The Qabalah states that we live in an erotic universe, one that connects and exchanges through the senses. Art participation itself is an erotic activity of exchange for both maker and viewer. We are sensual beings exploring the edges of our senses, expanding our association and comprehension of ourselves in the Universe. Eros and creativity as an attracting force can be seen as a fundamental driver of cosmic evolution, connecting all existence from particles to galaxies, a vision of an intimate, evolving reality.

“The erotic is the very act of the universe arranging which bodies go with which. It’s beautiful, if unsettling, to experience the universe organizing itself, caressing itself. O, to experience that pull, that draw of the world! To know — to feel — you are part of cosmic becoming! When you feel that tug of the erotic, when you experience that resonance that makes and unmakes you in the same gesture, that is the universe touching itself.”

Daniel Coffeen

In this workshop, we develop marking vocabulary on thin paper for layering to add a rich and evocative engagement with a large format acrylic painting. Some of the markings that we will explore are rubbings from textures, stencils, soft marks, asemic writing, and marks to release control. Themes cultivated are relationship to materials, receptivity, immediacy of the moment, releasing the conventional eye and availability.

Mark-making is a broad description of anything that leaves a residue from pressure or movement. It can be non-perceivable marks like words or a sunset. Trauma is a kind of marking. Delight and awe are also a marking. When we enter consciously into mark-making, it becomes a conduit for feeling sensations, connection, and information. This workshop will endeavor to extend our relationship to marking and being marked, a conversation beyond what most of us have consciously cultivated. It is not so much for our expression, but to expand our engagement in collaboration with the life around us and through us.

 Register Here

Fridays 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

On-going painting circle, call for drop-in

$260 includes four times, all materials

Large format acrylic mixed media painting

Are you interested in discovering the difference between doing and being through painting? –shifting from perceptions of a reality where you have little control as a perceived center of the world, while at the same time being seriously separate from much of life? This large, bold painting project can introduce you to an identity of partnership, creativity, and even kinship that has the potential to expand your identity and reality.

Come to Anavami Studio on the Westside off Swift St. to join a large-format acrylic painting project. There will be little technical instruction, but unique approaches with various materials designed to develop trust in your own process. There will be no critiques, as shared personal reflections pushing the edges of consensus reality are more interesting and impactful to other painters. Experiments like this in the past three years have proven empowering for participants, inspiring confidence and creativity not only in the visual arts but also in cooking, other daily activities, intimate relationships like child rearing, partnerships, and business negotiations, resulting in new visions of creativity and self-identity.

We will paint on 3’ X 5’ industrial paper with acrylic paint and various materials and implements. Drop-in is $65, and four sessions will be $260 a month. Call Majio with any questions at 831 420-1349

Click Here To Register Online

One of the twenty marking approaches introduced in the first week of each set widens the bandwidth of possibilities outside regular thinking, perceiving, and doing. The process cultivates innovative thinking through the development of new awareness. We will begin the first week of each month by making vocabulary to be used in paintings.

Here are some of the approaches we will explore to shift relationships to habitual reality:

Monoprints on tissue paper to be used for layering images with paintings. We will create various printing masks made from shadow projection and other ways, making stamps and stencils to incorporate into the painting.

Invisible marks are made by changing the paper surface or with clear modeling paste to create marks and texture that are not clearly visible until the paint touches the surface. Because there is little conscious control, spontaneity and authenticity develop in the process, opening unconsidered nuances.

Collected rubbings from textured surfaces combined in the painting process have proved to add subtle fields of emotion, like adding a new musical instrument to a band.

Asemic Writing or writing without semantic meaning, is a hybrid art form that fuses text and image into a unity, opening arbitrary subjective interpretations. Marking is a language exchange with the world in subtle and dramatic forms. To turn everyday writing communication into a visual rhythm and pattern, either as a collage or directly on the substrate, offers an evocative element to painting.

Daily creative practices help us consider a relationship to the world of belonging rather than anthropocentric separation.

The Theme for Retreat San Miguel De Allende Fall 2026

It will be a seven-day stay in an artist’s studio with a small group for a marking workshop.

La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel is an emblem of the town with two neo-Gothic façade towers that can be seen from most parts of the town.

Last time we were there on a fiesta day, 15-foot-high figures danced in the plaza. It is a magical place with a large international artist community.

The flight is usually around $500, and we will take care of our daily food and trip to the hot springs.

Let me know if you prefer certain dates, as we are still in the planning mode.

We will fly into León and drive to San Miguel. The trip is around $1500, which includes lodging, two fantastic restaurants, the pyramid ruins of Cañada de la Virgen, an archeological site, visits to local craftsmen, an instrument maker, and a paper mâché artist— airport transportation & workshop, and materials with Majio.

Our itinerary guide is Migdaliha

Join Us: Call or text Majio with questions: (831) 420-1349

DThe Theme for Retreat San Miguel De Allende September 2024

I have found that doing painting retreats outside the US, in Costa Rica and Italy, gives us a chance to see ourselves and the world in different ways. As many of you know, Anavami Studio cultivates ways to expand how we perceive reality through visual arts practice. Last time we went to San Miguel De Allende in Mexico, the retreat theme was ‘Being Present with What Is.’ The theme shifted the orientation of our perception and experience. We found we at first focused on physical sensations—taking rubbings of texture walls and doors. The city came alive in a way that we had not anticipated through color, sound, and smell. It was a way to be present without judgment. And yet at the same time, I was hit hard by colonization like never before. I realized that it never really registered on a body level. Even though everywhere I have lived in Japan has been colonialized. It was challenging to fully embrace the scene of traditionally clad Indigenous people selling their wares at the foot of the exquisite cathedral and appreciate and feel the feelings. My opinions of human audacity to invade someone else’s land were part of the feelings. I realized how much I had been ignoring in my own country that had of course been taken from the indigenous people.

The theme for this retreat is how we bring back to balance the entitled delusion we have cultivated of our human supremacy. It is one of those basic perceptions of reality that most of us have not given much thought. From an anthropocentric perspective, humankind is seen as separate from nature and superior to it with other entities like animals, plants, and minerals viewed as resources for our use. We are seeing that there is a price to pay for this fundamental misunderstanding. We will be using printing and marking to connect to the land, the people, and the animals. It is not to judge human’s age-old arrogance to ride slipshod over other’s lives, but somehow to see it, experience it, know the history and attitude, and choose to see it in ourselves.

Our group will be small and we will stay in an artist’s home with a studio in a local neighborhood. There will be trips to the hot spring, archeological sites with pyramids, and into the center of life in San Miguel at the crossroads of time and culture. An aspect of our retreat will be to taste an animistic view that everything has a being. In the life force of all things, we are not supreme but part of a greater whole.

Majio

If you are interested or have ideas of what kinds of experiences are needed to shift a fundamental viewpoint from our attitude of human supremacy, please talk to me.