"Artmaking As Contemplative Praxis"

This photo essay is a companion piece to my essay “Artmaking As Contemplative Praxis” published by the Center for Action and Contemplation in their Spring 2024 issue of ONEING.

This Anti-deportation Artivism action at Bryn Mawr College was hosted by Professor Jennifer Harford Vargas, Phd. Dr.Vargas invited me to lead a suitcase workshop to deepen her students’ understanding of current US immigration policies. The Anti-deportation “Suitcase” references the policy of allowing deportees only one small carry-on suitcase to take back once they are deported and this policy prompted the question “What would you carry?”. The prompt “I Am a Child” is a rif on the historic 1968 Memphis sanitation strike slogan “I AM A MAN”during the Civil Rights era.Here it references the separation of families by ICE. All the artwork shown here was created by Bryn Mawr students and faculty who attended the workshop.

The “Free Compassion, Gratitude and Love” Installation and art action was hosted by The Church of St.Francis Xavier in NYC while I was an artist in residence making art in the choir loft studio, dubbed “The Upper Room”. Xavier is a Jesuit church and I was inspired to do this action as a contemplative practice.The painted prayers with one of the three intentions written on the back, were placed in a rusty metal bowl. The bowl was replenished with new compassion, gratitude and love painted prayers as parishioners and visitors took a painting-intention. They were instructed to gift the intention to a stranger, a family or friend or to themselves. Playing with different palettes, I used rubber stamps, watercolor, pastel, oil, graphite and pen and ink. During the month of June, close to 800 small painting-prayer-intentions were given away.