As I considered the underlying causes of ecological destruction, I noticed that the idea that art passively expresses what a society or culture is up to isn’t the whole story. No, art actively prescribes what a society or culture does by affecting what its members can see as real. I saw how art, particularly the art celebrated in our art history books, museums and galleries has played an important role in creating the kind of consciousness that destroys its habitat.
Crisis solved: my role in environmental protection, my form of ecological activism, was precisely art. I committed myself wholeheartedly to a career of creating art that would change that consciousness. To whatever extent lies in the power of one individual, I would nudge our culture toward the paradigm of ecological healing and sustainable harmony.
At first I took a somewhat political approach to what such art would look like. I felt the urgency of stopping pollution, saving rainforests, decommissioning nuclear power plants. At some point, I began synchronizing my artistic process with ritual. I began each studio session with meditation, then an intention that the work I was starting would somehow, mysteriously, be healing to the earth. Then I worked. I gave myself to trusting that spirit presence I was experiencing more frequently: it would guide my work into a form that was needed.
After a time of working this way, I was one day dumbstruck by the hubris of seeking to heal the earth. I laughed out loud at the absurdity. We’re the frickin’ disease! By that time I had a personal, visceral awareness of the vast consciousness of the earth and her life forms. I reframed what I sought to do as an artist: to serve the earth in her efforts to heal us. To heal us crazy humans so that we might return to harmony before destroying the many species dependent with us on the very conditions we’re so determined to destroy.
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