Letters to a friend part 6

'Thanks my friend,

Meant to respond to your image for Oct earlier, but here I am.

                                                                        photo Holly Woodward

A comforting photo because it says what all gardens should say. That we are welcome and secure and and that they exist because we exist and that our eyes and hearts give them their purpose, their raison d'etre.

When Steve and I put 'Trees and Sky' together we decided (in fact we didn't decide it just happened synchronistically)...... that we would make images from  a max distance from our homes (for me it was 250 metres)...and that limitation was in fact liberating.

Lovely image'...................

I just wrote the above to a friend and this brought in mind, triggered off, a need to put it into some sort of context. Here I go. 

We are a group who got together at the Bristol workshop in July which was entitled 'Photography and Awareness' and we decided to keep our contact alive by sending each other photos every month. This, incidentally, is mine for October

And this is the idea.
No judgement, no criticism, no competition.
Just observation.
No hunting for images. Instead letting the images come to us as if carried on the wind

And so,'Photography and Awareness', although the other way around would make more sense because with a developed and acute awareness, photography just follows like a happy and obedient puppy.
Then again, I would prefer the word 'Absorption' to 'Awareness' but it would sound silly as a title, so we'll let it stand.
You see, when we are in a state of absorption, the awarer is not there as a separate entity and there is no duality. And we all experience this state when deeply into a book or film, or fishing or playing chess whatever. And of course children spend most of their waking hours in this wondrous state until adults begin to interfere. And the deepest state of absorption is when we are in the act of creating, whether a painting, a poem, a garden etc. In short, simply doing the things we love, if we haven't forgotten what these are.
Which takes me back to Holly's image. It is not simply another photo of a garden. It is a state of being where the experiencer and the experience and the subject of the experience have become one.
And this is what I mean by absorption.

Michael, October 2015

Painting and Photography

This article in the Guardian makes me faintly smile; that desperate yearning that photography has had for a century now to be recognised as an art form.

At Art College my chosen discipline was painting. I was a term into the three year course when I realised that being stuck in a corner of a studio with introverts was going to bore me. And I began to strike out sideways, looking for a more adventurous outlet for my energy. Tried ceramics but found it too slow, etching ditto. Then photography! Took to it like a squirrel to acorns.

It wasn't just that it was an instant experience, taking photos, developing film, making contact prints, printing images, not just that. What appealed to me were the people, the students. They communicated with one another, showed each other their images, smoked and drank too much and weren't so damn serious like those painting types.

So this is where my life divided and I found myself equally fascinated by painting, which slowed me down and Photography which sped me up.

Then I become equally bored by the Art Institution itself and started an art adventure club which did daft things to keep minds alive. I would hire a plane for a day and fill it with a hundred students and lecturers and fly off to Amsterdam to see an exhibition. Such stuff. It was performance art of a sort.

So even then I couldn't stay still enough to be considered as one thing or another in terms of a definition.

And after all those years I still think the same way. Which is what?

It is this. I tell young people to just get on and do stuff. That creativity is all that matters, and when you get on that train, it could take you anywhere and you don't have to stop at any station.

And I like to create art communities, to mix things up to turn folks upside down. Just because art can never be static, creativity is a wild river which cuts its own  direction.

And my photography and painting live happily side by side and have a relationship, one with the other. I paint images which drift into my head from the Gap. Then (and it could be any time later), I see that very same image out there somewhere in photographic reality. Oh, not the exact image graphically but they are the same to me in the zing effect they have on my imagination, that wondrous clearing house in my mind.

Here are two images which I offer as an example

 

Don't ask me for an explanation, it would spoil things.


I have opened a community 'The Creative Village' on Arthur Fox's site Innovation Global Network which you might like to join and find out about workshops planned in Italy next year.
Costs nothing to join and is full of interesting people

Michael
At Starstone
Next retreat in Assisi, Italy  'Wellness, Mindfulness: Painting your Life, 12 to 17 October

Awareness in the People's Republic of Bristol

Bristol: Photography and Awareness

I'd written off my car in Italy the day before I had to fly to the UK for our workshop at Hamilton House and arrived in a nervous state knowing full well I should have cancelled the trip (bruises, wounds and all). Glad I didn't though because the experience proved to be a fascinating one both for us photographer/leaders and for the participants I'm sure. This was our first workshop together, Steve, Colin and I, although we knew each other from our collective past and had a show in Turkey last year together with the same title 'Photography and Awareness'

So that was exactly a month ago and during this time we all us had pledged just one photo each by the end of July; the theme 'A heartfelt image'

'The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable'....Robert Henri

This is my fall-back message to self whenever I am working on a retreat or workshop (in fact I must get the T shirts printed) and in Bristol this popped up and swam around my head from start to finish.

Let me explain more clearly by going back and forth in time, starting from yesterday on the beach at Porto Potenza.

The image below; Man the photographer/hunter (may he forgive me, whoever he was)

  

When Tony Maestri and I started to work together at the then School of Photography and the now Arts University Bournemouth, we'd been out in Mexico and California and were fired up on all that stuff out there, stories about all those West Coast Boys (and girls), those photographers who had elevated photography into an art form, Weston and Adams, and then  Imogen Cunningham and the f64 group. I'd met Ansel Adams a few times and remember someone asking him the technicalities of his famous 'Moon over the Sierras photo' He answered 'Heck I don't remember. We were rambling down to New Mexico, all drunk as hell in a dodgy station wagon and happy and laughing. Saw this huge moon and we stopped to breath it in. And I stuck my tripod on the car's roof and just opened the shutter for I've no idea how long...and that's what I got. Luck? No of course not! The photo wanted to be taken and that's all there was to it'

Love that memory.

So, you are getting the drift of this, huh?

In my mind there are two types of photographers, The hunter (image above) who searches outside of the lens and then the poet, dreamer, who operates this (the mind) side of the lens. For the former, the camera is a metaphor for a rifle, stalk your prey, make a killing. For the latter, a mystical machine which interprets his unique inner vision. And there are those, of course, who float in between, searching for that space (gap) where the light gets in.

So, these were the  conceptual seeds we sowed during our great weekend in Bristol. 
And the heartfelt image task?

Looks easy eh?

Not at all! It was our cheeky ruse to throw our kind participants into a quagmire of turmoil, one where they would find themselves lost and drifting between those two worlds.

And why would we be so unkind?

Well, to prepare the theme for the next onslaught of course in Assisi this coming October.

Interested?
For all details of our Autumn programme click here

Michael

The Creative Mind: The Power of Consciousness

THE CREATIVE MIND: THE POWER OF CONSCIOUSNESS

We are not awake

We are mere passengers watching life flash by on a fast train.

Is this what you really want?

To be fully conscious is to live creatively, but how to achieve this? How can we wake up, be fully aware of the preciousness of each day and the opportunity it provides to create beyond ourselves?

Michael Eldridge and Anthony Rogers take you through the labrynths and unchartered waters of the creative mind and land you safely on the shores of the realm of creativity, where past and future dissolve in the timelessness of presence.
Here we paint, write Haiku, tell stories; make the whole arena a living sculpture, an expression of our energy and witness the wonderful flowering of our imagination

                   
                            
Painting by Duncan Campbell who writes this about his experience of The Creative Mind Retreat...

                                      The pines of Casa Faustina

Our venue in the beautiful mountains of Saint Francis is the perfect place for our adventures. It provides us with the calm and energy we need to dive head first into that parallel world which has always been there waiting for us: one of clarity, wellbeing and purpose. And to wake up in the morning on this cool, pined covered hillside at Casa Faustina is like waking to a new day dawning in your life.

                                     Delicious food by Chef Sara

Painting, Poetry, Tai Chi, Longevity and many other things yet to discover about ourselves. And of course exquisite Italian food in the friendly and tranquil atmosphere of Casa Faustina, Assisi, July 29 to Aug 2. 

Michael at Starstone

To write to Michael, click here

I love this photo

I love this photo, because....

 

It was taken at a moment which was not a moment. We had spoken about time and how to freeze it; drive a wedge in it..of timelessness

We are learning so much now about the human mind and body and are overwhelmed with information about what to eat, how to exercise, how to behave.

But you know, when we are brought together in a beautiful space and create words and images together, then the cares of the world dissolve and we taste again what it means to be alive and it is as if we are children once more.

Here's a haiku from retreat

If I wake up to 

Your sun-drenched smile tomorrow

I will be complete

And a collaborative painting by Nicki and Michael

Our next retreat is July 29 at Casa Faustina, click here for info

Letters to a friend part 5

Hi Michael
Interesting.
Yes, I would say more than just a 'subliminal presence' in the painting video; seemed well orchestrated (and not just the music... boom boom!)
Your 80s dream school sounds similar to those based on Steiner principles?
Love the unschooling & Lehla's blog. What a wonderful way to teach & learn about The World. Learning is doing & all the more meaningful & relevant because of it.
Thanks for the thoughts.
Melanie

Michael's reply
Hi Melanie,
Similar yes in a practical way, but our dream was that the Education System would replicate our model and make it a universal learning concept. How naive we were.
And now, as a result of sheer power of the information flow, it seems that the old ways can only crumble in the medium to long term. Parents and their children will just vote with their ipads.
And unschooling will be the driving concept, because their will be a need for centralised organisation.
It is happening slowly through the sheer energy and commitment of a minority.
I have witnessed unschooling projects where children share research topics with kids of other nations;
and sometimes in real time too. It is not linear or chronological and I know that some teachers find it frightening to behold. Kids love it and develop a love for learning.
Which is what it's all about, don't you think? The fostering of a love and passion for learning, for life.

Michael

Check out Michael's Starstone retreats in Italy at the beautiful Casa Faustina in Assisi
Next retreat 'The Creative Mind'

I'm not sure what you'll make of this

Stephen Bray, with whom I shared an exhibition in Turkey last year recently shared his five top tips for creative photographers. In fact he addressed the piece to their spouses, but that's another story.

Not everyone will agree with what he writes. Even I am unsure about some of it, but he does provide food for thought, so I thought I would share the document with you.

Here's the link: http://bit.ly/Top5PhotographyTips

Let me know what you think.

Best wishes,

Michael

The fee for our Bristol workshop is £160, with a reduction for early booking. Contact Colin Tracy UK 01305 889476 or, mobile 07874 910877 for full details.

    or email: colintracy66gmail.com

News Flash... Still places available on our Creative Mind retreat in June in Italy
Call Michael +39 3283535358