In-Bodying the Field Blog #1A: Introduction to In-Bodying Marking, Yielding: Gravity/ Levity with Bear of Gravité Poem

Anavami Center

Gravity/Levity-Yielding with Bear of Gravité Poem

Anavami Center, In-Bodying the Field explores not only marks, but entries into marking that for a practiced artist can redefine relationship to materials, images and the world. For the unpracticed it begins a fluid interaction with the world that in time will transform your present definition of art and your participation with it. For everyone it has an impact on how we see and perceive ourselves in the world. The work that arises from this kind of exchange is playful, adventurous yet ever risky. A challenge to most by not trying to be right or good. It flies in the face of the social norm and to most hits at the core of self-identification. At the same time, it opens new ways to witness creating.

Five years of implementing and exploring in this way I have found that I am much more aware of my relationship to everything in my world. I am not separate, nor could I be. Like many of you I have known this theoretically for a long time, but it has not been alive as it is now. I am not making art but participating in the creative exchange with which I am in relationship.

In this six-month series we start with the basics of marking making as yielding that orients us in space. Our mind/body is a fluid edifice of incessant motion that sources our capacity to mark in the greater field to which we belong. As we gain deeper insight, experience through exploration into markings it becomes clear that it is fundamental to all exchanges of information, communication and expression. Using our body, transmitter, receptor, and archive, as the template of the Universe…. the history of evolution of our planet is within us we will explore the template of the cosmos through what is most intimate to ourselves. The intention of this work is to discover our individual voice as we develop expression of the poetry as we live on the planet at this time.

Investigating gravity in our marking circle, both somatically and in terms of shapeshifting, a series of somatic experience with poems arose for me. The first being:

Blue Winged Bear, mixed medium, canvas, 3’ X 6’

Blue Winged Bear, mixed medium, canvas, 3’ X 6’

Bear of Gravité

the great Bear of Gravité

            sat on me this morning

                        like the Chinese ghost

who sits paralyzing you in your bed

I appealed to her blue feathered wings

            to flutter and lift into the air

                        but not the slightest movement

                                    nor levity

In time I found my way into her vast heart

            Huge—full of stars and planets

                        un-named things of color and darkness

 I did nothing there….

for a long time…. but feel into the space

and when I was no longer pinned to the bedsheets

I got up for a cup of tea…

Majio