Spherism

*2012 Sacred wheels….

.

.

.

.

.

….India is all about G (generator) O (organizer) D (destroyer) [Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva], so my sacred spheres are being put through the journey from the invisible to the visible…. <again, apologies for the low quality pix, as I am in an Indian internet cafe surrounded by frog filled rice patties> :)

.

*2012 -Wheels are spinning in Hampi, India

Sound bowl activations in ancient temples, and flower of life sacred geometry are giving birth to new ways to explore the spheristic qualities of nature as art. More (low quality Indian Internet cafe) pix to come…

*2011 -l’Original

L’Original

.

L’Original (detail)

.

Lays potato chips + L’Origine du monde by French artist Gustave Courbet = Classic Spherism

*2011 -back to the roots

Like all cycles; what goes around, comes around. So here I am with everything I have learned since 2004, returning to the basics. The simple pencil drawings that seem to captivate me in the abstractions that are created when breaking down the shapes of an image, and filling them with shorthand ripples, concentric rings of black and white. Again I turn to the trash of the American consumer culture to be my hero in this story. I have many pieces in the works now, and will post the finished ones here when completed. I am also in NYC doing sound bowl vibrational massages at my pop up healing spot In Praise of the Void, and working on some multi-media spheristic collaboration/animations.

I also feel as if I should re-write the manifesto, incorporating some of the fantastic information I have learned since the first on back in ‘04. Will post here soon.

Confessions (in progress)

.

Confessions

.

Final SUN (in process)

.

Popeyes Picasso (in process)

.

Popeyes Picasso

.

Stromming Matisse

.

*2009-2010 -into the void

During this time period I was in India, and focusing on different bodies of work, non-spherism related (some on my other blog). I did have a profound visionary experience during a Tibetan Singing bowl sound healing, and when I was in Dharmsala, India (home of the Dali Lama and the Tibetan exile community), I was trained to give vibrational healings using the sound bowls. This direct experience of the vibrations on the body produces many interesting effects, and serves as a deepening journey into the nature of sound/and vibrations which emanate from semi-spherical bodies. There is also much to learn in terms of setting up specific geometric configurations around the body (based on the 5 chakra, 7 chakra, and kabalastic 10 sepherot systems), to create subtle and powerful cross vibrational fields. I am realizing the importance of space as it functions to contain the vibrations. All this research is helping me understand more of the nature of what I am exploring through the medium of visual art.

*2008 -ancestral collaboration

I spent most of 2007 and 2008 arching my grandfather’s photographs. I used the opportunity to organize a book and exhibit of his unkonwn/experimental work. The book, Unknown Halsman, was sequenced in a way that used his photographs to show the cycle of creation, life, death, rebirth. The end became the beginning, like the oroborus snake biting its own tale, a motif I worked with years earlier. I also discovered that the pages of the book, when shuffled, could be used as a tarot deck. I started giving readings at art fairs like Art Basel Miami, and the Dark Fair in NYC.

For the book release exhibit at the Magnum photos gallery during Paris Photo, I created several site specific installations re-mixing his darkroom equipment and ephemera, as a limited edition box set which contained a unique collaborative object which combined his photos with my concepts of time cycles (eggs/watches/butterflies).

Ancestral Oroborus

.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (OHR&PH collab)

.

Albert Einstein (OHR&PH collab)

.

Andy Warhol (OHR&PH collab)

.

*2007 -concepts in motion

When my grandmother passed, I converted her exercise bike into a prayer wheel, with a series of 12 paintings that spun as fast or as slow as the viewer decided. There was no beginning or end, and as it went faster and faster it turned into an infinite color-field painting loop. This was a further exploration of cycles and circles, and even touching on astrology and the ready-made.

Yvonne’s Cycle
.

Dada For Grandma (instillation detail -Little Cakes Gallery, NYC)
.

Dada For Grandma (painting detail)

.

*2006 -continuation and transformantion

Maui

.

Sethian Forces Dismenbering Osiris

.

Sethian Forces Dismenbering Osiris (detail)

.

I was doing a residency in the Hawaiian jungle, living in an octagonal hut which was the home of a Buddhist scholar on leave. He had an image of the Rainbow Body Guru Rinpoche which was very inspiring. I took a departure from creating volume on the  spheres with concentric circles, and stared to explore vibrations as a way to delineate form. The rotting Jackfruit on the premisses inspired a blank Fibonacci spiral to serve as a vessel for the mythological struggle of duality between the Egyptian force of life “Osiris” and the force of transformation “Seth.”

Back on mainland, I explored how else to play on a 2D surface with the sphere and concepts of cycles.

391 Moon Years Old

.

Labor Cycle

.

Labor Cycle (detail)

.

Summer Spiral

.

Summer Spiral (detail)

.

She Knows Her Sister

.

Hey Far Out Kid (Black Holes Whole Sale)

.

Around this time Grigori Perelman solved the Poincare Conjecture, which proved that all shapes could mathematically be reduced to spheres (unless they had a hole in them, in which case it would resolve as a torus). This re-affirmed the path that I was on, and Inspired me to make my message more accessible to the masses.  I decided that my esoteric and geometric symbols were over the heads of most people, so I looked for inspiration in the supermarket. Spreads from The National Enquirer about the JonBenet Ramsey killer, cereal boxes, or significant celebrity media events [Paris Hilton jail release], became the vessels to fill with vibrations. If I could show that even the most mundane trash from America could hold highly spiritual knowledge, then I feel like being a sell-out POP artist would be worth it.

Poincare Conjecture goes Pop

.

Poincare Conjecture goes Pop (detail)

.

My Present LIFE style

.

American Spread Eagle [from National Enquirer]

.

Paris Hilton = Trojan Muse [People magazine cover]

.

*2005 -a new way

I discovered an organic way to create spheres, which opened up new possibilities for me. The spheres became placeholders for new concepts after I removed the ‘cartoon criminal’ eye-mask/vine knife. In it’s essence, the sphere is a perfect and complete shape. When one draws a globe on a 2D surface, it is a circle. This shape has been my life long mandala (as my name begins with an ‘O’). It seemed quite natural for me to work with this symbol.

I began to use universal symbols (Fibonacci spirals, rainbows, water drops, DNA helix, etc), as well as the process of ‘chance’ when creating forms to convert into spherism paintings. [All the work is gouache and ink on paper]. Here is a selection of work form 2005:

Praying for a Rainbow -private collection-

.

Praying for a Rainbow (detail)

.

Birthday Clock -The Dakis Joanou collection-

.

Birthday Clock (detail)

.

Manifested Prayer -Larry Rinder Collection-

.

Manifested Prayer (detail)

.

Original Seed -The Dakis Joanou collection-

.

Original Seed (detail)

.

North -Mario Martinez Collection-

.

West -private collection-

.

Keep Off The Grass

.

Van Gogh’s Shoes

.

Some of the research I was referring to in my 2004 manifesto can further explain how I saw this symbol could serve to help humanity understand the structure of the reality around them. In brief:

-Charles and Ray Eames “Power of 10” film. -Illustrates the micro/macro-cosmic symmetry occurring in nature. To borrow from Hermetic Mysticism: As Above, so Bellow.

-Quantum Physics. -Now this field has made many advances since 2004, but the basic premise is that at the smallest level of perception matter is undetermined vibrations, revealing that at the subtlest level reality is an illusion.

-Buddhist Philosophy. -See above. Suffering is attachment. Form is temporary attachment. So in my Spheristic conception, the quantum universe merges with Buddhist philosophy, and we see the building blocks of physical and mental reality is just a pattern of energy or concepts temporarily held together, and really has no existence un-to itself. Therefore to experience “reality” with this perception liberates one from attachment and clears room to rest in direct awareness.

-Personal observation of phenomena produced patterns. -Years of observing biological patterns play out with nature as a form, or personal relations mimicking growth and decay patterns.

-“Dali Atomicus” by Philippe Halsman. -My Grandfather and Dali created this image to show that we live in an atomic world, where nothing is really touching, so everything in the photograph is suspended in air. Dali called this “Atomic Mysticism”, and he felt like this would be the next art movement. In many ways I feel like the legacy holder, and that Spherism is the latest conceptual art language to merge science and spirituality, and present people with a new framework to experience their experiences with.

-Masaru Emoto’s research of prayers for water crystal production. -Dr. Emoto’s research shows the connection between thoughts/intentions/prayers and how this affects the crystalline structure of water molecules. In short: loving and affirming feelings directed towards water (our body is 70% water. Planet is 70% water) results in water molecules with harmonious geometry, which reveals the connection between our thoughts and how it influences the world around us.

-Buckminster Fuller. -Wow, where to start? Bucky did so much pertinent research. Perhaps in 2004 I was drawn to his explorations of inserting practical applications of biological structures into the world of architecture, specifically the geodesic dome.

-The 2004 RNC protest in NYC + The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco. -This experience, and this book affected the way I understood how organized power operated and quieted those in opposition.

-DNA research by Jeremy Darby. -Darby’s book The Cosmic Serpent points to the similarities between the DNA helix and the use of coiled snakes as symbols from cultures around the world.  This tells us that visionary experiences can take us to the heart of the biological universe, resulting in archetypal art.

-Jean Arp’s experiments with chance. -In the way quarks can seem to have a mind of their own the invisible force of chance can play out in artistic expressions as well. When I began to create the spheres organically this premise of surrender became more pronounced.

-Han Haacke’s “Untitled Statement” (1966). -This was really powerful for me in 2004, as the rest of my art practice at the time dealt with public art, collaboration, and interactive art. I put into practice these theories that I was talking about with my spherism, so I could see the results manifest in unexpected ways.

-Mola weavers of Panama. -This group of artisans adapted their traditional motifs to reflect subject matter that was more interesting to potential buyers, yet they maintained their style. This to me reveals the inherent adaptability of expression while being able to keep the same energetic signature.

-Conversations with Clint Taniguchi. -My collaborator at the time of writing the Manifesto. We shared many ideas and books while we were operating the Triple Base Gallery in SF at this time.

-Drunvalo Melchizedek’s sacred geometry research. -His _Flower of Life_ books series on the MerKaBa touched on many of these subjects discussed above, but really illustrated the geometry of our bodies and how this can be accessed through our mind.

*2004 -the origins

In 2004 I was asked to contribute art for a fundraiser art show in NYC hosted by a political group raising money for a Democratic PAC. I was living in California at the time and had been studying patterns of growth and structure in nature on a micro and macro level. I felt that there was a dark energy growth hidden behind the US flag, and decided to try and show this idea. I came up with a symbol for a criminal organism (a black eye mask -shorthand from old Disney cartoons [those 3 robbers who were always in Donald Duck comics], with a branch/vine coming out of one of the eyes, that was actually an arm holding a dagger). I titled it Something Rotten Washed Ashore, and Spherism was born. I used this motif of the “criminal organism” to show how, like a virus, malevolent energy could grow and cause harm.

Something Rotten Washed Ashore

.

We Live In Mythological Times

.

Heel Study

.

TV Pee One

.

TV Pee Two

.

Corporate Takeover

.

Corporate Takeover (Detail)

.

The Name Of The Rose

.

The Name Of The Rose  (detail)

.

I saw how this symbol of the sphere could be repeated, and built upon and transformed into larger shapes, becoming different symbols. For a while (it was a time of huge anti-Iraq war rallies in SF) I was finding ways to illustrate the woes of society (corporations, and organized religion) by embedding concepts into forms. After sometime going down this path, I stumbled upon a more organic way to create the “spheres”, and shifted the subject matter towards more esoteric concepts, as way to elevate the discussion.

The First Spherism Manifesto (2005)

SPHEREISM MANIFESTO #ONE

MAY 2005 SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

Sphereism is. Sphereism is the world around you. Sphereism is the world within you. Sphereism is. Sphereism is even that which is in direct opposition to Sphereism. Sphereism is how you grow and how you decompose. Sphereism is the building blocks of tangible reality and invisible energy. Your personal Sphereism is the direct results of your thoughts.

The rectangle breast has too long nursed us away from the observable pattern posts on our paths that point us to the un-spiral within.  Our cult’s fractured right angle schizo-mania splits us, boxes us, and buries us alive in coffin towers.  Back to nature. Back to basics. Back to humility.

-Oliver Halsman Rosenberg

Sources:

Charles and Ray Eames “Power of 10” film

Quantum Physics

Buddhist Philosophy

Personal observation of phenomena produced patterns

“Dali Atomicus” by Philippe Halsman

Masaru Emoto’s research of prayers for water crystal production

Buckminster Fuller

The 2004 RNC protest in NYC + The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco

DNA research by Jeremy Darby

Jean Arp’s experiments with chance

Han Haacke’s “Untitled Statement” (1966)

Mola weavers of Panama

Conversations with Clint Taniguchi

Drunvalo Melchizedek’s sacred geometry research