All Together Now, acrylic on panel, 60 x 60 in (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Deep, heartfelt thanks to @artconsultingservices for selecting this work as part of your Kaiser Permanente 3710 Broadway Oakland California project! What an honor and pleasure to get this baby out of the studio and into the public eye! It’s such a joyful celebration for me when I get to share my work in public spaces.
I finally got to go see it in person! It has been in it’s new home since April 2022, over a year now!
When I painted “All Together Now” I was thinking about how we are all interconnected. Not just all humans but every living being on the planet, animals, plants, insects, even the rocks and mountains. And how helpful it is to hold this in our hearts during such challenging times for humanity. Our prayers go out to those who suffer, those who hunger, those experiencing prejudice, violence, displacement. May this image I painted help us to hold this image vision in our hearts of our commonality so that we may move into a world of more harmony understanding and compassion for all. Peace, solace, & well-being to all those reading this and all who see the piece in person. 🙏🤍🕊️ Special thanks for my pal Julie for photographing me with the piece. and deep gratitude to Donna Enad Napper who initiated this project.
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.
Member Preview: Thursday, May 30, 6:00-7:00 pm (for members and exhibiting artists) Opening Reception: Saturday, June 1, 6:00-8:00 pm Family Art Day: Sunday, June 2, 1:00-3:00 pm
Arts Benicia, 991 Tyler Street, Suite 114, Benicia, California 94510
This exhibition and associated public events seek to capture and explore the ways that birds influence our understanding of our place in the world. To understand ourselves and our surroundings, humans think in metaphor and view the world through an imagined lens. As the enchanted realm of birds provides a natural metaphor for the innate desires and aspirations of human existence, so too does it inspire the creation of art. The sheer scale of birds in nature, found in every earthly domain no matter how inhospitable, and their remarkable mechanisms of adaptation to land, air, and sea, contribute to our fascination.
I’ll be presenting recent meditative paintings at The Fourth Wall in Oakland, California in the downtown Oakland arts district just off of Telegraph Avenue. Simultaneously, artist Marlene Angeja will be showing her abstract works in an exhibition entitled “This Storm is Called Progress.”
You Are My Heaven May 11th – July 6th, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 22 2:00 – 4:00 pm. I will be there and hope to see you! First Friday receptions: Friday, June 7 & Friday July 5 6:00 – 9:00 pm.
The Fourth Wall, 473 25th St. Oakland, CA 94612 Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 1- 5 pm and 1st Fridays, 6 – 9 pm, or by appointment by contacting 4thwallart@gmail.com
Because this work will be in the hallway at 473 25th Street, it will be also be viewable during non-gallery hours. You can check the hours for Slate Contemporary also in the same building for an idea of when the building might be open. All works will be for sale. Price list available here. Contact 4thwallart@gmail.com to inquire about purchasing.
3 Painting Commission from University of California, San Francisco Precision Cancer Medical Building
I’m pleased to announce that my three paintings, Peace Be With You, The Beauty Within and New, Blue commissioned for the Precision Cancer Medicine Building at University of California San Francisco’s Mission Bay Medical Center have been installed and are on view to the public.
I’m grateful to Donna Napper and Chandra Cerrito of Chandra Cerrito Art Advisors who sourced and commissioned all the work for this state of the art cancer care center. Interestingly, this commission came in at a critical and synchronistic time in my own life. Initially they reached out to me exactly two weeks after my mom was diagnosed with cancer and exactly two weeks before she passed. So this commission had special significance for me and it is a true honor to have my work exhibited in this facility and it is my deepest wish that it supports others during a challenging time.
