Beauty Is Healing

When a tornado tore a swath a mile wide and seven miles long through the city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama last April, killing 239 people and leaving thousands homeless, offers of help poured in from around the country and around the world. People gave freely of blankets, food, clothing, the basic necessities of life, and many generous services. However, as Tuscaloosa resident Jean Mills thought about all these much-needed contributions, it seemed to her that one thing was missing: beauty. People needed some beauty to lift their spirits.

Thus was born Beauty Amid Destruction, a remarkable response to a large-scale calamity. Jean set out to invite artists to contribute digital images of their original work, setting only two criteria for submissions: that the work be beautiful and that it not challenge anyone’s idea of what was appropriate (i.e. no nudes). Photos of original paintings, drawings, sculpture, quilts, metalwork, and photographs began to arrive. With donations from individuals and suppliers and the support of the Tuscaloosa city council, Jean and the other Beauty Amid Destruction team members had the images copied onto vinyl banners measuring 4 by 6 feet. They then hung the banners between poles and placed them free of charge in front of homes, public buildings, and lots whose owners requested them.

The result is a gallery tour unlike any other. Brightly colored art works stand like gateways in front of empty lots, skeletal houses, and on chainlink fences in both residential and business neighborhoods. Right after the tornado, when people drove or walked through the damaged areas it was to stare at the devastation; now they go to admire the art works and the spirit of compassion and generosity that put them there. "Garden Play" by Kevin Irwin is pictured above.

“The main message about putting paintings in front of the destruction is that art can help with recovery,” Jean said recently. “There is the recognition that one’s surroundings impact one’s emotional response and how one feels about life. Putting art out there where the tornado had done such damage was a way to acknowledge that and to try to provide a counter to all the negative stuff that people were being bombarded with.”

Reflecting on the long process of trial-and-error that the Beauty Amid Destruction team went through to find the best way of reproducing the art works and placing them, Jean has volunteered to make the group’s expertise available to any other community wishing to mount a similar project. See BeautyAmidDestruction.org for more information.

Guerrilla Knitting

Tired of stepping over all the cracks in the sidewalks of Paris, artist Juliana Santacruz Herrera decided to take action. To make her repairs she chose not concrete and asphalt, but a much softer material: yarn. Weaving together brightly colored pieces that fit each of the broken places like their own cozy sweaters, she set to work, embedding the fabric in the cracks and holes. Instantly have become magically transformed.

Whimsy is a gift, and it's relevant and welcome under all kinds of circumstances, including trying and difficult ones. By exaggerating the ubiquitous cracks, Santacruz Herrara actually transforms them into something friendly and delightful. She points to the problem, but without blame or judgment. Her work and that of other street artists bring beauty to the city in an unexpected way.

To see more great street art, visit StreetArtUtopia.com.

The Importance of Shouting NO!

This is a photo of Benny Zable, an Australian street artist, who has had a visible presence at Occupy Wall Street since almost the first day. Wearing his long dark cloak, which he usually tops with a gas mask that completely covers his head, his hands hidden in white gloves, he stands mutely as passers-by read the dire pronouncements his costume urges on them: WORK — CONSUME — BE SILENT — DIE and I RELY ON YOUR APATHY. Benny’s presence at Liberty Park (its original and far more fitting name than Zucotti Park), in the hub of the American financial industry, brings visible spectacle to the art of saying NO, which Occupy Wall Street is doing so magnificently.

Yet even many people who support the aims of Occupy Wall Street and the rest of the Occupy movement spreading across the United States raise a consistent criticism: Why aren’t the protestors making up a list of demands? Why don’t they have a clear focus? Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times even tries to “help” the protestors by coming up with the agenda he feels they’re lacking. According to this point of view, you don't have a right to protest unless you know exactly how you want things to be different and can express it,

Many great revolutions have been launched with a loud, collective, passionate NO. “No taxation without representation,” shouted citizens of the thirteen American colonies in the 1750s and 60s. NO was the battle cry of the people who gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, because they’d had enough of military rule, high unemployment, police brutality, and low wages. “Dites non!” (say no) is often the call to change that leads demonstrations in France.

Sometimes you have to shout out NO before you can articulate a more clearly defined YES.

And it’s been a long time since Americans have said no with any great conviction, almost forty years, by my count, when protests against the war in Vietnam finally helped bring an end to that conflict. Since then we Americans have mutely submitted to a whole slew of injustices perpetrated by those in power, including a war against Iraq launched wholly upon lies; shenanigans by the mortgage and housing industry that seduced hundreds of thousands of people into believing that they deserved a home they could not afford; a financial system that has brought many people to poverty, joblessness, and despair, while wealthy perpetrators continue to earn obscene amounts of money; and a war policy that defies the Geneva Conventions by permitting the practice of torture.

It is high time we shouted out NO! NO! We will not be victims any longer! NO: We object to being treated like this! NO: You may not carry on as if you the ruling elites represented the “99%” of the rest of us. NO: We will not be silent!

Occupy Wall Street is saying YES in many ways that the news media has ignored. They are being scrupulous about the way they handle financial contributions. They keep the park where they live and protest clean and free of litter. They compost. They drive the generators in their media tent through stationary bicycles that are constantly pedaled by volunteers. They are trying to imagine a better society and to live it. But the fact that the world perceives them as proclaimers of NO is really not a problem. They are speaking for many of us.

“I call attention to the dark side,” said Benny Zable when I spoke with him last week at Liberty Park. People who encounter him are shocked by his physical presence, his cloak weighted with dire messages. “They react,” said Benny. “They have to ask themselves: Where do I stand?”

Seeing the darkness and reacting to it is not a problem with the Occupy movement. It is their great gift to America. Saying no, we invite expanded consciousness of where we are and ask ourselves how we got there. Then we can say YES to something new and better that we will create more equitably together.

A Win for Salmon

When you think about a big, long, arduous environmental struggle, you are likely to picture legislation, lobbying, education, late nights spent strategizing and stuffing envelopes... but you don't typically think of art, theatre, and children.

Those elements played a big part in the twenty-year struggle of activists in southeastern Washington to get the 100-year-old Condit Dam torn down. When the dam was constructed, it blocked not only the White Salmon River, but also cut off the run of wild salmon and steelhead to their spawning grounds.

And from the start, salmon have been big players in the efforts of the activists, including Daniel Dancer, an artist (and member of the Radical Joy for Hard Times Council of Advisors). Frequently, the group held "Salmon Pageants," where children, carrying large, colorful cut-outs of the fish, would "breach" a wall. Part-ceremony, part-theatre, the pageants kept the vision of an undammed river a reality for the activists.

Repeatedly the officials in charge of the dam insisted that they would not remove it. By 2011, however, they determined that the cost of repairing the century-old structure would be higher than tearing it down, so, thanks to the persuasiveness of economics, the activists and the salmon won.

On October 26, 2011, when the children who enacted the first pageants had become young adults, the dam was exploded. Daniel Dancer has made an engrossing short (18 minutes) film, "The Art of Dam Removal". It includes footage from newscasts of the first protests, interviews with activists along the way, and the exuberant salmon pageants. The pay-off is exhilarating. When the pent-up river bursts through the breach, you can't help feeling it's a wild creature jubilantly bursting out into the world it remembers from long ago and can't wait to get back to. Even the guys in hardhats are exhilarated. "She's free!" one of them exclaims!

"Pilgrims of Place"

Powers of Place Initiative is a remarkable (and gorgeous) website and cyber-meeting place for those who recognize that places and people have a vital, living, flexible connection with each other. One of the best features of Powers of Place is "The Field," a terrain of the website where you can sign up and be in communication with others doing interesting things to delve more intimately into the question of place... spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and artistically.

A recent article on the site by Maila T. Davenport describes three different ways to be a "pilgrim of place," in this case the Love Creek area of Santa Cruz, California, which underwent a terrible mudslide that killed a child. Davenport joins two other healers, each with a different experience, approach, and perspective. Her story shows how "we live in layers of lived experience and each one operates from a particular kind of intelligence, telling a vital part of a place's Story."

David Hume on Wounded Places

Today I came across an essay by the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher David Hume, "A Treatise on Human Nature." Turns out that in 1739, Hume was considering how what I call wounded places affect people. Here's what he wrote about the difference between places that have undergone some kind of emergency and those that are just not very attractive:

"A barren or desolate country always seems ugly and disagreeable, and commonly inspires us with contempt for the inhabitants. This deformity, however, proceeds in a great measure from a sympathy with the inhabitants, as has been already observ’d; but it is only a weak one, and reaches no farther than the immediate sensation, which is disagreeable. The view of a city in ashes conveys benevolent sentiments; because we there enter so deep into the interests of the miserable inhabitants, as to wish for their prosperity, as well as feel their adversity."

Now, we can (and should) argue that it is arrogant and insensitive to contempt for those who live in a poor, unlovely place. But what's interesting here is that three hundred years ago Hume was thinking about how nature strikes the mind and heart in different ways, depending on what has happened to it.

How can we move deeper into this question? How can we assess our own responses to a city torn apart by an earthquake... and a city falling into disrepair as a result of poverty? Where is the "environment" in each? Where is "Nature?" Where does our compassion lie in each circumstance?

James Hillman on Beauty

Here's something from that innovative and opinionated psychologist James Hillman:

"That the world is loveless results directly from the repression of beauty, its beauty and our sensitivity to beauty. For love to return to the world, beauty must first return, else we love the world only as a moral duty: Clean it up, preserve its nature, exploit it less. If love depends on beauty, then beauty comes first, a priority that accords with pagan philosophy rather than Christian. Beauty before love also accords with the all-too-human experience of being driven to love by the allure of beauty" (from "The Practice of Beauty" in Uncontrollable Beauty, ed. Bill Beckley, with David Shapiro).

Hillman goes on to say that what's really repressed in psychology today is not violence, not misogyny, not child abuse: it's beauty and the acceptance of how important beauty is to the well-being of people. Perhaps there wouldn't be so much absenteeism at work, he suggests, perhaps the attention span of school students would improve, if people could spend time in places that were lovely and cared for rather than sterile and ugly.

It's a great essay, worth buying the book for, although there are a lot of other interesting pieces in this collection as well.