We are very good at not noticing that we are not noticing. 

We’ve all experienced something like driving from point A to point B and having arrived at B remembering little or nothing of the trip. I decided years ago that I didn’t want to do this life-trip and have a white-out about the details of it when I got to the other end.

Choosing to notice our lives is a gift that has tremendous value in the moment as well as over time. We can become more of who we are by opening our awareness beyond the boundaries we have allowed ourselves until now. It is a cumulative process that imprints and archives in the recesses of our minds and spirits, images and learning that would otherwise be lost to us. By the end of our lives, we’ll be able to look back and re-gather life experiences just by our having ‘noticed’ them to begin with. We’ll be able to touch those memories across the ribbon of time, even those places that have remained silent for so long. We’ll call upon old pictures to tease what our minds have redefined over time…because the mind does that.  It tweaks, enhances, deletes and reconfigures events of the past.  It can create something more worthwhile remembering that way. Those old memories should hold our feet to the fire of truth for much of what we ‘remember’ is construed by wistfulness, and is exaggerated and distorted by the ego. Little white lies basically. Hmmm.

I was in my 30s when I committed to walk more consciously through my life. What began as an exercise, even before I began painting, became a very natural process over time. The annoying thing about choosing to be conscious is that when you fall into stretches of unconscious behavior, you are conscious of it.

To really notice our lives means that we first must make the decision to do so and second, to create a taskmaster, an invisible witness of sorts, who keeps a vigil on our commitments reminding us that we are dozing or cheating ourselves of the gift of ‘seeing’. Call it what you choose…the Noticer Guy. Sometimes, Noticer Guy only needs to whisper. Other times, a bullhorn usually works.  WAKE UP!

Once we commit, our observer’s voice will pop up often enough to wake us up to what we are doing, whether we are conscious of the world around us today or not.  Don’t sleep through the experience. Gather it all in and store it, savor it, be amazed by it, grossed out by it, grow from it, share it. Notice it.

We may not like some of what we see. Judgements show up. Visceral responses to things that bug us. The thing is, we can’t un-see what we’ve seen but we can change our perspective on what we see just by choosing to do so. No matter how ugly, gross, disturbing or “just plain wrong” something is, we can, over time, learn to see ‘it’ differently and from new places in the continuum of perspective because new information does that, wisdom does that…and time. As long as we are conscious observers and don’t attach hard and fast judgments there remains opportunity for that opinion or perspective to morph quite elegantly into something other. As all things universal, the entire process is dynamic and fascinating.

Good news. We CAN change our minds about the validity of ideas we’ve formed without sacrificing our sense of self. We can admit, even to ourselves, that we were wrong…and be OK. What we believe to have been the ‘wrong’ opinion was right for us in the moment we formed it. We can learn to see it in a different way and whatever the aspects of our perceptions were, distorted or not, they were real at the time and are still part of our memory bank’s options. As hard as it is to un-see what we’ve seen, it is also a challenge to un-learn what we’ve learned. Many of us learned not to admit we were wrong. We learned a myopic, my way or the highway operating style. Still, it is possible to unlearn… and we all have some un-learning to do.  Just sayin’.

                  Judgment creates a labyrinth that complicates the path to creative inspiration.  

Next Post: The power of a question

One of the gifts we have as human becomings is that of a creative spirit, whether we recognize it or not, whether we use it or not. Like a pilot light, the flame holds constant in a quiet place until sparked by desire, need or magic to shine a light on a new thought or a new idea.

We also have a kind of invisible bubble around us that can either limit our ability to access that creative light or set it free. I’ll call that bubble our personal paradigm. The boundaries of that paradigm are defined by our beliefs, age, upbringing, education, experiences, history, society, gender, genetics, how we are wired up and so on. It is a filter system through which we see our world and the possibilities in it. Part of that system we create ourselves to either be open or closed….at some point in our lives…out of the choices we make. If open, your system or filter may be more easily willing to accept new information. It will help you adapt to change, new perspectives and points of view…even gladly seek them out. If, however, you operate from a more or less closed system, chances are you’ll resist new thought, you won’t grow much and you’ll pretty much stagnate in the status quo, left behind in the domain of the mediocre, a rigid relic. Hmmmm. I’ll discuss later the stuff that stops us cold from ‘hearing or seeing” it.

The other gift as individuals is choice. In fact choice is a universal imperative.  Either you choose or the world, someone or something else will choose for you. No pressure there. Choice can redefine or shift that paradigm and change the lens through which we see. Seeing differently, in turn, influences what we create. With each choice we create new possibilities and new perspectives. We grow. We get smarter. Whatever you do,whatever your choice, “you can’t learn less”, as Bucky Fuller said.

There is, out there, a school of thought that we have no free will…at least not as much as we thought we had….that we respond to external stimuli based on our wiring and that the choices we make are governed by some genetic factor. Well, that is possible.  I’m choosing to believe otherwise until I don’t anymore. I think most things need to remain possible in order for our collective human experience to elevate itself to a higher level of consciousness. So, I have no position at this point on free will…except curiosity. It was an interesting discussion on NPR so I am sharing it.

A former associate of mine, now a doctor in education, once said to me: “I wish I could see the world through your eyes for just ten minutes.” It never occurred to me that I was seeing any differently  And, what did she really mean by that? I find it curious that I never forgot that statement and how many times I have wondered myself, how ‘do’ I see the world?  How do you see it?  What influences it and why should we care?

We should care, I decided, because how we see our world and how we translate it informs the way we move through it and how we relate to it. We should care because how we operate in the world makes a difference.

One does not have to be a painter, a sculptor, a writer, musician or a designer to demonstrate ‘seeing’ in a unique way. How one hangs a painting, places a sculpture, selects a design created by someone else or connects with a complex riff is, in its own way, a demonstration of that. How one translates life experiences, good, bad or otherwise is an expression of that unique quality in observation skills…the ‘how‘ it is you are looking at “it”.  So, it’s not so much what you see but how you look. Maybe.

Being. Seeing. Expressing….unique as a personal life’s blueprint, impressionable and malleable.  

Next Post:  Noticing life between the lines.

In my first post, I discussed the What if Factor and how I came to create an exercise that explored seeing the world in extra-ordinary ways. The images you see here are the result of that process.  You can see in these collages that there are very few actual human parts but our minds easily translate an egg for a head, spinach for hair and seaweed for fingers as perfectly comprehensible.

What we see is what we want to see and, of course, we understand what these creatures are and are not. So our ideas about what a face ‘should’ look like can easily be adjusted and acceptable within the context of “why not” or “what if?” Imagination and the absolute rising up of childlike, joyful, “all things possible” conjuring, manifests in crazy, fabulous and innovative outcomes. Sadly, that sense of all things possible we are born with and have as children gets smothered out of us by the ‘experts’ in our world.: parents, teachers, older siblings and friends…society in general.  “Be reasonable” they said. “That’s crazy”. “The world doesn’t look or work that way”. Yet...the individual drive to bring ourselves and our own way of seeing the world is an undeniable force.  One way or another a unique and creative spirit will unveil itself.

What if?

One can learn to see in a way that is new again, on purpose and with intention. Though I am not speaking about seeing in only creative ways, it is impossible for me to visit the concept of shifting the ‘how’ we see without overlapping into the domain of creativity. The processes of conjuring, creating and information gathering are linked but are not the same. They inform one another but do not necessarily find their path from the same information bank. For example, conjuring and inventing straddle the hemispheres of the brain and dance between logic, intuition and spontaneity.

Creativity to me is making the conjured thing come to life in a uniquely magical or powerful way. How we observe and translate the world obviously plays a part in all of this. Sometimes I see things in a linear way but I rarely create that way. Obviously, pulling something together may become a linear process but the spark comes from an undefined cosmic bank of nudges that show up in fragments, pictures, aha’s, intuitions and awesome ‘accidents’. We move between the two modalities of logic and spontaneity all day long.  It’s not something we think about and each of us spends more time in one domain more than the other and in varying degrees.

Most of us know where we fall on the continuum between logic and spontaneity as our dominant style. That prevailing influence is to be noticed…not self-defining. Just know that labeling yourself as one thing or the other, left brain, right brain, can keep you trapped there and it’s not necessarily true that you are one or the other ever. It’s always a dance between the two hemispheres. Actually, it is more of a modality than a place. If evidence shows that you tend…which we all do…to hang out in one domain more than the other, just notice it and know the envelope is there to be pushed. If you naturally tend toward a linear operating style, there are ways to break out and become a bit more spontaneous.  Same goes for those who rarely seem to visit an organized and logical sequence of steps toward an end.  It is possible to move more in that direction when you need to…even though it may feel really structured. and claustrophobic.

It isn’t about changing your operating style. It’s about noticing it and appreciating that we don’t all do that the same way. Try stretching a bit into other ways of processing your world and understanding that much of how you do that is already hard wired.

As I said, my intention is to share what I have discovered about seeing our world and the powerful effects that noticing has upon who we are, who we become and our relationship to all things. Some of my thoughts may seem a stretch to some. To others, not so much. That’s good actually. I simply ask that you suspend judgment and consider these ideas. If you take away but one concept or idea that creates an aha moment then I’ll be content for it only takes one small adjustment in how we notice to make a difference in our world-view which then makes a difference in how we show up in that world.

Next Post:  The domain of rigid relics

What if you could learn to see the world in a different way; to see the ordinary in extra-ordinary ways? And what if you could free your mind in a way that allowed for more and new perspectives to show up? 

What if a new way of seeing made room for the usual to show itself in different and surprising ways? This is about that process. It’s about the What If Factor…What if you could see beyond the obvious?  The process of creating these images required seeing beyond what was evident…and being open to possibilities.  Yes, I was creating art but each aspect of the process is transferrable to how we observe and operate in the world in general. Learning to really ‘see’ gives us more options, more opportunity, more choices, more understanding and more aha moments.

The process  of getting to the What if Factor, an idea I was chasing, began with a simple question of how to demonstrate seeing the ordinary in extra-ordinary ways? This is what I have learned from the exploration of that process.

This blog is not so much about art directly as it is about noticing our world in a way that will get us to the end of our lives having actually seen it. Each post will explore aspects of why we see the way we do to what we can do to enhance our abilities to embrace or conjure new points of view if we choose.  Also, what gets in our way of seeing from a different perspective? I have some thoughts as to how we can “gather” more ways of seeing and why that is so important in today’s world.

This is basically a mind dump that, although the entries are related by purpose, they will likely be random or tangential, reflecting my own way of non-linear processing. Though I personally seem to operate in a more spontaneous modality, I will make an effort to find a linear thread for those of you who are wired that way.

I will sometimes be wrong, change my mind, be persuaded by someone who can do that and say things that may be intuitively based and unproven scientifically by our standards of empirically based “truths”. We don’t grow by sharing time with people who see the world in exactly the same way.  We grow by seeking out the differences.  So, if your point of view is different, share it. If you can enhance my perspective on something, I look forward to it and thank you. I encourage you to participate in my feedback loop. In advance, I thank you for your thoughts.

You can study the detail to better understand the process by selecting images from Mixed Media in the Galleries

Next post:  Seeing the ordinary in extraordinary ways.

How I arrived at these images and the exercise of What if?

Awhile back I was creating a process for a group of corporate executives attending an ‘innovation’ retreat. The goal was that by the end of the day, they would have learned to see the world in new ways…with new eyes or beginners eyes. The seminar I was designing spoke to curiosity, noticing, perception, intuitive intelligence and ‘syntropic’ influences in manifesting something from nothing. As well, I hoped to question our relationship to all things and encourage the idea of conscious noticing as a path to growing our options in the world.  As an artist, creating art as metaphor and demonstration seemed a natural vehicle to get my points across.

I stressed a bit over how to demonstrate that. The accompanying pages are a result of that process and the images, which are my own, are the result of the search for the exercise that would illustrate the journey through ‘what if’ and possibility. The exercise was designed to demystify the creative process as well as demonstrate our ability to actually see objects around us in unexpected ways; to pull them apart, turn them over and take risks with outrageous choices in perspectives. I wanted attendees to have a measurable result of having learned to see differently…creating a new reality out of existing situations, seeing the ordinary in not so ordinary, even extra-ordinary ways. This is some of what I hope to share with you.

The illustrations on these pages lay dormant until time, technology, purpose and passion inspired me to merge three mediums…collage, photography and digital manipulation. Each medium informed the other and the whole really did become greater than the sum of its teeny, weeny, annoying, little parts in synergistic and unexpected ways.

The central characters were created through collage. The pieces were carefully chosen for shadow, light, color and texture. The selected artifacts, accessories and fabrics had to have a design wow factor. Overall, the images were influenced by my love of fashion, the human form and a sideways world-view. You will notice that the pieces were selected from wild life, sea life, the cosmos, fashion pieces, fabrics, jewelry, food, furniture, hardware and so on.

I eventually redid backgrounds for my images.  I  photographed clouds and forest fire smoke from a spectacular forest fire we had here in Sun Valley as backgrounds and manipulated them in photoshop to compliment the central characters.  The computer was obviously critical in synthesizing the efforts in each domain. Scanning, mending, tweaking, colorizing and merging the different aspects of my work all happened at the Mac..

So much time passed by the time the work evolved to what it is now it seemed patience had finally met passion in a technological time warp. Well, not a completely true statement. Having patience would be an alarming stretch to describe me. More likely, I put the images away…forgot about them…rediscovered them and did what I usually do. I asked myself “Now what? and What if?

Since beginning this work I, truly, have never seen the world in the same way. Each time I turn a magazine page it is a challenge for me to see the images for what they are without translating each color, shape, artifact or gown into what might be possible “if” it could morph into something else. When I see an antique furniture ad, I may notice the sweet lines of table leg. I also see the possibility of what else it could become. If I turn the page upside down I see that same leg in a new way. What was just a table leg holds infinite opportunities to become something else just by turning it slightly. Combinations of possibility abound in the world around us and we need only to be awake to notice them.  The ‘What if” Factor underlies, at many levels, how I operate in the world and how I translate what I see into what might be or could be if…

I invite you to join me on this journey of living in the question….many questions, for now, in the domain of possibility, shifting our personal paradigms and rearranging our world views.

Next post:  Why care about how we see the world?