My latest work will on display April 16- May 16 2008 at
"Smooch"
264 Carlton Ave, Brooklyn
NY 11205
ph 718-624-4075
Opening Party May 8th 2008
6.30pm - 8:30pm
Nearly every morning this winter I walked across the park with my dog and often found myself looking at the complicated shapes of the bare branches of the trees. Almost instinctually I started taking photos. of them not realy knowing what I was doing. I played around with the mandala concept and it became clear that that I was seeing more than just the shapes before me.
Fort Greene Park was becoming a meditative space that was part of the rhythm of my life. This exhibition is a record of that time
These pictures form part of a series I will completing throughout the year
10% of all sales to be donated to the Fort Greene Conservancy
FORT GREENE PARK
Fort Greene Park is located in Brooklyn, New York, on a hill overlooking Wallabout Bay and downtown Brooklyn.
1846, Walt Whitman, the celebrated poet and then editor of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was writing almost daily urging for a park in Brooklyn. The park would be a "lung" to provide the densely populated city with free circulation of air and where the people could spend a few grateful hours in the enjoyment of wholesome rest. As a result, Washington Park on the site of Fort Greene was established as Brooklyn's first park in 1847
In 1864, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who had achieved fame for their design for Central Park, were engaged to prepare a design for the park.
The park's master plan also included a monument to the prison ship martyrs. The Revolutionary War prisoners who died aboard the wretched prison ships were buried in shallow graves on the shore of Wallabout Bay. As time passed, their remains were uncovered or washed out to sea. Their bones were collected by Brooklynites and ceremoniously buried in a vault on Hudson Street, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. By the 1860's, this vault was in a state of disrepair, and Olmsted and Vaux's plan created a final burial place and monument for the Martyrs.
MANDALA
In various spiritual traditions, mandala may be employed for focusing attention of aspirants and adepts, a spiritual teaching tool, for establishing a sacred space and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. Its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises
mandala can also used to refer to the "personal world" in which one lives, the various elements of the mandala or the activities and interests in which one engages, the most important being at the centre of the mandala and the least important at the periphery. Depicting one's personal mandala in pictorial form can give one a good indication of the state of one's spiritual life
Fort Greene Park was becoming a meditative space that was part of the rhythm of my life. This exhibition is a record of that time
These pictures form part of a series I will completing throughout the year
10% of all sales to be donated to the Fort Greene Conservancy
FORT GREENE PARK
Fort Greene Park is located in Brooklyn, New York, on a hill overlooking Wallabout Bay and downtown Brooklyn.
1846, Walt Whitman, the celebrated poet and then editor of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was writing almost daily urging for a park in Brooklyn. The park would be a "lung" to provide the densely populated city with free circulation of air and where the people could spend a few grateful hours in the enjoyment of wholesome rest. As a result, Washington Park on the site of Fort Greene was established as Brooklyn's first park in 1847
In 1864, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who had achieved fame for their design for Central Park, were engaged to prepare a design for the park.
The park's master plan also included a monument to the prison ship martyrs. The Revolutionary War prisoners who died aboard the wretched prison ships were buried in shallow graves on the shore of Wallabout Bay. As time passed, their remains were uncovered or washed out to sea. Their bones were collected by Brooklynites and ceremoniously buried in a vault on Hudson Street, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. By the 1860's, this vault was in a state of disrepair, and Olmsted and Vaux's plan created a final burial place and monument for the Martyrs.
MANDALA
In various spiritual traditions, mandala may be employed for focusing attention of aspirants and adepts, a spiritual teaching tool, for establishing a sacred space and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. Its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises
mandala can also used to refer to the "personal world" in which one lives, the various elements of the mandala or the activities and interests in which one engages, the most important being at the centre of the mandala and the least important at the periphery. Depicting one's personal mandala in pictorial form can give one a good indication of the state of one's spiritual life
posted by David Barratt # 1:22 PM
