Excerpts
from Peter London's Books
Drawing
Closer to Nature | No
More Secondhand Art | Step Outside:
Community-Based Art Education |
Drawing Closer to
Nature
Publisher web
site: http://www.shambhala.com/
Our
culture's profound separation of humans from all the rest of creation
has produced a deep, diffuse, pervasive loneliness, disorientation,
sense of loss, and fragility that is played out in all our relationships
and through all our means of expression. Rejoining these two aspects
of the original whole; the Self and Nature, is the great task each
one of us faces, the great requirement of our civilization's at this
pivotal moment in time. To the degree that we are able to draw closer
to Nature, too heal this broken primal relationship, our lives- mind,
body, and spirit take on a harmony, grace, a wholeness, and an endlessly
resourceful, gentle and indomitable power.
Our art becomes that way too. As we rediscover our
rightful place in the world, break through the barriers of hand-me-down
ideas and customs that have kept us from our ancient, infinite, dazzling
family of origin in Nature, we newly experience ourselves and our
world. The closer we draw closer to Nature, the more we experience
everyone and everything as family. In this world we are never lost,
never far from home. Two not incidentally linked consequences follow;
fuller, deeper, richer, more authentic art, and more broadly, a fuller,
deeper, richer, and higher life.
In order to accomplish so fundamental a task, a fresh
language is necessary to perceive and name the world anew, for our
prevailing language stems from a worldview that accepts the schism
separating human nature from the rest of Nature. The artistic processes
that shape art offers the power to create a worldview and a view of
our Selves that are in accord with the necessary and inextricable
symbiosis of humans and Nature. Nothing less than an effort of mind
and body and spirit is required to assert a new worldview sufficiently
credible to create a replete and durable sense of being in the world.
Art is such an endeavor. Art is a holistic language
that is uttered from the mind, body and spirit. In this way, art is
a perfect form of expression with which to imagine, investigate, propose
and engage in a new worldview. Employing this power of art, Drawing
Closer to Nature offers a wide range of readers-- artists
and environmentalists, veterans and novice, students and teachers--a
practical guide by which to forge their particular reconciliation
with Nature.
Because art and the creative process are seen as
an entirely natural and universal method of forming meaning, the book,
aims to help readers cultivate a simple, authentic, first hand way
of seeing Nature as it is and we just as we are. As we draw closer
to Nature, two profoundly important and powerful qualities are experienced.
One is that the entire world takes on new degree of poignancy, luminosity,
preciousness, subtlety, mystery and intimacy. The other is that we
increasingly experience ourselves in just the same way; poignant,
luminous, precious, subtle, mysterious, and intimate. For as we draw
closer to Nature, we simultaneously draw closer to our Selves. This
movement reconceives Nature, redefines our Selves, and reframes our
relationships within the universal web. When I speak of the Self throughout
this book, I most emphatically refer to an experience of being distinct
and unique but not separate. The Self is always understood as an inextricable
partner in an infinite corps de ballet that is the world -- all of
it.
The artistic process--in which elements are joined
in such a fashion that their new union creates a more meaningful,
satisfying whole than any of its constituent elements--is the perfect
instrument for drawing our Selves towards a more satisfactory union
with Nature. The artistic process is not merely a vehicle to represent
our current state of mind and affairs, more significantly it is a
powerful practice by which we can work towards the achievement of
desired states of mind and work.
As we employ the artistic process to draw closer
to Nature, and begin to establish a more perfect union, our inner
nature grows richer and deeper and becomes more articulate. Our willingness
to reach, our daring to dream, our coordination of effort in the service
of high ambitions, become elevated to a higher degree. The composition
of our lives takes on a greater unity. How we compose our page, how
we express our Selves through any artistic endeavor, correspondingly
becomes equally graceful, rich, full.
Fantastic claims? On first reading it may seem so,
and I have paused long over these assertions, asking myself if this
is indeed the case. Does drawing closer to Nature by employing a holistic
approach to the artistic process actually produce the resulting artistic
behaviors claimed? Having taught this approach for more than twenty
years across North America, in colleges, art schools, holistic centers,
teacher institutes, to thousands of students ranging from teens to
octagenarians, to "art phobics", naives, professional artists
and art teachers, I am convinced that it does help us attain such
states and degrees of artistic achievement. Everybody? Just about.
Drawing Closer to Nature presents practical employments
of art to enable the practitioner to both draw closer to Nature and
to draw closer to their inner nature. This in turn enables the creation
of an artistic voice that is rich, profound, subtle, and brave. Brave
enough to say how it is when I encounter the world first hand, saying
nothing more, and nothing less. This same healing of the schism between
the Self and Nature has the power to bring about an even greater good,
indeed it is the good that we all seek; a richer, profounder, more
subtle, brave and more grace full life.
No
More Secondhand Art: Awakening the Artist Within
This book means to help you uncover your natural
image-making abilities and so return to you the power that language
has to share and create life. We must recapture our personal and idiosyncratic
language so that we may speak about our personal and idiosyncratic
life. The claim is not that our triumphs in art will automatically
lead to similar successes in life. The claim put forward is more modest
but nonetheless substantial; it is that the ways of thinking about
what art is, what art has the potential for doing, and the strategies
offered herein, are powerful means of awakening the artist within.
The potential of carry over from art to the transformation of life
is real- not simple or automatic, but real. It is this personal transformation
of life through an engagement with the creative process that this
book intends.
How breathtaking it is to start out on a journey
into the unknown…Setting out on that journey in the hope of
uncovering sources of inner worth so that we may step more lightly
and confidently through life is our ultimate goal; our means will
be the creative process.
Suppose life is a journey, an endless, surprising
odyssey in which we may move from naivete to wisdom, from self-consciousness
and awkwardness to grace, and from superficial knowledge to profound
knowledge. The infinite menu of possibilities that life continuously
displays before us may be viewed as an invitation to embark on this
adventure through the varied and unpredictable terrain. The artistic
process is more than a collection of crafted things; it is more than
the process of creating those things. It is the chance to encounter
dimensions of our inner being and to discover deep, rewarding patterns
of meaning.
Step
Outside: Community-Based Art Education
Publisher's web site - http://www.heinemann.com
Artistic expression is born from personal experience.
To the degree that one's personal encounters with the world are engaging
and vivid, one will discover material for engaging and vivid personal
expression. Such experiences need not be heroic or even very dramatic,
but they do need to be personally and carefully encountered….The
arts, whether visual, literary, or performing , are richer in meaning
when they are an expression of experiences that matter deeply. Things
and events that matter, that have the potential to shape people's
lives take place within the immediate environment or community. The
community is the place where friends are made and enemies are grappled
with. It is here that dreams and fantasies are generated and tested,
where the triumphs and the tearful losses of life are encountered.
The community is the web of life that inextricably
embraces, defines, and empowers children and adults alike. Using the
school as its base of operations, community-based art education forays
out into the community for its motivations and its subject matter.
The community is the arena for the creative expression of personal
encounters with one's environment, one's web of life.
This book is intended for art teachers who are still
animated by a sense of social responsibility, who know that artists
require community and that communities without artists are barren
arenas indeed. They recognize the necessary relationship between the
artist and society and wish to acknowledge it in their art teaching….
Community-based art education offers those art teachers who feel their
practice becoming tame and remote- remote from the invigorating hurly-burly
of squiggly children with fresh minds engaging with bumpy but beautiful
life and telling their story clear and straight- a way to revitalize
their professional lives.
