artspiritstudios

December 16th 2012, Sunday 9:24 pm The President of the United States has just ended his condolence speech to the Newtown,(Sandy Hook )Connecticut community that has just undergone one of the most horrific of incidents in the history of the United States. All the while I listened and prayed, I kept hearing words and phrases such as "we are not alone" "we will do this together" "the children are not gone, but are still with us", "the Nation cries with you", and "All of you in Sandy Hook will be remembered for your courage and your strength." The whole time I was so fully and emotionally engaged in this service, I kept feeling a strong urge to create an artwork in response to this tragedy. My thesis work, the white shirts, and the work "Counterbalance" kept reappearing in my mind. I was lead to search my writings and found the following excerpts: "My work has no relevance to worldly catastrophic events nor political and inhumane injustices. It is about the struggles of death, an every day human event, this wound that happens to the rich, the poor, humans of every race. It does not change the state of the nation directly, and does not illicit worldly notoriety. But it does affect a circle of humans connected by the mark of the one that has transcended the physical world. It is something that changes identities individually and collectively. It is what is left." -2010 “We are Not Alone is my exploration of the part of human existence that comments on our connections to all that we come in contact with, on that ongoing tug and pull between the notion of individuality vs. that of a collective conscious; of our identities as humans through the continual absorptions, transferences and transformations that occur in our daily existence. "...the marks that we make carry on, even when our physical beings do not" "The shirts and the marks remind us that we are not alone, that we come from that which has come before us, and with whom we have been and will be connected. That our identities are part of an ongoing collective conscious, and that we are only as individual as circumstances and choices will allow." I began to wonder, why do we as "individuals", and as a nation, feel so deeply for these people, for this community and for these children, teachers and families, that most of us do not know? I will continue with these questions and this writing. It has taken a catastrophe to get me writing again, to inspire me to want to work again.

There is much to consider.