ten were chosen from the International Call and their art ranges from oils and watercolors to artist books and flutes. Galaudet Gallery curators arranged these works in the gallery’s Tower Room so that they could tell the story the judges saw emerging during their selection process. Starting with the art works that tell the physical part of the story and ending with the works that spoke of the metaphysical. All the works confirm that both sides of the story are important and although found on different levels of our reality, each side is needed in healing. The physical side of The New Medicine story has artworks based inhumanity ranging to the planet we share. London artist Emma Connolly’s oil painting Skin and Bone #5 shows a new angle to a shared physical reality. Connolly pulls back the skin so we can see underneath our surface and in doing so begins the dialogue about finding a new medicine that will incorporate metaphysical solutions. The white, red and pink tonality of her vision softens the actual observance of skin and bones and brings the viewer to awareness that there is something else at work here. Genoa, Italy’s Serena Laborante’s watercolor Ghost Dance - Spirits Circle makes the old new through collective memories and stories. The anthropologically minded Laborante found inspiration from turn of the 20th Century American Indians who followed the prophet Wovoka by participating in the vision he had of the Ghost Dance. 11 The Indians sought to heal their situation of displacement and loss by appealing to the Great Spirit and to metaphysical realities within themselves, believing that the dance would produce healing. Laborante’s small, square watercolored tiles dance up one wall representing symbolical forces the Indians found in nature. British artist Rebecca Key’s Erewhon12 also dabbles with legacies and connections as a small window into a cabinet of curiosities combining a magpie wing with a red drop of wax surrounded by an antique metal frame from a piece of jewelry. T. Oa Erewhon is like a letter sent long ago to remind us today of where healers and searchers Detail of DNA’s in Everything have been and in an eternal returning may be again. Canadian Artist T. Oa begins decoding a new language given to us from science in his DNA’s in Everything since he acknowledges the coding inside us is mirrored in everything. And so T. Oa stitches together deer and elk hide with red string placing curled, round carnelian beads to represent the double helix of our shared DNA on top. The Ghost-dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 by James Mooney Published 1896 by the U.S. Bureau of Ethnography. 12 “The title refers to Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon, and the influence of Darwin's 'Origin Of the Species' on Butler's novel.” From Rebecca Key’s Artist Statement. 11
Placing the microcosm of the double helix next to the macrocosm of tanned leather skins showed how the curve and color of each bead mirrors the pile and color of each skin—as if they are metaphysically dancing with each other to the music of symbolism. Indian Artist Akash La Farge reminds us that the earth also needs healing in his Transforming the Brave Heart with the Mars Retrograde which shows another mystical moment when the full moon and Mars glowed over fields that are just beginning to experience sustainable agriculture like crop rotation and sensible nutrient management which La Farge laments is a long time coming to his native India. He uses the powerful metaphysical symbols of the full moon and the perihelion orbit of Mars as witnesses to a seeing this new level of reality with their brilliance making the night sky start crying down in blue watercolor over the fields experiencing the beginning of healing as the viewer hopes this healing, seen as changes in farming techniques, is not too late. Several of the juried artists told the metaphysical part of The New Medicine story by fully entering the moments before, during and after healing takes place and bringing the definition of metaphysics into this story as being an abstraction of physical reality which completes the experience of this reality by moving beyond it. South Korean artist Yuri Hyun’s acrylic, ink and pencil Stars pour into my heart has a mystical movement this artist captures as medicine and shows us the moment love came to her as inspiration. Hyun states that she knows love can heal much of the discord the world currently faces and she shows the power of such a metaphysical force in her Power of Love which is done with such intricate symbolic forms the viewer is left wondering if a new language is not taking shape within the outline of a flower. British Artist Penny Alexander brings to form an inscrutable moment of healing she found doing her artist book Mind Maps. Alexander connected to a shared tradition of using typewriters and the physicality of using one moved her beyond post partum depression. The holes caused by the typewriter shine through a new light and rightfully the curators placed this book in front of an Eastern window in the tower to emphasis the metaphysical nature of each page. French Artist Elizabeth Benoit offers a triptych of yellow infused watercolors with collaged hollyhocks in Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Being Healed; Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healing and Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healed to show the process of healing, using the symbolism of the triptych to call on her Catholic heritage and a white washed artist frame to show that the healing took place in her white fenced garden. The shining crystals Benoit places in each hollyhock’s center speak of the dawn light and enter us into a transcendental space where healing can occur. Choosing to have the rising sun’s yellow light bathe the background so that the hollyhocks seem to float as effortlessly as the tiny dragonflies around them—all caught up in a life changing, healing moment. But it is the Turkish Artist Q’s abstract color-blocking of the moment he knew he was healed that clearly shows the metaphysical agents at work in his Getting Healed.
The upward movement of his horizontal watercolor strokes on canvas lifts the eye and mind toward understanding such a moment. These artists and the many others that submitted all recognize the need to stay connected with what has gone before in order to move beyond past ideas on healing and medicine; with some artists stating that healing is metaphysical, that it involves spiritual concerns and other levels of reality. Howe’s art also imbues these ideas through his use of the tohokmu designs which flow around scenes and within them; holding spiritual symbolism and constructing people and their ceremonial objects. Howe is careful to delineate who is in the tohokmu, who is using the tohokmu and who is the tohokmu—like a metaphysical guide the tohokmu explains each story Howe paints. Three of his paintings chosen for The New Medicine illustrate these three states of the tohokmu. Buffalo Hunt has a buffalo, horse and rider swirling in a tohokmu structure. The curve of the bow mirrors the tohokmu as the rider rises to take aim at the buffalo that has parts of its body covered by the tohokmu as does the horse who looks straight at the viewer Howe shows how the horse and buffalo are connected to the tohokmu but the rider only has an idea about it as shown in the curve of his bow. In Howe’s Wa pi ya (Medicine Man) With Herb Root in Human Form it is clear that the Medicine Man is fully immersed in the tohokmu as he concentrates on the herb root that is cradled in the tohokmu’s dimensions. The herb root structure mirrors the tohokmu but is still not as connected to it as the medicine man whose body is in the tohokmu fully. The symbolism here of healer and the person being healed is clear: the healer has to connect with the tohokmu and utilize its power and its movement coaxing the person needing healing to reconnect with this life force. Howe’s painting Calling Wakan Tanka shows who is the tohokmu with a family of three praying in three different ways that a fierce storm, which set the prairie on fire nearby, will not come back to them as a “left-handed storm”. The woman smoking from an earthen hole with a long stick sends her tohokmu styled smoke into the design, asking for relief from the storm, her hair looks like the legs of a spider helping us to understand her power. A young man, also on the ground, is working with some beads that mirror the tohokmu but his fear and his awe in the storm and standing father figure is evidently distracting him from fully connecting. The central, standing figure raises his pipe after ceremony, with the pipe head still attached to the stem he is offering his last prayer to the center of the tohokmu which is a bright 8 pointed star in the center topmost of the painting. This star is clearly the tohokmu, listening to these prayers. The many dimensional layers of space, time and sacredness are clear. This standing figure is connecting the earth where his wife and son pray, with his lower body outlined by the distant storm and ring of prairie fire while his bowed head and hands holding the pipe high are within the tohokmu—foreshadowing the answering of their prayers. It is in these decisions that Howe deepens our awareness of the chances we have to be connected to something like a tohokmu, that we can see connection points in others and
that in those connections points, in those patterns we can begin to find healing and health. Howe’s use of the tohokmu continues The New Medicine story into archaic ontologies and event-based timekeeping while also being a modern representation of the connection Howe created between his modern life and the mythologies of his ancestors. It is in these moments of elucidation on where our connections lie and what we are connected to, that Howe illustrates Eliade’s conclusions to his thesis in Eternal Return. Eliade posited that if we could remove history from a linear perspective and see it more as “situations” the “human spirit” could then “attain knowledge of levels of reality otherwise inaccessible to it”; this could also be understood as visioning a “spiritual universe from new angles”.13 Seeing a “spiritual universe from new angles” and experiencing “levels of reality” that we do not yet experience is possible without the fetters of “relativism”, “skepticism”, existentialism, etc. if the spirit is seen as autonomous or as Eliade puts it, “by affirming the autonomy of spirit”. The autonomy of each person, thus affirmed, could assist in seeing our current universe from new angles. Such autonomy would mean no connection to a linear history or spatial concerns like cosmology, geography or seasonal influences as we think of them today since such autonomy—in order to create a platform from which to view our universe anew—would need to free each person and their corollary spirit from any fetters of linear timekeeping.14 This has long been the conundrum of mystics and others visionaries—how to tell the world about visionary experiences? Remaining connected to our shared reality and using it to communicate seems to be the best way. 15 But the creation of new communication tools is needed. Art may be the only way to easily tell the world about these new ideas and establish places for an autonomous spirit to experience life anew. Using art to communicate metaphysical experiences is not a new idea; however, suggesting that metaphysics is an integral part of our everyday reality, even going so far as to say that metaphysics is the missing part which can complete our experience of reality is a new idea, a new medicine. Howe chose to portray Sioux cultural stories, ceremonies and actions in order to communicate that the presence of sacred time is everywhere—he made sacred time stand up against linear concepts of time by Eliade also wrote that if history could be seen as event-based then the terrors found in linear history could be manipulated and understood from a different perspective. It must be said here that Eliade was seeking to end the terrors in history for modern man by concluding that a more “situational” viewing of the passage of events from life to life could end the concept of historically induced terrors and replace it with the act of learning and hence evolving into a new concept of time and space. 14 Since our current reality could appear illusionary when viewed from a new angle or remain an obstacle. 15 In the communication of these findings care should be taken so that current influencers—history, economics, religion, geography, culture, geopolitical considerations, etc. don’t simply force these new ideas, these new angles seen, these new realities experienced into ideologies placed into museum cases from which to study them, frozen in a time they are not really even a part of, lost to others who could gain access to other spiritual universes or levels of reality. 13
imbedding it into his tohokmu design. Howe’s tohokmu is seen as six sides representing the cardinal directions of North, South, East and West as well as the metaphysical directions of Above and Below. This is where Milewski furthers Howe and Eliade’s thinking by using Howe’s six dimensions and adding Outside, Inside, Right and Left. Finding these ten directions within her visions and artwork, Milewski imbeds them into her art, as in her Badland Roads series, to communicate about new realities and new levels of our current reality. Finding connections in different scientists’ search for a Theory of Everything16, Milewski discovers these 10 directions akin to the theorized 10 dimensions spacetime may hold; however, knowing a tree could hold the same mysteries as particle acceleration/collision detectors, she chooses to use natural symbols in her art. Milewski chooses to portray the natural world abstracted through experientialism to communicate her visions all the while pushing against the accepted linear conception of time and space. Visions which show a trail lifting off the earth and connecting with the Milky Way spiral galaxy which Milewski communicates as the ability to continue walking into the heavens as in her work Badlands Road Above: The Twelve Tribes which uses sparkling Mica on each of the twelve stars that hover around the curling trail in the sky helping us understand it is these stars that caused her hiking trail to lift up into the heavens. Or she sees the hiking trail she is on as if from a far ranging satellite which shows her farm and the badlands within a spiral shaped galaxy in her painting Badlands Road Outside: Spinning Outside the Milky Way using NASA maps of distant galaxies and celestial formations to show us the galaxy we are looking at is not the Milky Way Galaxy even though her farm and the badlands are within it. These visions also are seen in a trail entering the inside of a badland formation renewing Milewski’s work on conservation of our natural resources as she recognizes the earth’s call from below in Badlands Road Below: The Green Road. Or having the very trails and roads she travels on imbed themselves into her neural and arterial structure in Badlands Road Inside: Lighting Me Up. The tonal harmony between the Badlands Road Below and Inside show the correspondence Milewski accepts between her physical body and that of the badland formations. Viewing the cardinal direction named Badland Roads together also shows how the sky changes the tonality and harmony of communicating these metaphysical experiences: with the early morning sky shown in Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home expressing the gentle beginning of a new way; the noontime blazing sun in Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink reminding of the heat of revelation; the twilight skies mirrored in prairie grass in Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) showing the ease of accepting metaphysical reality; and the deep hush of night in Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe explaining there is still so much to learn. Milewski examines these times of day in order to be certain that it A theory of everything is a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe. 16
is not the time or even the day that has made a difference in her artworks; instead, it is the moment these experiences happened that she recreates and stays faithful to the colors and harmony experienced because it is in the colors and shapes that Milewski finds her visionary language and includes us in on her mystical patterns. Howe and Milewski support Eliade’s other thesis in Eternal Return—that myths and rituals and a sense of time as sacred are all real. Both artists recreate experiences they have and have been told about and in the recreation presuppose the artworks to be the myth, ritual or moment of time they are showing. Like Howe, Milewski connects these experiences with scenery from our current reality as seen in the badlands. Like Howe and Eliade, Milewski transcends linear time in order to experience an event-based time, an experience of new time, a new reality. Where Eliade uses philosophical reasoning to achieve transcendence; Howe uses his tohokmu and Milewski uses her visions shown amongst her mystical patterns. The physical other-worldliness of The Badlands National Park assisted in the process of Milewski’s spirit becoming autonomous by affirming its autonomy through these visionary experiences. It is this autonomy that supports her understanding of these “new levels of reality” which use to be inaccessible to her spirit. A reality of walking toward the mica sparkling moon in the skies is not seen as physically possible but for a millennia has been seen as spiritually possible. However most people only allow such thoughts if they are fettered to relativistic thinking (many professors have told Milewski that such realities are “clever metaphors”) or other fetters which lead to conclusions that it is not possible to actually walk to the moon—when it could be possible on many levels and definitely in other levels of our reality. Eliade posits that if we move “history” from a linear perspective to a situational one then our spirits may be able to access these new levels of reality which might allow evolution to move forward since the linear motion of evolution seems tied to the linear motion of history—so if time were released from one dimensional thinking then evolutionary gains might support greater spiritual awareness and bring an understanding that our spiritual travels are not tied to mental gymnastics but are instead actual travels that access new levels of reality. 17 When each person’s spiritual and physical autonomy is affirmed we can communicate our experiences and build a new body of knowledge that will allow us to solve metaphysical problems like healing which is currently seen in too much a physical sense. Howe’s tohokmu design, Milewski’s Badlands Road visions, Q’s upward movement in Getting Healed are some of the pieces in The New Medicine art exhibit that signal movements of the human mind in this direction. Jules Heffe Vicki Milewski Which may not be the case alone since viewing history as situations which occur and may cyclically occur could become just another fetter to our full ability to vision new realities. 17
The way towards 'wisdom' or towards tow 'freedom' is the way towards your inner being. This is the simplest definition of metaphysics. — —Mircea Eliade
The Metap Metaphysical hysical Side of The New Medicine Story
Oscar Howe, Native American Artist Artist Statements
The buffalo hunt was a ritual that had a special place in the Dakota spiritual culture. Howe’s painting Buffalo Hunt tells a larger story about the Dakota philosophy that everything in life has a circular order from hunting cycles to the changing seasons and our own human life. Howe wrote about the reasons why he painted such cultural ceremonies: One criterion for my painting is to present the cultural life and activities of the Sioux Indians; dances, ceremonies, legends, lore, arts . . . It is my greatest hope that my paintings may serve to bring the best thing of Indian culture into the modern way of life
Wa pi ya (Medicine Man) With Herb Root in Human Form shows Howe’s use of the spider web as an element of the artwork and as a symbol toward a cultural understanding of Native American medicinal practices. Oscar Howe wrote about the spider web motif:
I have been labeled wrongfully Cubist. The basic design is Tohokmu (spider web). From an all-Indian background I developed my own style.
Oscar writes in the book Oscar Howe Artist about Calling Wakan Tanka:
The scene here shows a storm has passed causing a prairie fire by lightning and the storm is “reversing”, the Indian family in fear has turned to prayer. The fire is coming closer to them and the moment at the end of prayer, a flash of light bursts through the storm clouds, with rays streaming focally all colors of the rainbow (very sub-peaceful sign to the Sioux-thus a good sign from the Great Sprit who can control the elements in answer to their prayers.
Buffalo Hunt
Oscar Howe
Buffalo Hunt (1973)
25 ¾” x 19 ½” 53/1000 Printed 2002 an archival, museum grade giclee NFS
Wa pi ya (Medicine Man) With Herb Root in Human Form
Oscar Howe
Wa pi ya (Medicine Man) With Herb Root in Human Form (1974)
28 ½” x 18” 242/1000 Printed July 1994 on 80# Karma Handmade Paper with colorfast inks that meet archival standards $2,128.00
Calling Wakan Tanka
Oscar Howe
Calling Wakan Tanka (1967)
10� X 16 An archival, museum grade giclee $625.00
Whoever said that my paintings are not in the traditional Indian style has poor knowledge of Indian art indeed. There is much more to Indian Art than pretty, stylized pictures. There was also power and strength and individualism (emotional and intellectual insight) in the old Indian paintings.— Oscar Howe, 1958
Dakota Horse Dance
Oscar Howe
Dakota Horse Dance
21 ¾” X 15 ¾” Archival Lithograph 88/1000 from Mitchell, SD $1865.00
Donald Montileaux, Native American Artist Artist Statement
Montileaux credits both Oscar Howe and Herman Red Elk with giving him instruction and a “sense of belonging, of who I was as a Lakota person.” “With one's spirit, I dream; I create; I paint; I share." Montileaux said.
Detail from Taking the Flight to the Morning Star
Taking the Flight to the Morning Star
Donald Montileaux
Taking the Flight to the Morning Star 7� X 5�
Reproduction giclee on 100% cotton rag $24.00
Yuri Hyun, South Korean Artist Artist Statement Power of Love
Love is the panacea for mankind. Numerous crimes all around the world are from the lack of love. Although a number of darkness keep disturbing the peace of world, love brighten the possibility of the earth's existence.
Detail from Power of Love
Power of Love
Yuri Hyun Power of Love
26� X 14� Ink pen, colored pencil, design marker, acrylic on bristol paper
Yuri Hyun, South Korean Artist Artist Statement Stars pour into my heart
When stars fall into my heart and it sparked in my heart. It flew wrapped around my body and I entered the mysterious world by full of bright and beauty. Stars are the medicine takes me to the most peaceful but beautiful world.
Detail from Stars pour into my heart
Stars pour into my heart
Yuri Hyun
Stars pour into my heart
11� X 14� Ink pen, colored pencil, design marker, acrylic on bristol paper
Penny Alexander, British Artist Artist Statement
After suffering with Post Natal Depression, Penny Alexander found her creative passion via the medium of typewriter art.
Having already worked with artist books she used this skill to put together a conceptual book. The book contains a series of 12 hand-typed maps, each sitting alongside duplicate "keys" which have varying responses as a result of the particular environment in question; the experiences there, her private life and her general mental health state. The works are all drawn on a typewriter, formed by delicate lines of full stops.
"PND", was a difficult condition for the artist to deal with. In the midst of her illness, paranoia resulted in the condition being concealed from all whom surrounded her. Reimmersion in her practice proved to be the stimulus necessary - allowing her to speak openly, accept her experiences, and move on.
Upon returning to her typewriter, a lack of confidence limited the artist into only utilizing the "full stop" (.) character. Conceptually this pleased the artist since the full stop also stood for an "end". Mapping her life's addresses until her health issues, (then beyond) represented Penny embracing her experiences as a form of creative recovery. The book, albeit incredibly personal to the artist, is comparative to experiences many people can relate to: Birth, death, environmental factors outside of the front door are telling indicators of a person’s overall well-being.
"Mind Maps"
Penny Alexander "Mind Maps"
5 ½” x 5 ½” x ¾” A one of a kind Artist Book
Elizabeth Benoit, French Artist Artist Statement
This triptych was made in response to a summer early morning experience I had in my garden with the Hollyhocks in full bloom and towering over my head. Dragonflies were gently hovering over the blooms and the sun was about to rise when a man I love entered my garden and spoke words of love to me as he never had before. I did not realize until then how I had been waiting for such a moment and in that waiting I had lost touch with my health. Like electricity running along a wire I was alive again and knew I would be making a piece of art about this moment. As we embraced the sun rose and filled the sky above us with such a vigorous yellow it seemed to be flowing in waves, dripping healing down upon me.
Details From Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Being
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Being Healed
Elizabeth Benoit
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Being Healed (2016)
6� X 18� Collaged hollyhock drawing with Swarovski crystals, metal and pencil over Watercolor Painting on 400 Series Strathmore Paper
Elizabeth Benoit, French Artist Artist Statement
I studied triptychs in various churches and found the positioning of the figures is highly symbolic so I spent much time positioning those hollyhocks! In Being Healed there are 9—3 times 3 for strength from the Christian trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. For Healing there are 8 hollyhocks for the four directions and the four dimensions, all necessary to live fully one’s life. The most hollyhocks are in the Healed piece, 14 total and I put no stems since I wanted to help each viewer to experience the floating sensation I had when the man I love came and told me he loves me.
Detail From Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healing
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healing
Elizabeth Benoit
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healing (2016)
6� X 18� Collaged hollyhock drawing with Swarovski crystals, metal and pencil over Watercolor Painting on 400 Series Strathmore Paper
Elizabeth Benoit, French Artist Artist Statement
I made two frames from fencing that goes around my garden, painting each white just like the fence is. For the third piece I wanted to matt and traditionally frame it, to keep my state of healed intact, but I wanted it done in a simple fashion with a small frame and little bit of matting. As a triptych I wanted the middle one, the one for Healed, to be different because it is a different state one is in when health is boundless.
Details From Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healed (2016)
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healed
Elizabeth Benoit
Dawn, Hollyhocks and Him Healed (2016)
6� X 18� Collaged hollyhock drawing with Swarovski crystals, metal and pencil over Watercolor Painting on 400 Series Strathmore Paper
Vicki Milewski, American Artist Artist Statement:
Driving through the Badlands National Park during pre-dawn hours shows a pink, glowing light emanating from the formations and road. This pink light of the not yet risen sun colors the intricate hills and pinnacles showing a different sense of detail and form. One such early morning drive showed the road glowing strongly pink, I slowed and then pulled over to get out and walk on this pink road watching it smolder and change in color. How could this luminous pink infiltrate my life producing a more gentle way of going than I had been experiencing?
I rebel against conformity each time I turn west and acknowledge the pull of my spirit to return to wilderness and wild areas. I lead revolutions to change conventions of home, family and work so that others may feel more at home in self chosen paths, so that my struggles on paths different than others can help them and secure a future with more people able to follow their spirit’s call. These rebellions are not for naught. This part of the Badlands National Park Loop road, Route 244, climbs over Bigfoot Pass hovering over it as it meets with the horizon line. The moment I made the realizations above I was facing north on this very windy road.
The Native American Bigfoot led his people into a Ghost Dance religion in hopes it would change their lives. He died before knowing if it had worked but he knew his work was for something. The Native American experience of walking a “Red Road� as being one that is filled with spirit and good intent is also a part of the understanding of this painting. That this road is pink and not red means I am still learning how to fully incorporate my spirit into my work as an artist.
Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one)
Vicki Milewski
Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) 16� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas. Conservator-approved; archival quality $2,500.00
Vicki Milewski, American Artist Artist Statement:
During the late 1990’s and early 00’s I would visit the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota to camp, hike and rediscover my life with a Native American man named Joe. One evening just after dusk I was crossing Cedar Pass in the Badlands National Park headed south toward Joe’s home outside of Pine Ridge Reservation, when the stars fully appeared in the still dusking sky and on the lush, spring prairie grasses several hundred feet below me there were also stars shimmering. At first I thought the stars in the grass were reflections of those stars in the sky but they were not since they were in different locations and in different sizes.
When I mentioned the “stars on earth” to Joe said I was seeing my life changed and this idea helped to sustain my work in creating a better life for myself seeped in my own personal and cultural history and living fully in the present. Joe urged me to write a book about our time together and the lessons and information he shared with me. He scoffed at the idea that he could be a late 20th Century Black Elk since he felt that Black Elk was trying to explain a past cultural experience that Black Elk felt was lost since the Wounded Knee killings of 1890. Black Elk said that a people’s “beautiful dream” had been lost that day. Joe would echo the phrase “beautiful dream” causing me to call the first drafts of my book Beautiful Dream since Joe would say, “You and I are here to revive the ‘beautiful dream’ but on our terms, for our times. We are here now and work here and now, the past is only good information for us to learn from but not to live, we must live now and our ceremonies, healing, art and magic must be based in the now. Just as many people want a mountain, or a trip, or a person to change their lives, only we can live the most sacred of ceremonies—that of living our lives.”
Details From Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe
Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe
Vicki Milewski
Badlands Road South:
Going to See Joe
16” X 20” Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas. Conservator-approved; archival quality $2400.00
Vicki Milewski, American Artist Artist Statement:
Leaving the badlands before even pre-dawn begins makes it possible to drive all the way home in one day (12 hours). Many times as I have driven the Loop Road East during this hour of night the road would start turning blue. I started to notice the hue of blue would be similar to my state of mind at the time of my leaving: a deep blue would mean I was deeply at peace, a lighter blue would mean I had a lightness of heart. On this particular drive my heart was quite light and the road was a beautiful cloud blue and it seemed fluid like water with a current flowing east, spilling me toward home.
That the road at this point is spilling upwards to cross over Cedar Pass never seemed to matter to me—it seemed a slight surrealism had crept into some of my art making just as it had after having metaphysical experiences with Joe and on my own in the Badlands. Later I found that the White River, which carved out the valley the Badlands sit in, also runs uphill and North from its source in Nebraska. Since I had chosen to call my book about these experiences A White River Valley to honor the beginning of my journeys I felt an even stronger kinship with this river because of these artworks and the movement of water up hills. That the badlands have gotten their very name due to this river has made me spend much time camping alongside the river and learning from it. Many of my acts of rebellion in my art and in my life have stemmed from experiences I’ve had with this river and its valley.
Details From Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home
Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home
Vicki Milewski
Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home
16� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas. Conservator-approved; archival quality $1425.00
Vicki Milewski, American Artist Artist Statement
‌The next morning I left as the sun was rising and the badland formations rose up into the sky, looming larger than I had ever seen before. I saw stars inside the formations and a first quarter moon in one. The road no longer had a red center line but instead a pink one causing me to remember the first drawing and experience I had that began this collection: Badlands Road North: the Pink Road‌ however this time the outer edges of the road were a bright red which ran together to form a solid red road as it peaked at Dillon Pass on the Badlands Loop Road. At that peak the road seemed to lift off into the sky as five stars that shone bright red in the ever dawning sky. I immediately understood that these Badland Roads were to also be in the sky and was rewarded with four more experiences that created the next four canvases. The reverberations of these formations as they rose up into the sky was almost like they were breathing since I could see them getting larger and changing in color as they grew. It is experiences like this one that inform my art making and this experience showed me a new way of looking at my art and my life.
Details From Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink
Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink
Vicki Milewski
Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink
16� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas. Conservator-approved; archival quality $1400.00
Vicki Milewski, American Artist Artist Statement
On a hike during twilight I saw this view of a green road inside a large badland formation. At first it seemed contained in the formation until I saw how the tip of the road on top was not an ending point but that the road continued on into the formation. I tried to walk around the formation but could not climb over the steep grades. Later that week I was hiking on bear butte enjoying a cool morning and having the trail to myself when I came upon a Native American man tying prayer ties to a tree. The usual colors of red, white, yellow and black billowed out on the soft breeze but there was also a green strip of cloth. I asked the man what the green one meant and he said, “The green road is to take care of the earth and tell the world about our relatives the trees, grass, rocks and water.�
I thought about the green road in the badlands formation I had seen and realized then it was a part of my Badlands Road Collection. Since it was inside the formation I decided that in addition to North, South, East and West there would be Above and Below and Inside and Outside.
This badland formation also separated the still strong night sky and the coming of the dawn and so its very presence during this experience was like it was a physical manifestation of twilight. The two stars are Mercury and Venus as they share the morning sky which occurs when they change places as the morning star and the evening star. Following the transit of these two planets has led to a whole new way of viewing celestial time and seasonal constructs.
Details From Badlands Road: Below The Green Road
Badlands Road: Below: The Green Road
Vicki Milewski
Badlands Road: Below The Green Road
20� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas. Conservator-approved; archival quality
Vicki Milewski, American Artist Artist Statement
After many metaphysical experiences along the Badland Loop Road I understood that my metaphysical experiences while hiking in the Badlands needed to also be shown. During full moon nights when the skies are clear I love hiking familiar trails. The clean air is filled with wonderful scents of cedar, sages and more and there are different animals active that often appear as shadows. Reading a new translation of Revelations I was struck by the use of the twelve tribes as stars in the sky which came down to become messengers of God.
While hiking on the Medicine Root trail in the Badlands of South Dakota one early summer evening, I saw the trail lift off into the sky and then blue flowed from the sky onto the trail. The bright full moon had made other celestial objects disappear in its light but then stars started appearing with some of them appearing on the trail in the sky. As all this happened the trail widened into a road and the scene hung there in front of me as the winds started to blow stronger. I counted twelve stars before the moon started glowing again, blocking out the stars with a light reflected from the sun. I walked on seeing how the trail glimmered from the light of the moon.
Details From Badlands Road: Above The Twelve Tribes
Badlands Road: Above: The Twelve Tribes
Vicki Milewski
Badlands Road: Above The Twelve Tribes
20� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas. Conservator-approved; archival quality
Vicki Milewski, American Artist Artist Statement
After many years hiking, camping, meditating with and studying the Badlands I have found that its formations and skies are within me. My Lakota friend Joe would talk about how the universe we see is simply a mirror of our personal universes within. Sometimes I understand how expansive I am inside, how there are galaxies, star systems, planets, and me. Just as ancient alchemists would talk about what is above is also below, I understand now that what is outside is also inside since we create our world each moment. This canvas is a continuation of Badlands Road Above: Twelve Tribes and connected to the final canvas of this series Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with the Milky Way. Similar experiences inspired all three of these canvases. It is terrifying and energizing to expose some of what lies inside you. Often people ask how long it took for me to do a painting and my usual response is, “A lifetime.” But after working toward an understanding of this experience through these art works has shown me that the real answer is “Eternity.”
Details From Badlands Road Inside: Lighting Me Up
Badlands Road: Inside: Lighting Me Up
Vicki Milewski
Badlands Road Inside: Lighting Me Up
20� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas. Conservator-approved; archival quality
Vicki Milewski, American Artist Artist Statement
This road is also outside me, connecting me with our known universe and beyond. To think of our Milky Way Galaxy holding the places and people we love in its constant rotation through other galaxies is an idea I had after assisting with an ancient ceremony which many of Joe’s friends believed would help him to walk on after he caught the Milky Way Galaxy almost like an entrance ramp onto another way of being. I was camped in a favorite spot Joe and I frequented in the Black Hills of South Dakota with a small fire burning which I added sage and sweet grass to intermittently. As I watched the sky full of stars I saw how the campfire smoke started to resemble the Milky Way Galaxy and then I saw the barn on my farm and rows of corn tasseling in the fields. The sky was clear and star gazing was great during this new moon time. The Milky Way stretched from one horizon line up and over me to touch the opposite horizon line. This canvas is the culmination of my Badlands Roads series.
Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with Outside the Milky Way
Badlands Road: Outside: Spinning Outside the Milky Way
Vicki Milewski
Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with Outside the Milky Way
20� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas. Conservator-approved; archival quality
Q, Turkish Artist Artist Statement
My piece Getting Healed shows the moment I knew I as healed. It was an upward movement of my spirit that lifted me off my feet. When it set me back down I knew my health had returned and it had.
Detail From Getting Healed
Getting Healed
Q
Getting Healed (2016) 24” X 18” Watercolor on canvas
The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree tree;; they are worshipped precisely because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but sacred, the wholly other. —Mircea Mircea Eliade
The Essay The New Medicine:
Practicing Eternity
Part Three: The Questions
The New Medicine:
Practicing Eternity
Part Three: The Questions Galaudet Gallery curators know there is much work yet to be done on the path of solving metaphysical problems through accessing new levels of our reality. In no way does this pursuit call into question the advances in Western medicine’s focus on the physical side of this exhibit’s story but the metaphysical side is also telling a story—the same story actually—that is in need of advances in a real world way. This is not to say that the revolutions in prayer and meditation and other practices are not a good beginning, but much more is needed so that an acceptance, an autonomy, of spiritual advances in healing can take place. Eliade references the Christian idea of miracles and suggests that miracles are possible that “mountains can be moved if it is believed they can be” but that miracles are rare because we have lost the connection to their possibility. So Galaudet Gallery curators ask questions to continue the dialogue and move the story forward into a reality that represents both physical and metaphysical experiences. Some of the questions may take much time to be answered but it is in the asking that awareness of these ideas can take hold: Some Of The Questions What if our modern sense of history and the burgeoning historical culture we are creating also creates illness, disease and other maladies? Why do we see our lives as pieces of a greater timeline where hours, minutes, seconds are counted, hoarded, wasted, used and so forth? Does our sense of time change when we are healthy? When we are in need of healing? What happens if we activate Eliade’s idea about transcending this historically based timeline and move toward seeing time as situations or events that occur in order for our spirits to learn about other levels of reality? Will historians, geologists, meteorologists, and others want to collaborate on creating a new sense of time--to really effect a change in how we view our overall experience of time, of the motions of our lives?
Could we create watches that are moved by our own hands when we have an experience which allows our spirit to access information about levels of reality currently inaccessible? What would that kind of watch look like? Is the round face of clocks ironic given that they compartmentalize linear time? Often it is thought the round faced clocks are mirrors of the earth and her rotation but what if they were also suggestions about the next way we would envision time?18
The New Medicine furthers the conversation Galaudet Gallery started three years ago when they installed their first My Medicine Art Series exhibit. Examining healing through the lens of increasing our awareness of the different levels of reality and integrating both physical and metaphysical understanding into the exhibit’s storylines is one of the driving forces of this art series. Exhibiting fine art from artists who share in this vision is the goal. The New Medicine clearly attains this goal—through collaborating with judges who understand the examination and then carefully curating the art chosen so that there is a story that is told simply, quietly but with a profundity that is available for anyone to find. Understanding the My Medicine Art Series is a chance to widen the dialogue about medicine and hence healing and then to rebel against the current boundaries of what medicine is and has been and move toward what it could be: a chance to experience time and space in a situational sense that would support autonomous spirits in experiencing new levels of our reality, seeing our spiritual universes from different angles and then communicating these ideas with others is the profundity available through viewing The New Medicine.
Or maybe the roundness of clocks is only to distract us from the Cartesian coordinate grid-based reality that continues to concentrate our minds on pieces of a whole, on sections of a line, on measurements of time which causes us to lose any sense of wealthy moments brimming with information for our spirits—but we walk by these events, these situations since we are comforted by a round dial that spins around and around acting like it is modeling our earth and her orbit. But it is the digital clock that is closer to the reality we experience now since its rhythm is based on 0’s and 1’s—archaic code that accepts it is a piece of a whole, two parts of a line and in that acceptance lies our escape route toward creating an event based reality that we can learn from and grow within and begin the evolutionary steps toward a new reality fully experiencing levels of reality that have always been there—waiting. So first we need to affirm each person’s autonomy and one way to do that is to accept each person’s experience of the current reality since those experiences which do not easily fit with our current reality could mean those experiences are of another reality and herein lies the beginning of seeing our universe from new angles. 18
The New Medicine:
Practicing Eternity
Part Four: Afterward In the first year of the My Medicine Art Series, Galaudet Galley posited that Howe’s tohokmu design was another way to see our digital age—connected to what has mystically gone before us and using it to forge new ways to live life.19 In the second year of the My Medicine Art Series, Galaudet Gallery broadened the focus and included some of Howe’s students and Milewski’s art which is inspired by Howe. This second year examined how each of these artists interprets Howe’s tohokmu idea which brought the act of self discovery as an act of healing and art making into focus. Now Galaudet Gallery brings these ideas even further in the third year of this Art Series, The New Medicine by combining Howe and Milewski’s works with other artists whose shamanic works support Eliade’s search for a way to allow our spirits the chance to access other levels of our reality, other ways of being—art has long been such a path and again Howe and Milewski inform this search by making tohokmu’s and mystical patterns six dimensional or ten dimensional and within these layers of time and space, ceremony and experience, events and situations lie the doorways we have available to us to access these new angles of our spiritual universe and in seeing these artistic doors we recognize the lineage of shaman to artist and in their powerful connections they continue to create new paths toward new realities that will raise healing beyond a mere physical experience and unify it with a metaphysical experience and beyond. Jules Heffe Vicki Milewski August 2016 Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Howe’s Paradox and Anomalistic Legacy Shows the Turning Point for Native American Artists and Insights for our 21st Century Life by Vicki Milewski can be found at https://vickimilewski.academia.edu/VickiMilewski/Papers 19
Galaudet Gallery wishes to thank all the art collectors and art lovers who attended this exhibit. A special thanks to those people and organizations who purchased art works from this exhibit.
It is all of your support which is amazing and sustaining in our work of holding fine art exhibitions Sincerely,
Galaudet Gallery owners
The product of nature, the object fashioned by industry, ac acquire quire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality. —Mircea Mircea Eliade