Artist's Statement



I'm not really sure just how I do what I do as I create. As I write or sculpt or paint, play an instrument or sing, I disappear, becoming whatever it is that is being creatively born. It is only in a sort of shimmering aftermath that I realize I have been absent, and like a whale emerging from the depths suddenly 'I am' once more.
I am sitting in a room. There is a window beside me, softened at its edges by curtains, and a breeze pulls through. There is a floor beneath my feet. Where have I been?

Then I look and see that the paper beneath my hands is no longer blank, or the room resonates with the music that has flown forth from the guitar I am holding. Words have crowded onto the page of my notebook like a gathering of gleeful old friends. Something I cannot fully explain, whose origins are a complete mystery, exists, where before it did not.


While I do not know how I do what I do, I deeply know why. Much of the world is in pain, and those of us in it feel, in various ways, the dissonance, as the pain reverberates through. Something is wrong with the way we regard the Earth. Something is broken as we treat each other so poorly, as we stagnate in hate, and as we are absorbed by fear. Something needs to change, as we are so bad to ourselves, as we succumb to doubt, isolation and anger.

As I disappear, I think I must be seeking a solution to some of these challenges, issues, and difficulties. What I bring back with me, in words or images or music, responds to the friction, loneliness, misunderstanding and hurt in the world. It questions the way things are, and suggests kindness, symbiosis, awareness and playfulness. It acknowledges what we may lose if we cannot change from our present course, but never fully deviates from the joy and brightness that is still possible.


- Jorie Jenkins



Tuesday, June 14, 2016






Ahn'ri The Water Beetle:
The Cosmos and the Leaf 
of Origins

 
The Leaf and the Three Bridges

Ahn'ri the Water Beetle explains, “The Universe is quite like this water as it ripples – it is an outwardly moving sequence of rings, fertile with life, in various stages, between birth and death.
In this Universe, this broad womb of light, we arose, a leaf from a great and mysterious tree. The stem of the leaf is our origins, the path we all took, together, for a time. But at some point, we diverged into the Three Paths. This is when Man and Nature split apart, becoming the outer edges of the leaf as Man became afraid of Nature, and Nature fled from Man. The Ambassadors, those of us who are the bridge between, became the seam through the body of the leaf, holding together the two estranged worlds.

We live in a time where Man and Nature are farther apart than they have ever been – this broadest point of the leaf is the present, and to maintain its shape the leaf can become no wider – rather, it must taper to a single point. The bridges between Man and Nature must reach out, drawing the two worlds back together. For just as the stem of the leaf was our common origin, so too the tip of the leaf is our common destiny. Only by abandonning separateness, by coming together in kindness, awareness, knowledge, respect and love, will we once again be whole... The One World, which once was.”



Original illustration, 18x24
$400
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