C-Platform: It was a big number of 700 wishes/intentions, any of them impressed you?
Michele: There were so many beautiful, heartfelt wishes. When someone shares their dream with you they are being vulnerable. To me, it is a deep honor. I remember one person wrote of wanting “to live in a world without war” – a big dream that many of us share. But the focus on the word “war” brings to mind images of death, destruction and suffering. I encouraged her to rephrase her wish to imagine what her ideal world would look or feel like. She wrote of wanting to live in a peaceful world. Another woman I met, came to the museum with a friend. She told me he was waiting for a kidney transplant. Her wish was that he receive an organ donation to save his life another friend was wishing for her friend to be cured of cancer. It is very touching to me these wishes for the benefit of others well-being. I think the more personal and specific wishes were the ones that stood out the most for me.
How did you compile the wishes and intentions?
I sent out an email invitation and invited people to forward it to their friends. I also talked to everyone I knew about the project and invited them to share a wish with me. I received emails from all over the world and compiled them into a document on my computer. Some people handed me scraps of paper with their wishes. On the days when I was in the gallery, performing the piece live, I placed a notebook and invited people to write their wishes in a notebook I left out for them. They could also read the dreams and intentions of all the other people who participated.
How did you relate all the different kinds of wishes and intentions into the same type of paintings?
The seed is a universal symbol of potential and hope germinating. While in a meditative state, I carefully tore all the paper into the correct sizes and painted all these small seeds. At first, I did not even know what the seeds I was compelled to make were for. I started arranging them in formations and pinning them to the wall. Then, because of my interest in the power of the mind and of group intent, the idea came to use them to represent the dreams of others for this project. I needed many more seeds and I spent some time at a Zen meditation center here in California, meditating and spending the day mindfully tearing paper and painting seeds. I believe the state of mind of the artist as she works is palpable in the finished work. It is my intention to give the viewer my very best self. Once I was ready to install the project in the gallery, I brought my boxes of many seeds and selected them for size, color and placement as I went. As I spoke the wish of one person out loud and pinned the seed to the wall, I imbued each seed with that person’s intention. Because each is a symbol, it is fluid and can represent different wishes at different iterations of the project. So, far I have done the project in a museum and two galleries so now each of these little seeds are imbued with the wishes of at least three different people.
How this way of presentation worked, by assisting people to connect with the true essence of their dreams and wishes, as a step to be more clearly create them in reality?
Our thoughts and words have far more power than most of us realize. Many times we believe we are reacting to the world when the world is really responding to what we are projecting through our thoughts and words. For instance, let’s say our friend wants to find a love relationship but she is complaining or fearful there are no good men available, or that she is not worthy or she may be dwelling on unhappy relationships in her past. This is using the precious power of her mind in the opposite direction of what she wants. Now, let us ask her what she truly wants a relationship? What is the essence of her ideal relationship? Is she looking for companionship? security? affection? loyalty? constancy? honesty? support? By focusing on the essence of what she wants rather than the form, she may discover that she has these qualities already in her life. Or they may come to her in another form rather than just one relationship. Or by focusing on these positive qualities rather than the lack of them, she will begin to notice them more when they show up. With this project, I encourage her to focus on the essence of her desire and then I amplify it be speaking it out loud and pinning a seed to the wall for the fulfillment of her dream. So we are both together focusing on her true wish. And others who witness this are also participating. In this way, the project really is much less about the physical presence of the art installation created in the gallery and more about the ideas or intentions behind them.
I want to use this project to help give people back that power – their birthright – to create desired things, situations and feelings in their collaboration with nature. The forces of the universe are waiting to respond to our focus and intention. But often we are sloppy in our thinking because our minds are untrained. We say we want to be happy, but many of our thoughts are unconscious habits of criticizing ourselves, or internal complaints about our neighbors, our government, our family, the weather, the economy, etc. When we train our minds focus on what we truly intend to create we can harness a power that to many may seem like magic but it is truly the natural order of things.
Perhaps we find the dream of our friend for romantic love too frivolous. Right now is a critical point in human history. We know through science that human activities are rapidly changing earth’s climate. These problems can seem so huge and insurmountable to the individual. But I would posit that here, too, we must harness the power of the mind and intention in addition to taking action. When we lose hope, we sink into despair and inactivity. All over the planet people are not waiting for governments to act appropriately, they are taking matters into their own hands, installing solar power, partnering with industry leaders, using citizen science to monitor the earth’s changes, cleaning oceans, making individual life choices that have an impact. If we can use our joint intentions to strongly and steadily envision the future we aspire too, we can open up our individual and collective minds to solutions that are opaque to us when we only focus on the problem.
in the 8th verse of the Tao Te Ching it is written:
One who lives in accordance with nature
Does not go against the way of things.
He moves in harmony with the present moment,
Always knowing the truth of just what to do.
Seed Piece is a humble project designed to highlight in a simple way one of the most powerful forces I know of – human intention. And it is one of the most joyful things I can think of to do – to intend well-being and good for others.