The last few days I have been seeing this idea in my head over and over again. In my imagingings, I see a large goldfish gracefully swimming, swirling, and eventually encircling a woman wearing a long Qing Dynasty robe. I heard this sermon this past weekend on suffering which really spoke to me. It was […]
read on: Goldfish Dreams →Â I have been truly touched by a fellow artist, Nicole France-Coe, whose work is presently in the Leep Art Gallery at the Postema Center on the Pine Rest campus where I work. Her work is about prayer, and has a sense of whimsical reverence to it. Bright colors, and mixes of photo clippings, beads, […]
read on: Mei Yun (Beautiful Grace) →Every Thursday I lead a drum circle in the hospital where I work. Participating in this form of guided spontaneous music-making is probably as theraputic for me as it is for my patients. How often do you get to pound something for joy? To take the tension of life and transform it into a dancable […]
read on: Happiness is a Drum →I have received a request to show the actual dragon dance costume that I created which gobbled up so much of my time this weekend. The actual costume is designed for 5 people of roughly the same height, but for the sake of taking a photo, Yee Lam and our three children tried to make […]
read on: The Dragon →We had a peaceful Christmas at our home this week, and today is another grey day. This is my favorite time of the year – the period between Christmas and Easter when the Michigan weather creates an overcast that makes light dim and for me helps me settle into a reflective state of mind. I have […]
read on: Tombs →I love the smell of incense. I often burn it in my studio when I want to remember Hong Kong, or when I pray. I know that incense was used in the temple in the Bible, though I imagine it wasn’t sandalwood! As a Protestant boy, I wasn’t raised on smells associated with God like […]
read on: Altars →It has been a few days since my last entry. My kidney stones have not passed, my daughter needed to be taken to the Urgent Care Center, and we are still coping with the feelings after our friend’s son took his own life. Our family is not in a horrible place, but we are having […]
read on: Suffering, Beauty, and Bound Feet →As I have written about in earlier postings, my imagination is moved by images of old China. Maybe it is because for me as an outsider there are so many things that I appreciate about the culture that are beautiful, and yet I do not understand them completely either. There is a degree of mystery […]
read on: Reflections on Qing Dynasty Women →I often get stylistic inspiration for my work from Buddhist sculpture. Several years ago, I saw an exhibit in Hong Kong of a recent archeological find of centuries of ancient Buddhist sculptures which showed the way that Buddha came to lose his Indian features and become more Chinese-looking the longer Buddhism was in China. This […]
read on: Thoughts →