“All our knowledge is the offspring of our Perception.”--Leonardo da Vinci, “Thoughts on Art and Life”

SEEINGBILL RAMAGE

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SEEINGCopyright © 2011 by Bill Ramage

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ISBN Number: 978-1-60571-105-8

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Cover: Detail from Empirical Study III

TABLE OF CONTENTSPROLOGUE

PART ONE – THE EMPIRICALS

1) Empirical Study I

2) Empirical Study II

3) Empirical Study III

4) Empirical Study IV

PART TWO – THE CENTRIPETAL

1) The Studio Drawings

2) The Installations

a) Alternative Perceptions

b) The VCU Piece

c) The Bard Piece

d) The Brattleboro Museum Piece: The Mental Temple

3) Considering Time: Using Musical Form

a) The OSU Piece: Sonata Form

b) The University of Akron Piece: Bruckner’s Ninth

c) The WCMA Piece: Mozart’s Sonata in A Major

4) Another Consideration: Sight, Thought, and Disposition

a) The Fleming Museum Piece: Bruckner’s Eighth

5) Considering Belief Systems

a) The Hood Museum Piece: Petrarch’s Threshold

b) The No. B.I.A.S. Piece: The Light Hole

c) The Portals and Thresholds

PART THREE – THE NEURALCHEMIST

1) The Circle in the Square: A Two-Tiered Metaphor

2) The Drawings

3) The Dynamisms # 2 through #8

4) The Dynamis: The Spiritlike Vital Force

a) Dynamis Triptychs I and II

b) The Apollonian Triptych

5) The Self-Portraits: The Neuralchemist from the Inside

6) The Venus of Willendorf: A Series of Iconic Drawings

7) A Postscript

a) Question #1: What Is Real?

b) Question #2: Male Transcendence?

PART FOUR – WHAT WE SEE

PART FIVE – CONCLUSION

1) A Recapitulation

2) Epilogue: “A Prospective Brain”

PROLOGUEIn the truest sense of the word, artist might not be apt. I would go so

far as to say, I mostly use art because it is my first language and the medium most suitable to my designated task. If the truth were to be known, I consider myself to be as much a theorist and a soothsayer as a visual artist.

I have always been intrigued and curious about seeing, but this intensified thirty years ago while I was working on the Empirical Studies. It was as though an almost tangible presence within me made the request that I focus my curiosity about seeing on trying to find another way to envision the Lebenswelt (life world).

For the last thirty years my efforts have been an evolving response to this request. Its three phases, the Empiricals (the large head drawings), the Centripetals (the spatial drawings in situ), and the Neuralchemist (the metaphorical drawings in search of a mental mechanism that sees), is a single effort that needs to be considered as a whole. The whole of this thing is all about its purpose, which is to challenge the very limited way we visually interpret and image the life around us. And with this thing, the message is the medium. Any one piece is not the art that it might appear to be; in fact, it is really nothing without the context of its purpose. For any part of this effort to be considered without regard to the request to reenvision the Lebenswelt would be like the old story of the Wall Street Journal covering the crucifixion and reporting on the profitability of the concession stand near Golgotha. It misses the significance of the event.

PART ONE – THE EMPIRICALS

“My perception is itself a thinking, and my thinking is perceiving.”

--Goethe

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THE EMPIRICALS

This alchemical event where light is turned into thought and the mind extends beyond the body to radiate consciousness out into the world is incredible to think about. But that is what seeing is. Although seeing happens readily and can function without much conscious thought, when you seriously consider the sensation of sight, it becomes an experience that is truly miraculous.

Going back to my student years in the 1960s, I primarily worked from life, making observations and then analyzing and synthesizing that process, both two-dimensionally (drawing) and three-dimensionally (sculpture). The objects produced were manifestations of the observations. It was not just about the product, but it was always about the process—the seeing and what could be gleaned from that activity.

Around 1977, I realized that most of what I had learned about translating sight two-dimensionally and what I could visually extrapolate three-dimensionally were two separate and often competing and/or contradictory experiences. I could draw a very convincing two-dimensional space, but this would break down when I tried to connect the spatial lines as I saw them three-dimensionally.

One good example of this would be to have two vertical parallel lines that are about fifteen feet high and three feet apart. There are two ways to consider these lines. The first would be to look at each line in time and space. If you were to stand back about fifteen feet from those lines and turn to face the left line straight on, you would see a straight up-and-down line. And then, if you were to take the time to turn to your right and consider the right line, you would find the same thing. So spatially you would see two straight up and down, parallel, vertical lines. But then, still standing fifteen feet from those lines, if you were visually to measure the widths between these lines from that position, the visual width at the top of the vertical lines would appear narrower than the visual width at eye level. So spatially, you have two vertical lines that are parallel, and two-dimensionally you have varying widths between these two vertical lines. That is to say, you have parallel lines with varying widths. If

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you were drawing this empirically, you would have to choose one or the other of these two perceptions. This is a two- and three-dimensional contradiction. You cannot have it both ways.

The photograph on the left is a manipulated image in which the vertical columns were made to appear straight up and down to match, as Ms. Stokes puts it, the way you really see. And straight up-and-down columns is the way you would experience this cathedral. In an actual space, you would not see tilted columns. The other is the original photograph. The angled perspective of the vertical columns is the product of a two-dimensional medium.

After a couple of years and quite a few failed attempts to address this conundrum, I decided to simply do what I have always done . . . to work empirically, to look at three-dimensional objects and make careful two-dimensional observations. New to my approach was to aggressively suspend everything I knew about seeing and make the three-dimensional observations without any preconceived ideas or structures or any other learned seeing skills, and then to respond to these observations with an unbiased integrity that would be totally mindful of the process at every step of the way.

After a good deal of consideration, I concluded that heads would be the best subject for the activity of monitoring the empirical process, because of their subtle complexity. The thought was that the format was simple and

Vézeley Abby (Basilique Ste-Madeleine), photographs by Maggie Stokes

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universal: an ovoid volume with two ears, two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Yet the subject has enough physical and visual variables that almost seven billion people can appear recognizably different from each other. Besides, it is a subject we believe we know well, because we see faces everywhere every day. Therefore, I thought drawing heads was the perfect medium to address the issue of preconceived beliefs about what we see.

The process was slow to develop. I made a series of about twenty small drawings (twenty-two inches by twenty-eight inches) of friends with which I tried to wean myself from the almost reflexive precepts I knew about seeing. Nevertheless, these drawings were not that successful. All those years of learning how to structure perception was both consciously and unconsciously ingrained deep in my mind.

One thing that did happen was with all that concentration, I was seeing more information than could fit on a twenty-two-inch by twenty-eight-inch piece of paper. The solution was to get a larger piece of paper (a thirty-six-inch roll) and with this I drew my friend Mark. This three-foot by six-foot drawing took more than a hundred hours to complete.

That drawing taught me three things. First, I was still dealing with the bias of all I knew about seeing. Although the observations were becoming more competent and astute, I could tell the underlying structure of the head was a

Proto-empirical, Susan, 22 x 28 in., pencil on paper, 1977

Proto-empirical, Mark, 3 x 6 ft., pencil on paper,

1977

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learned structure. The second was that I was still seeing more than I could fit on that three-foot by six-foot piece of paper. Also, more than a hundred hours was too much to ask of anyone. I needed to be my own subject.

In order to work from my own head, I needed to reconcile using a mirror. Was the reflected image on the flat surface of a mirror a three-dimensional object? I concluded that to look at an object that reflected light and was not a graphic image was three-dimensional.

My first attempt was a three-foot by six-foot drawing. Intuitively, I still felt as though most of my decisions were responses acquired by training, as opposed to what could be seen. It seemed that the size of the drawing was part of the problem. The scale was wrong. A three-foot by six-foot piece of paper did not adequately accommodate all that could be seen, and the entire process was conceptually constricted by the format. So, I bought a roll of paper that was sixty-two inches wide and started a series of four drawings. As it turned out, the scale facilitated even more information and it allowed me to focus even more intensely. This required me to make even more accurate observations, free of assumptions and constructs.

Each of the four drawings took about a year (over one thousand hours) of very intense and careful seeing. While working on these drawings, I knew I was searching for

something: for some explanation of the two- and three-dimensional disparity of understanding. But there was no specific idea as to what to expect. This process resembled a type of scientific research. I would experiment with a thought as to what was operative when making observations, and then monitor where it would lead the empirical activity. I called the drawings Empirical Studies.

Proto-empirical, Bill, 3 x 6 ft., pencil on paper, 1977

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EMPIRICAL STUDY I

The first Empirical Study tried to void out all the things known about the structure involved in seeing a head. To address this, I approached the structure of the head unconventionally. Just about anyone who was ever

Empirical Study I, 5 x 8 ft., pencil on paper, 1978

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taught to draw a head learns to start the same way: an oval with an elliptical line that indicates the center of the head’s symmetry and a perpendicular elliptical line, about halfway down, to indicate the placement of the eyes. However, for this drawing, I started with the left nostril. I worked for days drawing it as accurately as I could and by doing so, I knew the depiction of this nostril would determine the size and placement of the head and all its features on the paper. When drawing an object, there are a lot of learned principles about proportions and placement, shapes and volumes, and these principles are very specific and seemingly helpful. But they prescribe the seeing process to the point where you cannot see without them; your perceptual thinking is imbued with this information and pretty much directs all the decisions you make about what is being seen. It took all my concentration to try to see without them. It was like trying to read music without a staff. But the result was worth the effort. I was pleased and surprised by the way the image came together. With this unconventional approach, each feature had its own axis in relation to each other. I found this to be an interesting way to understand the visual structure of a head.

Meanwhile, on another front and unrelated to the structure, there were dozens of other variables that had to be taken into consideration. For instance, the temperature of the studio affected the color and texture of the skin; the constantly changing ambient light affected the tones on the head. With this drawing came the awareness that there were many more considerations to be made than I had ever imagined. That realization alone made the drawing process intensely engaging.

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Empirical Study II, 5 x 8 ft., pencil on paper, 1979

EMPIRICAL STUDY II

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After becoming aware of the myriad of variables that were presented by the first drawing, I came to the second Empirical Study more knowledgeable about how to go about it. I thought the only way to address this was to be absolutely and unflinchingly honest, as well as careful about every single observation and its synthesis. To scrutinize and analyze anything and everything that came to mind while working on this drawing, I kept copious notes and made many didactic drawings about what I was seeing.

To maintain focus and concentration, I had to slow down my metabolism. I had to invent mechanisms and rituals to avoid slipping into the familiar comfort zone provided by the known structure that had always been at the core of my perception. On February 2, 1979, I wrote: “The problem is to make the processing and the mind responsive rather than directive, susceptible rather than structured, open to the possibility of perception rather than blurred by intention.”

It was during this drawing that I became aware of the function of the fovea (a rodless area of the retina affording acute vision) and its role in the act of perception. On February 6, 1979, I wrote: “The peripheral is always beyond or around what is focused. Consequently, it is much more dependent on language and constructs. Can the un-languaged foveal activity function apart from the peripheral’s constructs?” And on April 26, 1980, I made these notes: “The mechanics of the eye demand a constantly changing and moving focal point. This mechanism, the fovea, requires purpose to engage it, find its range, and cause its movement. The purpose is not the seeing. So it would appear that some kind of thinking, and all that implies, intrudes on perception both before and after the act of seeing.”

Another thing that became obvious with the awareness of the fovea was that my left eye is profoundly dominant. I would say it manages about eighty-five percent of the seeing. And about eighty-five percent of what was seen and synthesized in this drawing passed through this eye. Only the area around the right eye was processed through that eye. The structure of this drawing was the product of two different perceptual axes, each distinct from the other. Consequently, to draw the head I had to compensate for these two perceptual origins. As hard as I tried to be unflinchingly honest about the seeing, I had to “lie” to present a coherent image.

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Didactic II, 8 ½ x 11 in., photocopy, 1979

This didactic tried to delineate the areas seen by the left and right eyes. The radials from the left eye covers about eighty-five percent of what is

seen by that eye and the right eye sees the much smaller area depicted by the smaller radials extending from that eye. There is a narrow

triangle extending from the left eye to the lower right-hand corner of the drawing. The area of the head in this triangle had to be distorted in order to compensate for the two different perceptual

axes. It is fabrication.

It was becoming apparent that it was an extremely difficult, if not impossible task to be objective about how I synthesized the perception. Conceptually, physiologically, and temperamentally (in terms of my ability to concentrate and maintain the stamina required to stay focused), I could not separate myself from the decisions needed for the perception that was taking place. On February 24, 1979, I came to the following realization: “The more specific I try to base the decision I have to make, the more intense I look at the subject, the more intense the perception, the more each unit becomes finite and isolated. This proliferation of tiny disconnected units of information forces an even more subjective, nonspecific decision/perception that causes an intrinsic abstraction based on extrinsic information.”

This drawing failed to be absolutely and unflinchingly honest. That intention was compromised by the demands of the drawing.

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EMPIRICAL STUDY III

Empirical Study III, 5 x 9 ft., pencil on paper, 1980

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As I began the third Empirical Study, I thought if only I could have more control over some of the variables, then maybe there could be more perceptual objectivity. So I made a special effort to control the light I would be working with by blocking out all the daylight from the studio. To avoid the problem of the dual axes of the right and left eyes, I would use only my left eye, literally turning the right eye off. But most of all, I was determined to step up the diligence with which I would monitor the process. “The anxiety level is a very significant part of this drawing,” I wrote on July 3, 1980. “The quality and integrity of each observation, decision, and execution has to be monitored with an intensity that is unnerving. But it is this crazy watching of the activity: this very internal, singularly personal observing of the thinking that makes this process worth the effort.”

This time it was significantly different because I was using only the left eye. For the third time I approached the structure of the head by starting with the left nostril. The size and anticipated placement of the head and its features needed a completely different approach. It ceased to be a perceptual understanding of the head that needed restructuring. It was the seeing itself.

And then there was the light. Even in the controlled light environment, the variables were out of control. In order to understand what was going on, I borrowed a photometer to measure the light intensity on the head. Taking readings from the brightest and the darkest parts of the head, I measured the dark-light ratios during different times of the day. The dark-light ratios kept changing as the light progressed from day to night, and I found the contrast was three or four times greater at night than during the day. And apart from the dark-light ratios, I found that when I would focus on a small section (about an inch square) of the head, I would actually see shapes morph into different shapes as the left eye tried to stabilize the experience of the light. Between the restructuring of the seeing, dealing with the variables of the light and the morphing shapes, and all the other considerations that were part of the process, I was completely overwhelmed.

What I was experiencing was the total dissolution of everything I knew about seeing. I was seeing things I had probably always seen without any awareness that I had been seeing them. For the first time in my life I was consciously experiencing something completely new and different. It was an intense and moving experience, and my professional life has not been the same since. It was a perception where everything was in flux and there was not a fixed visual certainty. It became a reasonable possibility that the assumption of a fixed visual certainty was just a construct, something we make up: a useful way to organize visual information. It was not real.

To have experienced this was both a blessing and a curse. My intrinsic understanding of just about everything has been affected. Seeing is the primary

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access to most everything we believe we know in our empirical culture. So, without a fixed visual certainty all the other constructs that have grounded almost every aspect

of life are in question—a question that was both exciting and disquieting.

In this didactic there is the object (head) and the mirrored image with the orthogonals radiating from the left eye of the object to seven points on the reflected image. The relative positions of these points when projected onto the drawing are determined by where they pass through the circle around the head. As the orthogonals pass through the circle, they are deflected to a flat surface, which is the drawing. Originally this drawing was simply to explain the perceptual falloff (the fish-eye appearance) of the drawn image. But it ended up being much more significant than that.

Explaining the restructuring of seeing required a didactic with a view from above the head, so I could draw the orthogonals (the perspective lines that radiate from a vanishing

point) radiating from the left eye. From this didactic came three profound realizations. One: the perceptual orthogonals could radiate from the eye, putting the vanishing point in the mind and behind the eyes and not on some distant horizon line. Two: the fish-eye distortion of the head was the result of the lengths of the orthogonals radiating from the left eye; the longer the orthogonals, the more the structure of the head would diminish. The perspectival falloff was due to the fact the space was expanding from the eye. Three: the two-dimensional representation was determined on the circle around the head. It was two-dimensional because the circumference was always equidistant from the eye. (Equidistance is important because variable lengths would indicate a space that is not two-dimensional.) Also, the projected orthogonals are always perpendicular to the circle. This little didactic initiated the ideas that were to become the Centripetal.

Didactic III, 8 ½ x 19 ½ in., photocopy collage, 1980

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Empirical Study IV,5 x 10 ft., pencil on paper, 1981

EMPIRICAL STUDY IV

The fourth and last Empirical Study was another attempt to be more objective and truthful about the act of perception. I was concerned about the distortion of the third drawing and I thought that just using one eye might have been a contrivance. So I decided to draw the left side of the head using the left eye and drawing the right side using the right eye. Another concern was hair. It seemed drawing hair was a technique that had nothing to do with seeing. For the most part it was made up, a distraction that had more to do with drawing than perception. So, I eliminated all the hair: no eyebrow or eyelashes, and the hair was just a dark mass.

Two things happened while working on this drawing. First, it seemed that the purpose of

this drawing was not that substantial, and there was not that much to be gleaned from the process. However, I did find out that my left eye (the dominant eye) was no less than five times more capable of seeing forms, tones, and values. My right eye, by comparison, saw things as flat and linear. Second, I was really preoccupied by the potential of the didactic from Empirical Study III. Intuitively, I knew that I had happened upon something that I still believe is very significant. So halfway through Empirical Study IV, I realized that there was no need to continue. I needed to focus all my attention on the potential presented by the didactic of Empirical Study III. This led to the drawings and installations known as the Centripetal.

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PART TWO – THE CENTRIPETAL

“Perceiving is at once outside and at the center of thinking, and thinking, likewise, passes through the heart of seeing

and surrounds it.”--Goethe

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THE CENTRIPETALOn March 25, 1980, I wrote: “Seeing is locked into a single understanding in

a fixed position (a vanishing point), which is strange, because there is the potential latitude of tens of thousands of understandings if empiricism were subjective.”

This is the place in the story that I make the outrageous claim that I have provided a more vital perceptual system that turns linear perspective inside out. Although the iconoclasm of such a claim is disconcerting, in fact that’s exactly what centripetal perspective does.

When we engage in the act of seeing there are two functions of that activity occuring simultaneously and symbiotically: the peripheral vision that involves your entire field of vision and the foveal vision, which is the very small (about the size of a pea at arm’s length) part of your perception that is in focus. For the most part, we are not aware of this duel-synchronized function of seeing. Most people don’t know there is a fovea that is critical in creating a conscious perception.

Linear perspective is a system that gives coherence and form to the peripheral field of vision, which is otherwise beyond and around what is focused. This structured coherence and form causes the periphery to be an incredibly effective conduit; but essentially that’s all that it is, a venue for the fovia. I contend that as incredible as this structured field of vision is, it’s far from being a perception in and of itself. Linear perspective, as the primary means of synthesizing a perception, objectifies and consequently over-simplifies what is seen. The word objectify in this instance has a double meaning. First it gives the peripheral measurable dimensions – like an “object.” And secondly it turns that object-like field of vision into something that is objectively, as opposed to subjectively, experienced. It puts most of the activity and understanding of what is being seen outside of the perceiver. The structure of linear perspective primarily places the determination of a perception on a far away vanishing point radiating from a distant horizon.

The centripetal is a system that tries to articulate and understand the foveal vision. The foveal is a perception that originates in the mind, putting the vanishing point behind the eyes of the perceiver and then projecting that mind out into what becomes a visual world. With our prevailing linear perspectival paradigm we are unaware that this pea-sized ball of focused perception is always moving rapidly back and forth, up and down, in and out, and all around the conduit of the structured peripheral field of vision. It’s the function of the fovea to constantly connect, synthesize, stitch together, and cause what is experienced as a conscious perception.

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While these two systems (linear perspective and the centripetal) are symbiotically connected, I believe the centripetal should be considered the primary source of how we visually experience the world.

The word centripetal means to move towards the center and this system moves the focus to the center of every perception; that is, in the mind of the observer, where seeing, a living thought experience, really ought to be.

From 1981 to 1996, I produced twenty-five centripetal installations and each one was an experiment probing the idea that the perceptual perspectival orthogonals radiate from the viewer and not from some external faraway horizon line.

The early experimental installations provided a system that compares to linear perspective as follows:

CENTRIPETAL PERSPECTIVE LINEAR PERSPECTIVE

* the orthogonals radiate from the viewer

* the orthogonals radiate from an external source

* the view is from the mind to the horizon

* the view is from the horizon to the mind

* an active perception in which the observer’s sight is projected from the mind

* a passive perception in which the observer’s sight is received from a vanishing point

* primarily describes a fl uid, expanding space that is projected out to the horizon

* primarily describes physical objects and their placement in a fi xed two-dimensional space, projected from the horizon

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CENTRIPETAL PERSPECTIVE LINEAR PERSPECTIVE

* objects appear to diminish spatially in size from the viewer because they progressively occupy a smaller percentage of the expanding space projected from the viewer

* objects appear to diminish spatially in size because they are projected from a distant vanishing point

* needs an actual space to be realized * can only be realized two-dimensionally

* is a perception that involves the dynamic fl ux of time

* is a perception that is frozen in time

* is a perception in which space is kinetic

* is a perception in which space is static

* seeing as an expression of the viewer’s life experiences* is a perception in which the authority that determines what is being seen is in the mind of the perceiver

* seeing as a description of the space apart from the viewer* is a perception in which the authority for what is seen is deferred to the consensus that provides the distant vanishing point

The didactic from Empirical Study III opened up a completely different inquiry that needed something other than the head studies as a venue for consideration. An interior space, like a room, with its conceptually accessible geometry of square and rectangular walls (ceilings and floors), right angles, and perpendicular planes became the most useful means to explore the concepts generated from that didactic. The geometry of this conceptually accessible space also facilitates the use of geometry in calculating the effects caused by the different lengths of orthogonals in an expanding space. This means I could describe mathematically the perspectival falloff of a wall by the measured lengths of its orthogonals.

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Studio Didactic, 15 x 33 in., pencil on grid tracing paper, 1981

Didactic III, 8 ½ x 19 ½ in., photocopy collage, 1980

At first, the notion of an expanding space was mostly an intuitive sense that there was another way to think about our visual experience of space.

The thought was: if I could do it with faces, I could do it with spaces. So I made a corresponding spatial didactic describing the walls in the studio, as if they were being seen as a projection from the viewer.

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THE STUDIO DRAWINGS

I followed this with the task of drawing the studio with the same scrutinized acumen as in the Empirical Studies, carefully making observations without any acquired constructs about how to see an interior space. (In this drawing, you can see the abandoned Empirical Study IV.)

To approach this drawing, I put a string that was level with the height of my eyes (sixty-five inches from the floor) all around the studio. Every decision and observation for this drawing was made in relationship to this string, an approach comparable to starting with the left nostril in the Empirical Studies.

That string around the studio can be seen as a straight, uninterrupted line in every direction, with no discernable information in and of itself about the lines and planes that could describe that interior space. That line was a circle around me. Just as it was with the didactic from Empirical Study III, I quickly realized that all the seeing that occurred while working on this studio drawing was seen through that circle. I then drew a circle on the floor, and that circle and the eye level “circle” became visually and two-dimensionally parallel. This presented a circular/cylindrical visual plane that surrounded me. Because all the orthogonals to that plane were the same radii, it was really two-dimensional.

Studio Drawing I, 3 x 7 ft., pencil on paper, 1981

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Studio Drawing II, 3 x 7 ft., pencil on paper, 1981

I did a second drawing of the studio, for which I stretched four strings across the space of the studio, in order to see what would happen to these lines and the space they occupied. Would they be observed as though they were on that circular/cylindrical two-dimensional plane?

I didn’t glean much about the string lines themselves. But later while looking at the finished drawing, I realized that those spatial lines were actually drawn across the drawn walls and ceiling in that drawing of the studio. Then it occurred to me that if those lines were drawn on actual walls (walls that were mathematically plotted to compensate for the expanding space), the four drawn string lines would appear to be spatially strung across that three-dimensional space. It would be as if the actual strings were stretched across the studio. The seed for the centripetal installations had been planted.

The issue was to make a drawing as if it were on a circular plane around an observer and then inscribe that drawing on the actual walls in a three-dimensional space, thus forming a two-dimensional drawing on a three-dimensional space.

I was beginning to understand the two-dimensional/three-dimensional conundrum that initiated this entire dialogue.

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THE INSTALLATIONSAlternative Perceptions

Working with dimensional walls and actual physical spaces was the ideal venue to develop an understanding of the three core ideas about an alternative perception initiated by that didactic from Empirical Study III: (1) that the vanishing point is behind the eyes and in the mind that sees, (2) that the perspectival orthogonals radiate from the viewer and expand out from there, and (3) that a two-dimensional translation of that space occurs on a circle or cylindrical plane (with constant radii) around the viewer.

Over the course of the fifteen years that I worked with the centripetal installations, those ideas evolved from a zealous exploration of an alternative perception, to fairly elaborate visual events that were more about the viewer and the mind from which the perception originated.

The initial thing I did was to make a couple of trial installations that were not public, to see what they looked like and to figure out the math that was needed to apply the centripetal concept to an actual space. These early installations were a matter of trying to figure out how to construct a centripetal installation, and then to determine what this alternative understanding of a perceptual space might mean, and finally to develop the argument making this alternative perspective worthy of consideration.

The VCU Piece

The first public installation was executed in 1982 in the Anderson Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University in conjunction with a group show that was entitled “Aspects of Perception.”

Virginia Commonwealth University Piece, black tape in situ, 1982

This piece was nothing more than three drawn parallel lines. This was done by mathematically expanding and contracting the width of the space between the drawn lines by mathematically compensating for the expansion and contraction of the actual space from a designated spot in the gallery.

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Although these projected parallel lines were not perfect (the math was not totally resolved), the accomplishment was important to me because these lines would become a fundamental component in all subsequent installations. They were the horizontal lines of a grid that would be experienced visually as two-dimensional circular/cylindrical planes around the observer, even though they were drawn on two or more walls in a room. This grid became the basic armature on which to build, develop, and come to terms with the concept of centripetal perspective.

The Bard Piece

The Bard Piece, colored tape in situ, 1982

The Bard Piece (executed in 1982 in the Edith C. Blum Art Institute at Bard College) was my first attempt using this cylindrical grid. The purpose of this piece was to see what would happen to a few diagonal lines passing through that grid (like the strings in the second studio drawing). I had still not resolved the concept and the math; consequently, I did not learn much about the diagonal lines. However, the experience I acquired doing these first two installations was definitely worth the effort.

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The Brattleboro Piece: The Mental Temple

In 1984, I did a piece at the Brattleboro Museum in which I had, to a greater extent, worked out the math and a method for the centripetal projection of the cylindrical grid. After designing a simple hypothetical temple, consisting of two stepped platforms with seven square columns on the first step and a column/lentil structure behind that on the second step, I next produced four technical drawings to prepare for the installation of the piece. My first drawing was an image of the temple that had to be mathematically projected as though it was on a cylindrical grid. I next made a drawing of the walls of the gallery that plotted the spatial expansion and contraction of the physical dimensions of the gallery.

Fourth technical drawing, 28 x 33 in., pencil on grid tracing paper, 1984

Third technical drawing, 28 x 33 in., pencil on grid tracing paper, 1984

The Brattleboro Piece, colored tape and chalk in situ, 1984

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The third technical drawing combined these two drawings, one on top of the other. It was necessary for the fourth and last drawing to translate the temple image of the third drawing onto a drawing of the rectangles that were the actual shape of the walls. Finally, all the calculations (there were hundreds of measurements) from the last drawing were transferred to the walls and the floor. The result was a two-dimensional drawing of the temple on a three-dimensional space.

As I carried out the installation process, I realized that I could project layers of these cylindrical grids. Each layer was projected from a different hypothetical distance from the designated spot in a room or gallery, and consequently, each grid would diminish in size to compensate for the expanding space. This provided a dimensional grid (like a jungle gym) on which to build an installation.

The C.W. Post Piece, colored tape in situ, 1986 This piece is an example of the use of a dimensional grid.

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CONSIDERING TIME: USING MUSICAL FORM

The Ohio State University Piece, Sonata Form, colored tape in situ, 1985

The OSU Piece: Sonata Form

In 1985, while preparing for Sonata Form, the OSU Piece in the University Gallery at Ohio State University, it became apparent that seeing this piece had to involve time because it was going to be on three walls. The largest wall was fifty feet long, so it would take real time to view it from end to end. Because of this time element, there was an added subtext of music.

The nature of music requires a structure of time. One commonly used structure is the sonata form. The sonata form is in three parts: (A) an exposition, (B) a development, and (A) a recapitulation. A simple example of this ABA form is “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

The exposition is “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.” The development is “Way up in the sky so high, like a diamond in the sky,” The recapitulation is “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you

are.” Its structure in time could be thought of as architectural, similar to post and

beam construction. The exposition and the recapitulation are the posts or columns that are connected to and supporting the development, the beam or lintel. Using the metaphor of architecture as the sonata form, the OSU piece addressed its time component.

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Music became a recurring theme in different ways in three other pieces. The University of Akron Piece was Antoine Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, the Fleming Museum Piece was Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, and the WCMA Piece was Mozart’s Sonata in A Major. These three were not only about the structure of time in terms of music, but also about the character and the content of the music. The idea of employing the subtext of music and the purpose of that subtext evolved into another kind of dialogue.

The University of Akron Piece: Bruckner’s Ninth

University of Akron Piece, colored tape and chalk in situ, 1988

The University of Akron’s Emily Davis Gallery is a large cavernous space with walls that are about fifteen feet high. And Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony (his last), particularly the scherzo, is a loud, bombastic, larger-than-life expression of his profound spirituality. The hope was to bring these two, the gallery and a sense of the music, together to turn that imposing space and the centripetal projection into a viscerally experienced expression of his spirituality.

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The WCMA Piece: Mozart’s Sonata in A Major

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) Piece was part of a two-year project called WALLWORKS, which involved four artists: Richard Haas, Mike Glier, Sol LeWitt, and me. We each installed a work in situ on a wall that measured thirty-five feet high and twenty-four feet wide, located in the atrium designed by the postmodernist architect Charles Moore.

The stairs and the skywalk in this space created a triangular spiral that circled upwards in a counterclockwise movement. Using a centripetal perspectival projection, it was my intention to complement and move counter to this spiraling space by causing the large wall of the atrium to appear to be split, with the top half of the wall moving on a plane that is angled clockwise to the bottom half. I wanted to complement this spatial activity that occurred in time with a constant, so I employed Mozart’s Sonata in A Major. In the exposition of this initial theme, the melody and the harmony pivot around E, a note that is nearly constant throughout the theme.

With a similar focus, the WCMA Piece is made up of twelve octagons, a constant (note) around and through which the visual dynamics of the piece pivot.

The WCMA Piece, colored tape in situ, 1988

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ANOTHER CONSIDERATION: SIGHT, THOUGHT, AND DISPOSITIONAround 1989, after Akron’s Bruckner’s Ninth and WCMA’s Mozart’s Sonata, I

realized that there was another layer to this centripetal dialogue. For eight years I had been concerned with the mechanics and dynamics of a projected “centripetal” perception. But then the experience of Mozart and Bruckner turned in on itself. To include music in that projected perception initiated the idea that what was being projected was more than an alternative visual codification of sight. It was a projection of all the relevant qualities of the viewer’s consciousness that responds to the content of music. I believe that music is one of the most essential things we experience. Practically everyone listens to music every day. And the music each person listens to is an abstraction that has a defining effect on who they are and how they fit into the general scheme of things. There is music that addresses just about every aspect and event in life: love, faith, hope, aspirations, desires, death, etc. The music listened to becomes a defining expression of the life that’s being experienced. And so it might be with perception.

This initiated a very significant shift in focus on the entire centripetal dialogue. Instead of tracking the seeing that radiates from a center in the viewer’s mind, my focus became what is in the mind that sees. It was the content of the consciousness--the myriad of thoughts, beliefs, and things known that was being seen. The mind does not simply see; it images its visual experience.

This imaging becomes a defining expression, like the music, that is more about our character and capabilities as we meet our needs and desires, and live our lives, than it is about any phenomenological event. A perception is the triumvirate of the physiology of sight, the complexity of thought, and our mental/intellectual disposition, and it is these elements that determine what the seeing will be, what it will look like, what it will mean, and how it will be applied.

The Fleming Museum Piece: Bruckner’s Eighth

In 1990, I did the Fleming Museum Piece, Bruckner’s Eighth. It was drawn directly onto three walls (including two corners) of the large gallery in the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum. Although this piece explored the spatial dynamics of centripetal perspective, its overall concern was an attempt to provide an experience comparable to the luminous interior of the sacral uterine sanctuaries of the mother church, such as the celestial interior of the sixth-century Basilica di San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy.

In preparation for this piece I listened to Antoine Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, sometimes referred to as an aural cathedral, about fifty times while reading the score.

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To augment these sounds, I visited churches to experience their sanctuaries and I looked at many images of San Vitale’s sanctuary. With these references imbued in my mind, I executed this piece in a search for the experiential qualities of a celestial space. In the process of this search, I explored the context of human qualities that might be involved in such an experience. Because a celestial space is not just indigenous to the physical properties of a cathedral, it is also projected by the spiritual disposition of the viewer.

At the center of the piece, there is a large red circle and a large red chair (about six feet high). This was an attempt to invoke the energy and purpose of the ancient fertility idol, the Venus of Willendorf, which I believe is the progenitor of a conscious sense of transcendence, the essential purpose of a sanctuary. This is flanked on either side with ethereal architectural structures (the Brattleboro’s mental temples), some of which are surrounded by swirling vectors of energy that refer to the ether or to some radical idea in modern physics, such as “string theory,” or the “zero point field,” or maybe David Bohm’s “holomovement.” The floor of the inside circle is red in reference to the foot chakra, where the temporal energy connects to the terrestrial. And the top or the outer circle is blue-green, as though it might be a celestial space or cosmic garden. Each of the two sides of the piece tries to exude gender qualities, the left being female and the right being male. And these qualities converge in the sexual vortex in the center occupied by the Venus of Willendorf, the essence of fertility.

This installation was the confluence of biology, sex, transcendence, temporal and cosmic energy, and the activity of thought as the source and foundation of how we image everything around us. It aspired to be the content of the mind actualized in a perception: a weltanschauung that sees.

The Fleming Piece, University of Vermont, colored tape and chalk in situ, 1990

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CONSIDERING BELIEF SYSTEMS A weltanschauung is a world view that takes into account all belief systems

comprising a given culture, a world view that is a foundational orientation to our understandings of everything on every level. It is my contention that within this world view, there are two elemental types of belief systems. There are the functional belief systems, like the grand narratives of religions, the Enlightenment, and political and cultural ideologies that serve to structure the life from the outside. And there are the core intuitive belief systems that are essential to the life we experience.

The core intuitive beliefs come from abstract deliberations that occur somewhere in the core of the human mind. And these deliberations cause things as fundamental as likes and dislikes, the scope of your personal space, your disposition about the way things are, the foundation of your temperament, and your internalized perspective of the world. These core beliefs then determine how the functional beliefs will implement that life. I have the notion that core intuitive belief systems are expressions of a life, created by that confluence of the biology, sex, transcendence, temporal and cosmic energy, as well as the activity of thought (the confluence of the Fleming Piece).

Just as music formed the subtext for earlier installations, the notion of a core intuitive belief system became the subtext of the Hood and the No. B.I.A.S. pieces.

The Hood Museum Piece: Petrarch’s Threshold

The Hood Piece, Petrarch’s Threshold, was installed in Dartmouth’s Hood Museum in 1992. It brought together an excellent example of a centripetal two-dimensional drawing on a three-dimensional space, and the subtext of core intuitive beliefs concerning our present-day circumstance. The hope was to evoke the process of the abstract deliberations that occur in the core of the mind as we approach our contemporary version of Petrarch’s Threshold.

Our threshold is postmodernism, one of the most dynamic and demanding circumstances we have ever had to deal with. In terms of the functional belief systems, we are lost in the transition between what was the modern world to a world yet to

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be determined. We call ourselves postmodern because the only thing our functional belief systems are confident about is that we are no longer modernist, because we sense that the tenants of modernism are no longer believable or useful to our well-being.

The postmodern shift is comparable in magnitude to the shift from the institutional medieval church to the modern world of the humanist. That medieval/humanist circumstance was intellectually progressive, leading to a period in which within the span of one lifetime, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael made the argument that to be human is to be magnificent: Columbus proved the world to be round while discovering a new world, Luther challenged the church and began the Reformation, and Copernicus hypothesized a heliocentric universe and initiated what was to become the Scientific Revolution.

Today we deal with a shift that is more a matter of “do or die.” We seem to be seeking something that lends purpose to life and is capable of dealing with “the plasticity and constant change of reality and knowing” (Richard Tarnas, The Passions of the Western Mind), while coping with the catastrophic issues of plutonium, pollution, and population—issues that are seemingly unsolvable and insurmountable. It could be argued that there is virtually nothing we do today that is sustainable. My core intuitive understanding suggests that we might need a new and almost evolutionary mindset to survive.

We are at a threshold. In the fourteenth century, Petrarch said: “Here stand I as though on a frontier between two people, looking both to the past [Middle Ages] and to the future [the Renaissance].” Today we stand on a frontier between two people, but we are looking away from the past and not yet capable of projecting into the future. We are at the brink of a world we cannot imagine. If there is a solution, I believe it will come from those abstract deliberations that occur deep in the human mind. It will come from a shift in the core intuitive beliefs.

The Hood Piece tried to visually and experientially simulate that intuitive dialogue of a core beliefs’ deliberations, responding to a Lebenswelt in flux. First, by providing a space that has been transformed by a very convincing centripetal projection, it catches the viewer between an interior space of actual walls and the projected ones experienced.

Second, the two-dimensional centripetal drawing, visually suspended in the three-dimensional space of the corner of the gallery, is of an otherworldly interior. In the middle of this ethereal space is a large circle with the appearance of being a mechanistically closed threshold. This threshold is both an inviting and a forbidding passage, depending on the disposition of your core intuitive beliefs.

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If you were inclined to enter, the question would be how to open it. Is there a hidden lever? Do you need to solve a perplexing riddle? Do you will it open with psychic powers? Do you just wait for someone or something to open it for you? Will it just open when the muse feels that you are ready?

If you are not so inclined, do you turn your back on it and pretend it is not there? Do you throw up barriers to protect yourself and what you know from its threatening potential? Do you try to destroy it? Do you pray to God for deliverance?

Personally, I am very curious about what is on the other side. I think of the blue-and-white interior to the threshold as a narthex to the cathedral of a world yet to be imagined.

In the drawing, the threshold is on the back wall of this narthex. Flanked by two other drawn walls, a floor and a ceiling that hosts eight gridded circular symbols of a triadic dualism—a dualism in which A and B are opposites of each other, but both A and B are opposite to C. This forms a cyclical, dynamic, and kinetic kind of sonata form, in which the structure of time and the melodies are perpetually changing with an endlessly shifting context. Ultimately, the desired effect of the Hood Piece was that all these elements, in concert, would provide a sense of the machinations of a core belief system at work.

The Hood Museum Piece, Dartmouth College, colored tape and chalk in situ, 1992

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The No. B.I.A.S. Piece: The Light Hole

In 1996, at the No. B.I.A.S. (the North Bennington Independent Artist Space) Gallery, I constructed a piece entitled The Light Hole. The Light Hole was an invitation for anyone who witnessed it to step inside, walk around, and experience an event of the Dagara culture, a tribal community in Burkino Faso, West Africa. The thought behind this project was what better way to explore an expression of a core intuitive belief system than to participate in a system from a culture so remarkably different from our own?

I once read an autobiographical account of Malidoma Patrice Somé and his experience participating in the initiation rituals of his tribe. (Much of this section is taken directly from his book, Of Water and the Spirit.) It is an extraordinary tale. Seized by Jesuit missionaries when he was four, Malidoma was educated to assist in converting more African people. From the Jesuits, he learned all about what he called the white man’s reality: anatomy, geography, history, literature, mathematics, and Christianity.

When he was about twenty, Malidoma found his way back over many miles to his own Dagara tribe. The tribe was unwilling to accept him because he could barely speak their language and had been educated by the colonists. He had forgotten what it meant to be Dagara. Also, in the Dagara culture becoming a man and assuming the responsibilities of adulthood occurs during an initiation ritual for boys when they are about thirteen. Not having gone through this initiation, Malidoma could never be accepted as a member of his tribal community.

Malidoma had to convince the elders to allow him to be initiated. The rest is the almost unbelievable story of the Dagara initiation, told by a person who was an articulate conduit between two extremely different cultures. During this ritual, the initiates had to jump into a light hole. To be honest, I can’t really imagine what a light hole might be. Malidoma talks about what is the greatest problem in telling his story. It is that the things he talks about don’t happen in English but in a language that has a different mindset about reality. In spite of this difficulty, he describes how the elders create a portal by combining a piece of hide about a meter in width with a green gelatinous substance. They conjure with chants and ceremonies to create this opening to a light hole into which each initiate must jump. When an initiate enters the light hole, he feels himself descend rapidly, about a dozen or so kilometers every

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second. Soon after that, he has to force his eyes open to see a powerful light: a light that is a symphony of luminescent light wires that are bundles of light that seem to be alive. His task is to grab onto a light bundle and stop his descent. It is important to note that if he fails to grab one and falls too far, he will be caught in a nether world for eternity and will never exit the light hole. This did happen to one of the initiates. Never to return, he was dead to the living.

Once the initiate has a firm grip on a light bundle, he experiences floating weightlessly. The initiate then loses any sense of his own physicality. He cannot see or touch his body and becomes an invisible presence bathing in the light of his own invisibility. He is visible only in his own consciousness. Due both to his own will and the ceremonial chanting of the elders, the initiate is ejected from the light hole and left lying on the ground with violet flames dancing on his body. Malidoma contends that he still bears the scars from these flames.

I have no idea what this event really is or what it means, but I do believe that the Dagara initiate believes to his core that it is a life-threatening, life-altering event, as real as the scars on Malidoma’s body.

While planning for the No. B.I.A.S. Piece, I knew that to address the idea of the Light Hole, the installation had to be more physically visceral than a two-dimensional drawing on a three-dimensional space. So unlike previous pieces, this one was not drawn on the walls of the gallery, but was constructed in the space. The centripetally projected drawing in the space was not tape and chalk, but strips of black-and-white plastic stapled to the constructed frame. The piece also had dimensional components. About three feet in front of the constructed centripetal drawing of plastic strips, there was a dimensional centripetal grid made of one-inch by two-inch pieces of lumber and saplings. Between two columns in the gallery, I suspended a constructed circle in a square directly in front of the corner and cut out a round hole in the corner, a portal, that revealed a colorful drawing on the wall behind the piece. Throughout the piece radiated vines wrapped in white plastic.

The No. B.I.A.S. Piece, wood frames, colored plastic strips, and lumber and saplings, 1996

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All these layered elements of the Light Hole descended physically into the space. The centered constructed circle in the square, the dimensional grid, the walls textured with plastic strips, the hole cut in the corner of the piece, the colorful drawing behind the piece, and the wrapped vines penetrating the space combined with the spatial ambiguity of the centripetal projection. Plus, like the Hood Piece, they were choreographed to provide a sense of the machinations of a core intuitive belief system at work. But this one was a tribal belief system, different to the point of being untranslatable from the machinations of our own core intuitive belief systems.

THE PORTALS AND THRESHOLDSThe large circles in both the Hood Piece and the No. B.I.A.S. Piece were

thresholds/portals to worlds outside and beyond the world we know. The Hood Piece was an unimaginable future and the No. B.I.A.S. Piece was an exploration of the mysteries of the Dagara weltanschauung.

The depiction of a circular portal that first appeared in the Islip Museum Piece II, The Host, was an attempt to draw out the presence of the muse, or the Venus of Willendorf.

Since the Host piece in 1989, nine of the eleven remaining pieces had this circle: the portal/threshold.

As these pieces evolved, I became more and more convinced that there was some kind of mental mechanism, which could be a keeper

of the gate or a guide like Beatrice from Dante’s Inferno, to allow us entry or guide us through the portals/thresholds. The next chapter of my story is my earnest attempt to name, describe, and somehow establish a rapport with this mental mechanism.

The Host, tape and chalk in situ, 1989

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PART THREE – THE NEURALCHEMIST

“The voyage of discovery is not seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

--Marcel Proust

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THE NEURALCHEMISTFrom here on out, it all becomes a metaphor, a fantasylike description of the

premise, the content, the subject, and the drawing process, that is proposed after the fact. And as it is with metaphors, it is only a shadow on the cave wall. A metaphor is both a true and apt portrayal and an imaginary fabrication of a thing or an event. It is a lie, but it might be the only way for me to describe something that eludes description, so bear with me.

What started out as a simple question concerning a disconnect between a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional response to a perceptual event, has evolved (through the Empiricals and the Centripetals) to a concern that, on the face of it, looks as though it has nothing to do with perception. It is not an analytical drawing from life or a mathematically constructed alternative perceptual space. It looks as though it aspires to be ART in the tradition (to name a few) of Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Arshile Gorky, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock.

This is because I have come to the same artistic arena as those modernists, but from a different perspective and for different reasons. That perspective and those reasons concern perception.

When you read the writings of Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, or many of the artists of that era, you will get the sense that they created a metaphorical forum in which to pursue a romantic, unquestioned belief that an artist making art was the only conduit to durable universal truths. Also, in this forum, it is the confluence of all that is in the life of the artist who makes the art that becomes that conduit. Jackson Pollock said it best: “Painting is a state of being, self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.”

My concern about perception (as seen in the Fleming Piece, the Hood Piece, and the No. B.I.A.S. Piece) has led me to this forum, where painting is a “state of being.” Just as it was for those modernists for whom making art was ultimately the confluence of all aspects of the artist’s life, so it was with the perception expressed in those last few centripetal installations; they reflected the confluence of biology, sex, transcendence, temporal and cosmic energies, and the activity of thought. To put a different spin on Jackson Pollock’s quote: “Seeing is a state of being, self-discovery. Every conscious Being sees what he or she is.”

The primary difference in my approach to the modernist arena is that it is not my concern to create a metaphorical forum to deliberate durable truths. The modernists have accomplished that. I want to witness and participate in the deliberations taking place in this forum, particularly in terms of how we image the world around us.

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In the process of producing twenty-five centripetal installations, I have come to appreciate that perception is an expression of all that is the life one lives, and I have also come to realize that there is something in the core of the mind of that life that affects, if not determines, that perceptual expression. I call this mental core facilitator of all of life’s components, the Neuralchemist (neural alchemist). The Neuralchemist sets the agenda and oversees and facilitates the deliberations of the deep mind. I would like to come to terms with this Neuralchemist, as it officiates over the deliberations, listens to music, ponders the core intuitive beliefs, and determines what the seeing will be, what it will look like, and what it will mean.

THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE: A TWO-TIERED METAPHOR

The circle in the square is a two-tiered metaphor that is both a portal through which one can witness the Neuralchemist’s deliberations and a threshold between a Lebenswelt in flux to a world yet to be defined.

All the drawings that look to the Neuralchemist (and there are hundreds of them) start with a circle in a square. There are at least four reasons for my commitment to this format.

First, this format is very useful insofar as it provides a structure that sets limits, lending some controls so I can more effectively and freely explore the purview of the Neuralchemist. As Igor Stravinsky said: “I fence myself in, in order to be free.”

Second, there are the dualistic implications of the circle in the square. The shapes themselves are dualistic: the square being the complement to the circle. The square is often thought of as representing the earth and its four corners, while the circle is a

symbol for the heavens. In addition, Carl Jung looked at it another way: the circle, the age-old symbol of the soul; the square, the temporal.

The third reason is the installations themselves. The structure of these centripetal projections goes back to that little didactic from Empirical Study III in which any two-dimensional translation occurs on a circle or cylinder (with equal radii) around a viewer. It is that circle inscribed in a square room that is the essential premise of all the centripetal installations. For fifteen years, I stood in the center of a circle in a square. It is a perspective I know well.

Circle in a Square, 6 x 10 in., watercolor and pencil on

illustration board

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Finally, the circle in the square was a significant conceptual and compositional element (portals/thresholds) drawn on the walls in nine of the last eleven centripetal installations, including the Hood Piece, the Fleming Piece, and the No. B.I.A.S. Piece.

The simple format, the dualism, the structure of the installations, and the conceptual and compositional elements—all add up to the circle in the square as the most perfect, logical, meaningful, and almost inevitable venue for the Neuralchemist dialogue.

THE DRAWINGSThe early Neuralchemist drawings were executed while I was still producing

the centripetal installations. There was an overlapping of concerns from the subtext of music and core intuitive beliefs of the Centripetals to the Neuralchemist, just as there was from the Empiricals (that little didactic from Empirical Study III) to the Centripetals. There came a point in the dialogue that these installations had served their purpose and there was no longer any need to pursue the centripetal perspective. I needed to focus all of my attention on the perspective of the mechanism inside the mind and behind the eyes that see.

The very first drawing looking to the Neuralchemist was entitled Dynamism. It could be thought of as something comparable to a mandala. It was an attempt to provide a beacon and then to consider our interaction with some very influential belief systems. Finally, it posed this crucial question: How much of our thinking is prescribed by these beliefs and their symbols?

This drawing started with the dualism of the circle (a self-contained shape) in the square (a shape that points out in four directions) and then layered it with visual symbols representing some fundamental beliefs embedded in our collective psyche.

It features the yin-yang, the universal symbol of dualism. But this yin-yang is the triadic symbol referred to in the Hood Piece—the third element with its all-seeing

Dynamism, 30 x 40 in., pencil on paper, 1997

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eye and implied mysticism: the Masonic symbol in the center. This all-seeing eye is viewable on the United States one-dollar bill, and this legal tender could be considered a symbol of a monetary belief system that provides a quantitative means to measure our human and spiritual worth.

There is a target, which I think of as a symbol of purpose, and a diamond, which is a square turned on its end to represent the idea of a dynamic transformation. Two perpendicular elements of the simple cross convey a sense of reassurance, like the Red Cross, the Blue Cross, or the White Cross. This cross then extends its vertical element and becomes the Christian Cross, with all sorts of implications for the western psyche and its need for transcendence. The serpent and the fish refer to the dualism of good and evil: Christ and Lucifer. Finally, the image of a solar eruption and a landscape represents the dualism of the celestial and the terrestrial, the cosmic and the temporal.

The thought behind this drawing is that any deliberation of the Neuralchemist will have to take into account the overwhelming influence of all these functional and fundamental symbols and their content.

With the Neuralchemist drawings, just as with the Empirical drawings, I knew I was searching for something, but I had no specific idea what to expect. With the Empirical drawings, I was trying to come to terms with how we see. The Neuralchemist drawings were an attempt to come to terms with the mental mechanism that determines what that seeing will be. The process of both of these resembled a type of scientific research in which I would experiment with a thought or a question and then monitor where the activity of making the drawings would lead.

But unlike the Empiricals, the Neuralchemist dialogue does not lend itself so readily to description and explanation. Why? Because the Neuralchemist function is in the unlanguaged core in the mind and has to be addressed in a more intuitive and subjective way, comparable to the modernist method. Consequently, when I bring a thought or a question to the experiment, it is more a matter of kneading and massaging the idea than a direct inquiry. This intuitive process continues until the experiment is satisfied in some ineffable and fruitful way. These experiments rarely present an explicit answer that I can readily draw.

THE DYNAMISMS #2 THROUGH #8After that first drawing, I executed a series of seven yin-yang drawings entitled

the Dynamisms, #2 through #8. This series considered the idea of a yin-yang, because I was struck by how dualistic the first drawing (Dynamism) was.

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These Dynamisms asked the following questions of the iconic symbol of duality: What would happen if a third element were to be introduced to the yin-yang to

disrupt its perfect balance? What if a yin-yang were simply to let go of the tension that maintains its otherwise

eternal flow? What does a relativistic yin-yang look like? How does the Neuralchemist deliberate without an intact yin-yang? How might a disrupted yin-yang affect the expressions (perception, music, and

core intuitive beliefs) of the confluence of biology, sex, transcendence, etc.? A yin-yang is also a symbol of energy visually represented by an isometric

swirl or flow of force. Nietzsche, Jung, and others said that energy is caused by the tension between two opposites. So, I thought of these drawings as depictions of an energy caught in the disruption of that tension and its dualistic origin. Each of these drawings was a yin-yang responding to a dynamic occurrence of disruption; each, a response made by a component of the confluence expressed in the Fleming Piece.

Dynamism #2 is sex responding to the dynamic occurrence of disruption.

Dynamism #2, 58 x 48 in., carpenter crayons, pencil, and paint on canvas, 1998–1999

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Dynamism #3 is transcendence (faith)

responding to the dynamic occurrence of disruption.

Dynamism #4 is the terrestrial responding to

the dynamic occurrence of disruption.

Dynamism #3, 58 x 48 in., carpenter crayons, pencil, and paint on canvas, 1998–1999

Dynamism #4, 58 x 48 in., carpenter crayons, pencil, and paint on canvas, 1998–1999

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Dynamism #5 is the temporal responding to the dynamic occurrence of disruption.

Dynamism #6 is transcendence (death)

responding to the dynamic occurrence of disruption.

Dynamism #5, 58 x 48 in., carpenter crayons, pencil, and paint on canvas, 1998–1999

Dynamism #6, 58 x 48 in., carpenter crayons, pencil, and paint on canvas, 1998–1999

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Dynamism #7, 58 x 48 in., carpenter crayons, pencil, and paint on canvas, 1998–1999

Dynamism #8, 58 x 48 in., carpenter crayons, pencil, and paint on canvas, 1998–1999

Dynamism #7 is biology responding to the dynamic occurrence of disruption.

Dynamism #8 is the cosmic responding to the dynamic occurrence of disruption.

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There is also an underlying activity concerning dualism that is a substructure for these Dynamisms. In each, there is a layered underdrawing of a Cartesian-like vortex with its energy that is methodical and systematic. And on top of that, there is a drawing that is a chthonic energy, an energy caught in that disruption. This underdrawing appears in the Dynamis Triptychs, the Venus of Willendorf Triptych, and in the Death and Ecstasy of St. Theresa.

It is an exploration of all these energies that became the focus of the next series of drawings: the Dynamis Triptychs.

THE DYNAMIS: THE SPIRITLIKE VITAL FORCE ANIMATING THE HUMAN ORGANISM – DR. SAMUEL

HAHNEMANN, ORGANON OF MEDICINE, 1842

From the body’s 98.6 degrees to the ineffable projection of a person’s mojo, from pheromones to auras—essentially it is all about energy. It is just as Jackson Pollock said, “We’re part of it all, like everything else.” These drawings consider the possibility that everything we do, think about, and experience (including perception), can be thought of as a projection of that animating force.

It has been my experience that when it comes to something as simple as talking to someone, the activity of that conversation is just as much an exchange and mingling of energies, as it is a verbal interaction. In teaching, I find it is more than a simple matter of disseminating information. The learning that takes place is conveyed on the back of the personal energy I am able to project.

Just as it is for conversing and teaching, seeing is more than the simple act of receiving light. Merleau-Ponty describes perception as a full-blown sensory system of the human animal. He believes seeing to be a whole body experience. Seeing cannot be understood apart from being in the world as a thing that breathes, moves, touches, hears, smells, feels pain, experiences love, knows happiness, and so on. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of perception is sometimes described as a primordial openness to the Lebenswelt. For Merleau-Ponty and for the purpose of these drawings, seeing is the dynamis and the dynamis is seeing.

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Dynamis Triptychs I & II

The titles of the pieces of the first two triptychs are words from different cultures that embody the dynamis: Wakonda is Sioux; Ruin is African; Ruach is Hebrew; Ki is Japanese; Baraka is Sufi; Mana is Hawaiian, Kahunas.

All of the drawings, going back to the empirical studies, were searching for something; yet, I had no specific idea what that was or what to expect. While working with the dynamis, I found myself unexpectedly led to a sensibility that was sexually charged. It wasn’t something I overtly intended. What became apparent while processing these drawings and experimenting with the dynamis was that sex, as a powerful function at every level of consciousness, was central to and predicated

Dynamis Triptych II, 5 x 15 ft., watercolor and colored pencil, pencil and paint on canvas, 2001

Dynamis Triptych I, 5 x 15 ft., watercolor and colored pencil, pencil and paint on canvas, 2001

Wakonda Ruin Ruach

Ki Baraka Mana

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on a melding of biological, mental, and spiritual imperatives. Sex was a significant component of the spiritlike vital force.

After this unexpected turn of events, I could no longer work with or consider the Neuralchemist without considering the need of human beings to participate sexually. Since these triptychs, most of the drawings have been imbued with this sexual sensibility. Another unexpected quality of the first two triptychs is how fundamentally female and chthonic they are. It was as though I intuitively saw the feminine as the most essential and natural quality of the dynamis.

The Apollonian Triptych

The third Dynamis Triptych, The Apollonians, consciously and self-consciously addresses a male manifestation of this energy. As much as it was a reaction to the first two triptychs, I had a need to address and celebrate what turned out to be something you could call the “Sky God” (Camille Paglia’s thought) of the dynamis. The intuitive source of these Apollonian drawings is thinly abstract, ethereal, and aloof from the more chthonic feminine energy. The decision-making that became these drawings seemed to originate more from the frontal lobe than from the more essential depth of the mind. The activity of drawing this triptych was an entirely different experience from that of the first two triptychs. Both reflections, the feminine and the masculine, enhanced my appreciation and understanding of how the dynamis might work.

Drawing these three Dynamis Triptychs provided me some access to the Neuralchemist’s deliberations. At least I caught a glimpse of the machination of some very powerful source material and how it plays a role in the deliberations that determine how we image the world. The next thought was to approach these energies on a first-person basis—a self-portrait, so to speak.

Raphael Giotti Pollock

Dynamis Triptych III, The Apollonians, 6 x 18 ft., mixed media on canvas, 2002

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THE SELF-PORTRAITS: THE NEURALCHEMIST FROM THE INSIDE

Several years ago, I experienced a devastating, life-altering event in my personal life that resulted in nothing short of the death of my person. What I was and who I was, was lost forever.

This next series of drawings was to consider and bear witness to the rekindling of the vital force that animates the energy that had nearly been extinguished in me. In these drawings I wanted to use this circumstance to come to terms with the Neuralchemist from the inside.

As part of this introspective exploration of the Neuralchemist, I considered the idea of transverberation. I have always been drawn to Bernini’s Transverberation of Saint Theresa, where you can witness her experiencing death, sex, and transcendence simultaneously, as she anticipates another life—a life characterized by a euphoric, expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness. I was also attracted to the idea of an infusion of this mental and spiritual energy into my own anticipation of another life. The titles of these drawings speak to a celebration of revitalizing the anima within me: I Am the Phoenix, The Conception (a reference to a rebirth), Joy of My Desiring, and The Death and Ecstasy of Saint Theresa.

Bernini: Transverberation of Saint Theresa, 1647–1652

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I Am the Phoenix, 8 x 8 ft., watercolor, colored pencil on canvas, 2004

The Conception, 7 x 7 ft., watercolor, colored pencil on canvas, 2004

Joy of My Desiring, 8 x 8 ft., watercolor, colored pencil on canvas, 2005

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I found that reigniting the vital force within me was not a wildly dramatic chthonic event; it was neither an exploding yin-yang nor a primordial openness. Although the process was about an incredible infusion of energy back into what had become the dysfunction of mind, body, and spirit, this transverberation was more like a methodical reconstruction and a systematic reigniting of that animating vital force. All this led to the idea that it was possible that the Neuralchemist and the deliberations could complement its visceral libidinal energy with a careful, methodical manifestation of the dynamis. I believe the circumstance of my condition, and what was necessary to reengage the vitality that had been lost, provided the opportunity to reveal the other rational and methodical side of the Neuralchemist. This also provided a whole new breadth of possibilities to the Neuralchemist deliberations.

In this next series of drawings I wanted to think about the Neuralchemist as an iconic symbol that embodies the full spectrum of the deliberations that determines how we experience seeing, as well as the life that we live.

The Death and Ecstasy of St. Theresa, 6 x 12 ft., mixed media on canvas, 2005

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The Venus of Willendorf: A series of iconic drAWingsI have always held great reverence for the Venus of

Willendorf. I see her as the milestone that indicates the most significant transition to date in the history of our species. Although one can only speculate about the intention and significance of this little piece of limestone, I personally signify her as the beginning of art, the awakening of the metaphysical, and the initiating of the quest to try to understand what it means to be a human being.

So it was with the Venus of Willendorf in mind that I executed a series of drawings, inventing iconic symbols which attempt to embody all the operative capabilities (chthonic, dynamic, libidinal, methodical, primordial, rational, systematic) of the Neuralchemist. The idea was to picture the Neuralchemist employing all of these operative capabilities as it presides over the confluence of biology, sex, transcendence, temporal and cosmic energies, and the activity of thought.

Venus of Willendorf Triptych (center panel), Eleanor of Aquitaine, 7 x 7 ft., mixed media canvas, 2007

Venus of Willendorf II, 7 x 7 ft., pencil on canvas, 2007

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At the conclusion of this last series of drawings, I realized that I was as close as I was ever going to get to giving form to the Neuralchemist. After twelve years of trying to find this Neuralchemist, I still cannot describe it; however, I have acquired a good sense of its presence. I am certain that the Neuralchemist is there and it always has been there. It is a real and fundamental function of the mind.

Since the advent of the Venus of Willendorf, which opened this dialogue, philosophers, poets, priests, scientists, shamans, and artists have been negotiating with and channeling the Neuralchemist. Aristotle and Plato; Descartes, Hume, Kant, Locke, and Nietzsche; Homer and Sappho; the authors of the Bible and other sacred documents; Newton, Einstein, Bohr, and Bohm; Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and the Beatles; Leonardo da Vinci, Giotto, Michelangelo, Picasso, Pollock, Beuys, and Nauman—all of these and scores of others, over the centuries, through great effort and meditation have framed questions that bid access to this fundamental function of the mind. The Neuralchemist has revealed its deliberations to some, and these revealed deliberations have become the core intuitive beliefs—the beliefs that have been the underpinnings of the way we see, understand, and live in the world.

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A POSTSCRIPTAs a postscript to my story, I humbly asked the Neuralchemist two questions, the specificity of which was unlike the pursuit of my forty-year concern with perception. One question concerns modern physics; the other, romantic love. I think questions put to the Neuralchemist are essentially the same: What does modern physics or romantic love or any other perplexing issue of a weltanschauung mean? How do we effectively address it?

Question #1: What Is Real? The first of my questions was a concern for the mental, spiritual, and psychic

conundrum we face as we deal with modern physics and its impact on how we understand the world we perceive and live in.

How do we address the idea that the physical world of modern-day physics is not the great knowable machine Newton told us it was, but rather a great elusive thought? In his book, In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat, John Gribbin calls it a participatory universe. “The whole universe can be thought of as a delayed-choice experiment in which the existence of the observer who notices what was going on is what imparts tangible reality to the origin of everything.”

I thought the controversial twentieth-century physicist David Bohm would be a good venue to query the contemporary conundrum of the physical world being a great elusive thought, because he tried to answer it. Bohm challenged the standard Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, for which he was marginalized by his colleagues. He proffered a revision of quantum theory that included a wholeness that was fundamental in what he called the “holomovement” or the “ground of all that is.” He also restored an objective reality in the enfolding-unfolding of the implicate order as it ephemerally manifests itself as the explicate—an expression in particular form and experience.

The David Bohm Quintet, 7 x 35 ft., colored pencil on canvas, 2009

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The David Bohm Quintet is my intuitive exploration of Bohm’s interpretation. It has a “ground of all that is” that extends as connecting lines and a radiating field across the five pieces. In each piece there is an explicate event of the implicate order that is unfolding from a square or a circle or a circle in a square. Each of the five explicate expressions is a drawing of one of the invented iconic symbols of the last series of Neuralchemist drawings, with all their intended content, and each of them also unfolds from a circle in a square.

Bohm stated in Wholeness and the Implicate Order: “I would say that in my scientific and philosophical work, my main concern has been with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole, which is never static or complete but which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment.”

David Bohm extrapolated a philosophy of consciousness from his theories concerning physics. The implicate order became a propositional template for plotting the emergence and dynamics of both matter and consciousness, which he thought had the potential to be transformational. (Much of this section was taken directly from The Essential David Bohm, edited by Lee Nichol.)

Bohm once wrote: “I would say that as a man perceives, so he is . . . So the transformation of man must come through a new vi