Andy Goldsworthy in my Backyard
NO ONE CAN LOCK DOWN OUR MINDS BUT OURSELVES
“What happens when pandemic restrictions keep us from traveling and serving the world in person, and all our passion for exploring remains centered in our own backyard? Does the short-term surrender of our physical freedoms imprison us or refocus us as more internally aware builders of a new human identity and reality? Two years ago, during months of forced bedrest and rehab after a climbing accident, I learned something of great value that has helped me ride the waves of this pandemic. Whatever our political or scientific position on “Covid lockdowns and quarantine protocols”, it is important to realize that physical limits may be imposed externally, but no one can lock down our minds but ourselves. If we can allow our minds to view our present experience not as blocked or limited, but concentrated within and telescopically focused, even life within our closer-cropped boundaries will expand like never before. Rather than adding to the conflict created by this unplanned shift in our lifestyles and culture, we can become catalysts in transforming the seemingly negative energy and tension of this phase of evolution into unparalleled advancement. First we must of course survive, and surviving with restricted contact has for many become increasingly difficult, but rather than looking back to what we knew as proven pre-Covid solutions or to a new life built only on social media connections and virtual meetings, we can challenge the blindness of our fixed preconceptions and conditioned patterns. We can penetrate the veil of what is known and watch the mundane and familiar lift like a fog on a horizon of new possibilities, unlimited discoveries, unacknowledged beauty, and people whose efforts open our hearts and make us deeply grateful for the ground which we call home.
COMBINING THE POWERS OF ART AND NATURE
One of my own local lockdown discoveries was Alnoba; Harriet and Alan Lewis’ private NH sculpture park and retreat center. It is a destination dedicated to cultivating collectively conscious leadership and advancing a global culture of creativity and sustainability that seeks to nurture harmonizing relationships between all of humanity and the Earth. With so many of the urban temples of art closed or limited to timed reservations and facing a major moment of downsizing and self-reflection, never has Alnoba served a greater human purpose. Never have the holistically combined powers of art and Nature been more essential to elevating the minds and rejuvenating the bodies of those worn down by the division, instability and loss experienced in this pandemic period.
On the surface, these untamed, seldom seen New England woods seem an unlikely place for a global cultural mission. And, one may wonder why the sculptures of Andy Goldsworthy, Jaume Plensa and others are kept more lost to the solitude of these woods than found by hungry art followers. But soon it becomes clear that their purely held presence is far more powerful than any monolithic sculpture rising from the concrete ground of the most refined cityscapes. Like anyone who has lived in a place where Nature still clings to its innate balance and harmony; where it is silent enough to hear the music of the stars and invoke the cosmic forces of day and night, these sculptures have become part of the undisturbed Nature where they have taken root, and a life in which they both exist in and transcend the physical space of their forms. The deeper into the property you go, the less the sculptures appear as separate objects and the more they evolve as expressions of that energy and intelligence uniting all forms; vibrating with a frequency and reach unmatched by any virtual installation or viral video of the moment.
If one measures the value of Alnoba in social media likes and followers, its unique depth as a well of solace, beauty, strength and positive transformation may go unnoticed. However, with so many of our lives’ trajectories reset on an unknown course, any place empowered by art and Nature and dedicated to restoring our belief that neither our creativity nor our minds’ desire to grow beyond all limits can ever be locked down will be an invaluable partner in healing and activating new life in the days to come. Alnoba is such a place; a place to harvest sparks of renewed confidence in Nature and our human potential and rekindle our visions of a future in which we excel beyond the standards and patterns of the past. Like the sculptures left to stand in their woods, absent the walls of a famous institution or gallery, Alnoba brings us closer in awareness to a deeper resonance, connectedness and potentiality waiting to be discovered beneath the surface of our externally focused lives and identities. Alnoba is not just a sculpture park, but a place that inspires and nurtures a more enlightened re-sculpting of ourselves as part of a greater whole waiting to be realized through a re-harmonized relationship with Nature and an understanding of the subtle as well as physical dimensions our own human nature.
For those few who find their way here, it is also a tangible reminder that we don’t have to travel to the farthest places to make a difference or discover something of profound beauty. Wherever we seek it with an open heart and mind, it is there. Even without mass attention, wherever we plant seeds of Light, they resonate universally. We may or may not see their chain of far reaching impact, but we must never deny, especially now, that our thoughts, feelings, actions, words and works, have unfathomed effects beyond the time and space of their physical origin. We must never doubt that wherever they project some pure and undistorted spark of the Energy and Intelligence networked within all Nature and the self, they serve to strengthen the progress of human advancement. One is called to Alnoba not by clever marketing lead magnets, but by the palpable love and elevating intention which built and sustains it. It radiates everywhere in the space, enters you with every breath, and it fueled my will to create, with ever greater responsibility, love and discernment, an art which breaks the boundaries of our conditioned perception, balances and heals our connection to the Earth, and nurtures an experience of a more unlimited nature and human identity.
Register on our contact page to join us at lightmindimages.com for the December holiday preview of Deborah Goudreault’s latest collection of images entitled “Unfolding Sculpture: Hidden Variables and Cosmic Truths”, inspired by her pandemic period hikes through Alnoba’s Sculpture Park.
GOLDSWORTHY: A Study of Form and the Energy that Gives it Life
I have always felt a deep appreciation for Goldsworthy and his work, yet being present with it at Alnoba was an unexpected revelation. As our small socially distanced group approached his “Boulder House”, a bat flew out of the entrance and auspiciously overhead. Still I was the first to enter, without a flashlight, magnetized by the unknown form waiting in silent stillness within. I thought it would be a vast cavernous chamber, but in the dark womblike space of what most would consider inanimate stone, I felt an unanticipated surge of life, and realized this sculpture is not only about artfully enshrining a boulder with masterful execution, but giving it a place of reverence that recognizes, and magnifies the cosmic currents within its form as both part of a living Earth and who we are. Those who enter or stand at its opening, are given more than a curious or entertaining manmade house of stone. In an experience beyond what you would ordinarily attribute to either glacial boulders or caves, Goldsworthy has given us a space to feel the precious stores of Earth’s memory and the timeless waves of cosmic Intelligence resonating in that ancient glacial boulder. He has not entombed it, rather freed its aliveness and Consciousness for all who will make themselves subtle enough to listen to its presence as an enduring transmission of universal wisdom; freeing us along with it from our limited perception of Nature as solely separate and finite. If to find the answers to the problems of disharmony, disease and suffering we have created, we must first see all the manifestations of Nature as living coherent elements of one universally networked whole, then Goldsworthy’s “Boulder House” offers an exercise in that greater understanding. A place to stand even in a dark space of earth and stone and feel illumined within with the Energy and life that gives birth to the self and all forms in Nature.
Goldsworthy has said that his work with nature is a very physical connection rather than metaphysical, but I think his true art is that he sculpts in a way that transcends these divisions within matter. He not only creates beautiful organic objects, but consciously or unconsciously also magnifies a connection through physical stone, leaves, water and time to those infinite cosmic forces which serve our continued evolution; something of great value now as we struggle to realize the mind, heart, and actions of a more harmonized and perfected humanity. Perhaps the most profound artistic achievement of “Boulder House” is that in what is actually a compact, densely filled space, Goldsworthy channels a sense of vast emptiness; a use of nature that draws the senses inward and creates a refuge from the ordinary external focus of a complex, materially driven world. If one has ever practiced meditation, entering “Boulder House” mirrors that inner process of entering the dark unknown dimensions of the self, something that at first may be uncomfortable or fearful, but as one learns to perceive the subtle Light in what was apparent darkness, one can follow it beyond the limits of the physical body and uncover new dimensions of awareness and the dormant potential of a more unlimited human totality. Even for someone like myself who grew up on a farm and devoted decades to refining a meditative practice and nurturing an understanding of the union between Nature and humanity, walking around its close-quartered surround offered an intimate and uniquely empowered moment with Nature. Born in the glacial belt of New England, this would not be the first time I ran my hands across the granite skin of a great, invulnerable boulder, or felt the hundreds of thousands of years one had travelled to the height of a mountain peak only to be carried back down by oceans of ice to live in our midst. But this one is more than an artifact of Earth’s history. With each step circumambulating Goldsworthy’s boulder, housed as if it was a deity enshrined there, something of its cosmic essence would radiate, flashing in my mind like the quartz inclusions on its face catching errant pieces of light. Where my own body curved its way around its spheric contours, I would touch a space beneath its stone flesh; a subtle dimension of weightless freedom, time transcendent flight, and a bridge to a greater, coherent totality.
THE PERFECT ANTIDOTE
It took a pandemic for me to “meet” Andy Goldsworthy in the overlooked reaches of my own backyard, but his precisely grounded stone works were the perfect antidote for growing global uncertainty and a time where what framed the world we knew for so long is falling like a house of cards. I often find myself connecting back to his “Boulder House” and its sure expression of the unlimited potential available to humanity when we create in harmony with Nature, the Earth and each other. Goldsworthy proved ultimately to be a sculptor not solely of form, but of the possibility that awaits us when we open our hearts to the Energy and presence of Nature, the subtle dimensions of our own universally networked self, and the mutual bonds between us. And if in the silent dark you lift its veil of stone, you discover “Boulder House” is more than sculpture. It is a Shakti House; a place where the Energy through which all forms manifest is felt and honored.” -Deborah Goudreault
Register on our contact page to join us at lightmindimages.com for the December holiday preview of Deborah Goudreault’s latest collection entitled “Unfolding Sculpture: Hidden Variables and Cosmic Truths”, inspired by her pandemic period hikes through Alnoba’s Sculpture Park.
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