Tag: Nature
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Life is like hills. It is sometimes difficult or sometimes easy, ups and downs like these hills that I drew. Down hill, up hill, changing even in color.
Transitive / Transform
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Joan Ling, INNOVATOR AND ADVOCATE FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA and Ann Lindbeck, ARTIST
Contents of Trunk:
A letter ordering lumber by Pablo Neruda
Accordian landscape
Key to a China trunk
Map of California
Map of China
Architectural drawing
Squirrel Pie
Culver City High School, Grade 11.
It doesn’t matter who you are and where you live, it’s what you make of it.
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Rhino Blues
Man, always satisfying his external passions, has no compassion regarding the sovereignty of our land, devastating, polluting, annihilating. His only urge is to satisfy the emptiness of his soul, feeding it with all sorts of possessions and pleasures, little by little forgetting the search in his spirit for answers.
The fauna and flora die at his feet, dedicating their horns, nails, and bones to unending sexual gluttony. Thousands and thousands of little seahorses, tigers, and rhinoceroses disappear from the planet becoming powder and potions that man will later use to ingest and, as a result, feel manly, virile, or fertile psychologically.
These three blue horns represent nostalgia of the rhinoceros at the feet of man. They are the ghosts that circulate his bed after he, man, has proven his virile fortitude once again.
Grass Roots
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Judy Kleinberg, MAYOR OF PALO ALTO and Sharon Chinen, ARTIST.
The mayor’s interest in growing a healthy community is represented in the roots of this piece. The box is filled with the soil of Palo Alto, laid down as a rich foundation for the small red berries which represent the children of Palo Alto and education…two passions of Mayor Kleinberg. Our roles as women, teachers, caregivers, leaders — the flourishing community of which we are all a part — is finally represented by the blossoming trees that reach out to the world at large.
Fire in the Belly
Mother’s Endless Love
The Childhood
I spent my childhood hiding in yellow rice in the beautiful sun-filled countryside, cheerfully crying out for an egg in a straw mat or discovering shiny shells.
The memories are carefully retained since that distant time.
Conjugation Between Earth and Sky
It is commonly known that in order to survive, blossom and continue the course of nature, it is necessary to intervene with our surrounding habitats. This lid symbolizes the ever lasting sky and its thousands and thousands of living species that are endangered by daily air pollution. The bottom represents our earth, life and death, the moments of glory, agonies of defeat, and on going war and peace.
Between this conjugation, we define sacred love for human beings and nature, our dreams and desires to fulfill a glorious and promising future.
In the end, conjugations of any type: earth and sky, man and nature or man and its kind must be cared for and preserved. The lack of attention to this contributes to the heavy consequences that we face today: the holes in our ozone, the wars and its death toll, last but not least the AIDS epidemic.
Drvo-Tree
Process of creating this wooden box is returned to its beginning. The earth is in the box and the seed of the tree is in that earth. My contribution to fight the international destruction of floral life.
Break Water
Borders are changing lines on our world’s map that demarcate culture, land, time, history, ethnicity. These are intellectual separations, but the older physical lines of division are also lines of connection- the oceans that separate us, join us. Water is the vehicle for life- our food, our bodies, our planet. Women share the experience of our body’s potential to transmit new life. Our female bodies are both the source of our common oppression and transcendence. Break Water recalls the moment that proceeds birth. The image is simultaneously bound and released, evoking change, possibility, destruction, hope. I have included materials from previous works; a Xerox transfer image of a rope sculpture I made across a rotten East River pier in New York City, and two eggs which I collected in Brazil during a women’s collaborative show. These are symbolic “births” of new ideas and images that women artists are collectively making to Break Water and change the marks that divide us.
Damagua
Following Examples: An Exhibition
Because I am a curator and not an artist, I decided to organize a miniature show for Women Beyond Borders. The 10 featured artists were given a dimension of 1-1/4 x 2-3/4 inches and told to make something flat. The visual artists I invited are people whose work, lives and friendships have inspired and informed my life in a meaningful way. This is an extremely personal project and I wish I could have included something by all the others whose creative lives have proven to be exceptional examples to follow.
Barbara Berk
Angie Bray
Karen Brown
Jacqueline Cooper
Eileen Cowin
Kim Cridler
Kathy Haddad
Danielle Imperiale
Sari Roden
Liza Ryan
Flor de Canela
My box is an expression of myself. Now others will know who I really am.
I did not have an original box, but built a bigger one with my husband. All objects and photos are symbolic.
Song From the Earth
My work celebrates the Native American philosophy of centering one’s life in the natural world. This is both a conscious and instinctual commitment. Rather than illustrate this idea, I use materials to suggest our relationship to the earth.
On the brink of the new millennium, let us all be mindful of celebrating and preserving the earth’s gifts. This should be a universal concern.
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Yoriko
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
YORIKO KISHIMOTO, VICE MAYOR, CITY OF PALO ALTO and Jen Schachter, ARTIST.
A photo of Yoriko as a small child with her parents and older brother in Shizuoka, Japan flies from the branch of one of her favorite trees, the maple, signifying her love of gardens. The trail reflects her journey from Japan and her love of travel while the mountain symbolizes her love of hiking and mountains, and her desire to “climb to a high place and see as far as I can”— hence the binoculars.
The central image is her interest in the 4 elements — earth, air, fire and water. Earth is symbolized by a clay container I made (I am a potter) and the water by blue glass that was melted in the clay container.
There are so many aspects of Yoriko’s life that are not included, but through some mysterious mental process, I have focused on these ideas and presented them in this way.
Gaia
I put earth into Pandora’s box, enclosing meaninglessness within. The box, decorated with various symbols and colors signify the contents. The edges and corners are softened.
The enclosure of earth becomes an oxymoron. A small portion inside stands for the universal. The box is a prayer to the larger form from which it was taken.
The pins refer to the sensitivity of a living body that will feel pain by being injured, but will also start to blossom. The GROUND/ SOIL/ EARTH as READY MADE, an allegory of GAIA (earth), the UNIVERSAL MOTHER AND LAST HOPE.
Legends of Tundra
Bird of the Forest
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Eternities
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The Women’s World
Mother Earth
Deep within her there is life.
She is encircled by the web of life.
It is no mistake that earth is a “she”
for all that grows does so because of her.
We are the children of this mother.
We are all connected to the earth and one another
through this mystical experience we call life.
Gift
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El Mundo de Maria Sabina
Deseo Atrapado
House Animals (1986-96)
A box with eleven animals in cellophane envelopes, on each of which its name is written.
Fly (Agnes)
Moth (Monika)
Butterfly (Ilona)
Butterfly (Gertrud)
Fly (Karen)
Bee (Lisa)
Moth (Edith)
Bluebottle Fly (Karl)
Cutter (Isolde)
Spider (Martha)
Beetle (Helmut)
Look at the Mirror
Song Heartfelt
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Nita Song, PRESIDENT/COO OF IW GROUP, ASIAN AMERICAN ADVERTISING AGENCY and Ann Enkoji, ARTIST
The starting point of this sculpture began when I asked Nita about pivotal moments in her life and she began to share the stories that created the themes for the box:
— moving with her family to the US to live in Alabama with her aunt
— pinching a young playmate until he broke her nose with a brick
— taking that injury and wearing it as an emblem of her character
— delivering her first child, weighing in at 10 pounds
— her two children’s artwork
— deepening her family and community relationships, especially with her mother
— and her love of the soil
Clay became the natural connection between my art and Nita’s life when she said: “… soil represents who I am. Soil is fertile, nutrient rich and stimulates growth.”
Fate
FATE — Pine cones in a pine box, enough said.
Emerge: Each Holy Remain
This book/box was produced for the 1999 leg of the Women Beyond Borders show. Its surfaces covered with gesso (support for intricate graphite drawings) and gold leaf, includes a reliquary indicating potential life, death, and emergence into light. The 52-page book pictures detritus from daily living, preserved by attentive drawing and watercolor: seeds, bones, plant tips, shells, buds, nuts, skeletons.
I know that there are lives much tougher than my own, and that I am enormously privileged to luxuriate in the poignant beauty of the commonplace. I hope that we all sometimes have the opportunity to pause and consider, even in the helpless despair of suffering and the frustrating reality of working so hard so often for our own survival; physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional, and that of our loved ones, as well as all sentient beings.
A Cricket
I used to think, in my childhood, if the wonder and beauty of flowers I see is the same as the one my playmate sees. Though I regard their color as ‘yellow’ and so does she, can our ‘yellow’ be the same?
When you see an object, you see not only it itself, but also some experience and memory which you picture to yourself by seeing it. If the brightness you see is different from one I see, and if so, are the views, the climate and the smells you have seen and sensed also different? This work of mine you’re looking at may be different from the way I see it.
But such a difference can make our lives more complicated and richer and reveal who we are.
In the Garden
Outside In
Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
KATE MCISAAC ,1ST LIEUTENANT, U.S. ARMY and Laura Klein, ARTIST
Kate McIsaac just celebrated her 30th birthday in Baqubah, Iraq. She is a 1st Lieutenant in the Army, serving in OIF IV – V at FOB Warhorse as a postal officer. Her unit is from Long Beach, California.
She is also a first-year law student at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa and will either go into criminal law or First Amendment Libel law. Libel law is near and dear to her heart.
Kate also has a degree in Journalism and worked as a journalist for several years.
Fancy
Nature is far more fanciful than me.
Welcome to the Forest of Dreams
I have built a place of healing and repose.
Though small enough to fit in your hand,
it is a place to soothe and comfort the weary sojourner.
May you enter and find your peace.
Enter the forest, its cool green breath,
its embracing boughs, its mystery.
Enter the shadows your spirit longs for,
follow the labyrinth.
Enter the heart of the ancient forest,
wander until the dusk surrounds you.
until you find you have come to a place of rest.
Dream until you have found contentment.
Dream until you have found your own way
home, into the light.
Souvenir From Hawaii
I have covered the surface of this box with pieces of plastic found on a beach in Hawaii in 1993.
On one hand, I saw all this plastic as evidence of the persistence of this detritus of capitalism’s endless appetite for more THINGS; on the other, I was struck by the weathering of these ambiguous fragments as they begin to resemble organic flotsam and jetsam.
The categorizing of things washed up like this becomes more difficult and the beach becomes a shifting archeological site of displaced artifacts (or garbage) driven by the tides. Presumably, eventually these things break down into a kind of synthetic sand.
The Key and the Walnut
Today the box arrived in the morning. What will I put in? Hopefully everything, or even better: The best. Before I start working I’ll make an extra walk through the garden, maybe I’ll be able to think of a more concise way of what I want to do because ‘the best’ is a kind of program, a wish, not an image. In any case, I’ll take the box with me, just like the little key for the upper garden. This garden begins behind the very romantic door that we once discovered hidden under a thick layer of ivy. Then we also discovered cannonballs made out of stone, old fashioned roses, wild orchids and rare lilies. All of which we probably owe to the nuns who had owned this garden. There also is an old, old walnut tree. I think of the history of the garden first owned by knights and later by the nuns. Since when do gardens exist in general? Looking at this carefully it seems that the history of gardens is very old as the history of mankind. Opening the door, I am thinking of PARADISE, but my small, ordinary key brings me back into reality. It cannot be compared to the masterpieces that we usually see on old pictures in the hands of St. Peter. I feel a little sorry looking down at my machine-made product. But, on the other hand, it is important to know what a key can do, not what it looks like.
Canadian Nest
Volcanicas
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Top: the 3 jewels (the Buddha, the Dharma (teachings) and the Sangha (spiritual community)
Color: yellow for the Lama’s robes
Images: lotus flower, 3 jewels with Bon swastika (Bon was the religion of Tibet before Buddhism), fish, vase with flowers
Inside the Box: barley
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Blue skies, sun rises, sun sets.
Very quickly, you leave us
Like a bow leaving it’s arrow.
We stay. It’s good to stay.
Our future is good.
Top: flower
Images: Knot of eternity, eight-petaled flower, Bon swastika, 3 jewels (the Buddha, the Dharma (teachings) and the Sangha (spiritual community), sun, moon, flowers
Inside the Box: Kata (white scarf used as offering to Lamas or enlightened people)
Text: World Peace
Blue sky, sun rises, sun sets.
Very quickly, you leave us
Like a bow leaving it’s arrow.
We stay. It’s good to stay.
Our future is good.
A Womb of One’s Own
Woman Thinking Outside the Box
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Nurture
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My love for boxes goes way back in time…It was triggered in me as a child when I was enchanted by all the silken colors, embroidery and sweets that came out of my grandmother’s old wooden box. And at that time, we lived in a yet bigger stone box that reeked of lemon and jasmine flowers. The color of its cover was interchangeable, ranging between bright sky blue to a shade of azure and it seemed as if it were decorated with stars. But there was always someone who broke my boxes that contained me and I them…
Desert Water
Emergence
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The flower makes me happy and excited. I feel like offering it to the person I love.
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Personal Dandelion Patch
Ripened Fruit
“This world is a tree to which we cling–
we, the half-ripe fruit upon it.
The immature fruit clings tight to the branch
because, not yet ripe, it’s unfit for the palace.
When fruits become ripe, sweet, and juicy,
then, biting their lips, they loosen their hold.
When the mouth has been sweetened by felicity,
the kingdom of the world loses its appeal.
To be tightly attached to the world is immaturity;
as long as you’re an embryo,
blood-sipping is your interest.”
– Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
A fascination with seeds, seed pods, fruit of both tree and vine accompanied my own struggle with fertility. What appeared to be fallow in my life gradually evolved into a period of regeneration and rebirth. At present, these familiar forms reflect the renewal of my work and symbolize the opaque and marvelous mystery of the human life.
This box is lovingly dedicated to Mary Interlandi: May 20, 1983 – February 10, 2003
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The Earth moves me
The branches protect me
And her beauty fills my soul
Caged Wildlife
My box has to do with the exploitation by containment or denial of the wild splendor of nature and of woman.
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Children Beyond Borders
Age 18
Lauren has always enjoyed art and appreciates the enrichment it brings to her life. She plans to continue making art.
VSA arts is an International organization that creates learning opportunities through the arts for people with disabilities.
Moon and Sun
The Color of Life
We never know that our color of life is so rich and various.
You should feel it and live with them.
If you don’t feel it you would be lost.
Like many Mongols, she is longing for
flowers, since there are no flowers in Mongolia.
-Vesna Wallace, Religious Studies – UCSB
Family Tree
The Poppy Field
My nickname is “Poppy”. I go to school at Tanglin. I was born in Singapore. My friends come from different places. I have two brothers but no sisters. I go to England every summer holiday. Whenever I go to England to see my Granny and Opa, I see poppy fields. I love them and so I decided to make a sculpture of a poppy field. It reminds me of my holidays. I put airplane wings on my sculpture because we fly to England to see the poppies. I love living in Singapore but I miss seeing the poppy fields. Every year they sell fake poppies at Tanglin. It is on the day the great war finished. Opa was born when the war finished.
Garden Carriage
Children Beyond Borders. VSA Arts.
Age 10.
The box reflects me because it’s quiet, pretty, and full of flowers.
Watersheds
Coca-Cola Box Project
We were intrigued by the boundary aspect of this Women beyond borders box project. Our thoughts turned to physical boundaries, specifically those found in Santa Barbara. By looking at a map, you can see the natural boundaries that are created by watersheds in our area. A watershed is an elevation, a divide, a drainage basin that separates one river system from another, and ultimately drains to a watercourse or body of water. Defining Santa Barbara by its watersheds would change our existing boundaries.
At this point in time, watershed education is important. There are vital connections between our watershed resources, human activity and water quality. Watershed restoration improves water quality, creeks, wetlands and the ocean.
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Top: the 3 jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma (teaching) and the Sangha (spiritual community)
Colors: monastery
Images: goldfish, land, mountains, river, clouds; an island surrounded by water; fruit
Inside the box: barley, primary ingredient of Tsampa, a basic Tibetan food
The Birth
Mimo
Now, we humankind encounter a life crisis that we have never met before. This crisis may have been brought upon by the competition for “superiority” and “profit” for such things which each person belongs to, as the nation, peoples and sex…etc. I wonder how we can surmount this serious condition? Can we evade the collapse and find out the light of hope in the twenty-first century?
A primitive man held awe and respect to the universe and nature. We should bring them to life intensely and lower our head and pray sincerely to them. The ancients prayed for the approach to the sacred thing through praying. We should also learn a lesson from their wisdom.
Now each of us must be in immediate need of breaking our little shell of ego and appearing as our universal or spiritual soul which sleeps undeveloped in deep layers.
Painting, building, singing and dancing…these acts are also a prayer itself, I believe.
Make a Rhythm Called Silence Next to Transfiguration
Soundless loud voice
Silent move
If no sound is the loudest noise which someone gives,
Silence is an allegory only for some.
Organisms bring silence, rhythm and perfection. The shape of the organism and the balance of energy is given out by the organism through me, naturally.
Why is the shape made by nature so fluent in spite of taciturnity? It may be a wrong thing to deform a complete thing by making over it as a work. But I think that meeting the “thing” is going to be much wider by adding my power and moving the space.
A space has energy, resonates with energy from objects, makes a noise and rhythm, hops, bumps, and bursts open. The organisms soundlessly cross between their energy and ours.
To embody “the voice” is my hope, and it is pleasant to have a relationship with it through my work.
Life
Box-Bird and Branch
The cosmos of my work is in a forest. Flights of birds grow on silent trees and huge seeds take different positions. The leaf is the poetic unit which allows the magic passage from the world of plants to the one of animals and from there to the geophysical world.
When I begin my work, I spend a lot of time minutely observing the physical world. Then this state of vigilance is changed through a more distant positioning in which the object I observe is the parallel motion of my creative process to that of nature.
Is there an ecology of conceptual and creative phenomena? I often tend to incorporate ecological concerns by contrasting elements (birds on trees without foliage, seeds with burning interiors) to suggest the interplay of human interventions on natural processes.
