Constructing an artmaking ritual as social and spiritual practices (part 3)

Construction of a ceremonial artmaking as a social and spiritual practice
Sarah-Andrea Morrigan


Background for this project: In 2008, I began serving as the artist-in-residence for the annual Operation Nightwatch (Portland, OR) spiritual retreat in rural Clackamas County, Oregon.  The annual event, an invitation-only affair with a group of between 10 to 20 pre-screened participants, brings together various kinds of people for whom any similar event held elsewhere would be economically prohibitive.  Built upon the regular client base of Operation Nightwatch, this includes individuals in various stages of recovery, those living with non-mainstream mental diversity, and severe socio-economical challenges.  Since 2008, I had worked on the improvement of existing art-and-craft programming during the event by inspiring and providing infrastructure for creativity.  A well-stocked ad hoc open art studio is established each year through the duration of the event in the conspicuous common area to allow a free-flowing and open-ended artistic expressions and experimentation by participants.  I had also made conscious efforts at improving the artistic quality of the group project, as the product of the group project has traditionally been on permanent display and I felt that many of the previous years’ group projects appeared infantile and reflected low expectations placed by facilitators of participants, thus unduly underestimating their values as creative adults with a real life.


Challenges:
The past year’s project began incorporating the interactive social practice aspect of artmaking (making art as a conversation), but it did not produce a sense of community -- in fact, a certain person had vandalized the creations of other participants while no one else was watching!
In the effort at making it free-flowing and open-ended, the quality of the artwork suffered accordingly, and was far from complete when the retreat was about to be over.
This format came originally as a response to feedback that participants were being hurried endlessly from one activity to another and did not have mental space to take in the nature and the retreat’s themes.  How can we make a great art together, and have a great fun at it, and yet derive some serious spiritual meanings out of the activity, consistent with the overall theme of the spiritual retreat -- all without anyone feeling like they are treated like little children in a boring art-and-craft class being told by a teacher what to do?


Solutions:
While I am primarily a visual artist, art is more than visual and encompasses all modalities.  As a social art, each participant brings his or her own talents, personalities, and creative modalities to the mix.  Hence the project is no longer limited to visual art or specific methods, but rather incorporates a little bit of everything -- including performing art elements.
Taking the spiritual themes of the overall event as the point of departure, I had constructed the project to elicit creations of spiritual significances by participants.  This is accomplished through a ceremonial format.
The ceremony is constructed deliberately to be in keeping with the ecumenical nature of the organization with “no proselytizing policy” in place.  Instead of using the “lowest common denominator” (which usually involves a scaled down, minimalist Protestant Christian practice), however, I had taken the entire ceremony outside what may be familiar to the participants.  This is done for a number of reasons: (1) A retreat is a time outside the ordinary by design, and creating an environment that is outside the routines and the familiar is rather appropriate; (2) This way, I would not need to privilege a predominant (or any specific) faith tradition over the others -- in the rituals invocations are made to “Lushede” (from the La’adan language) to emphasize the all-inclusion in neutrality; (3) and thirdly, I hoped that this project will not only be multimodal and mixed-media, but also multicultural.  The ceremonies are generally constructed along the lines of shamanic rituals of the historic pan-Tungusic nations (eastern Siberia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea and Japan), with some input from the Chinese Buddhist and Daoist elements, as well as some parallels in the Native American rituals.
The all-encompassing ritual environment facilitates participation without making it feel like a compulsory “art class” or “craft activities” of the past.  Fully incorporated with the Exploration sessions of the retreat, participants can bring whatever the feelings into the ceremonial art while can also derive personalized meanings from the experience.  Likewise, the ritual elements create a special time and space within the event where certain intentions are held in common as a group.


The Art Project: Road Markings (2011, mixed-media, 18 inches x 18 inches) 

This year, in favour of enhancing the shared social elements of artmaking -- and in recognition that each person comes with a varied artistic skills and creative temperaments -- less emphasis is made on the visual media or development of skills.  The actual artmaking, heavily ritualized, is rather simple and easy for most people, involving a form of East Asian calligraphy (without needs for learning any language).


The panel is accented with a small canvas board painting representing the four cardinal directions according to the Chinese tradition: black turtle (xuanwu) of the north, blue dragon (qinglong) of the east, red phoenix (zhuque) of the south, and white tiger (baihu) of the west -- signifying that the the artwork represents the world in which we live. 


At the centre is a circular mandala made of paper leaves in various shades of green.  The leaves grow outward in a radial movement, representing the reaches of the world tree from the axis mundi that connects the heavens and the underworld with the earthly plane.


Upon the leaves are a spiral line, originating from the periphery extending inward into the centre of the circle.  During the ceremony, Chinese calligraphy brushes are passed around, and each participant may write words or ideas representing what they believe is the truths about who they are.  Outside the circle are straight lines, upon which what they believe is the falsehoods about who they are is written.  The spiral shape of the lines of personal truths also symbolizes a kind of pilgrimage, on which a person undertakes to take leave of the falsehood and into the ultimate truth, while discovering more and more about what is real and what reflects their own divine images.