my last two years as an artist written for my college but enough to inspire myself

I started my studies at Goddard from an artists point of view. My main question was what is art and how can I not just understand the artistic process, but how can I feel it as an ever present force in my inner being, as well as my social and creative manifestations. I was especially interested in working with communities creating what as the 19 th century German artist Josef Beuys would call social art. Now I would define my studies as community development and social process but I don’t feel that my stream of thought and end result has changed much. It has however transformed in its processes and expanded in its many concepts of spiritual and cultural connectedness. My written and presented work that has been sent in the form of packets, unfortunately cant begin to describe the full participation I have had in these social processes throughout my time at Goddard. It is for me best to include the time line of life experience that I have undergone, along with a description of my academic transformation and development. Both have been worldly and multi cultural experiences, that bridge today’s abstract concepts of art, science, and culture, and developing a strong inner core of social individuality, I am able to let myself become immersed in and embrace community needs and the collective challenge of social renewal. But first I must clarify a term and concept I use in such descriptions that creates a light outline of what social art is. The term social process is a term I use to broadly refer to the fluid workings of human relations. It covers the concept of physical, creative and consciousness evolution on a more macrocosmic scale following the same patterns of a more microcosmic scale that shows more immediate psychological patterns of needs and solutions in an everyday social environment. How do these patterns relate to art? Science? Psychology? And especially culture and community. Seeing as my base definition of my academic goals have changed since I began my studies at Goddard I should begin with analyzing why. My educational and social background was developed during my childhood and years of adolescence through Waldorf education and anthroposophically based communities that were filled with people who lived by the social theories and spiritual beliefs of Rudolf Steiner. I then finished high school and went to Emerson college in England, which is a school based on anthroposophical studies. It was there that I grew to value the entity of community and collective living as well as a spiritual and self developmental education. The course that I took at Emerson college was called the orientation year and was a broad year of education in many fields such as art, science, cultural studies, theater, agriculture, sustainability, and above all spiritual self development. This course required us to do a 6 week placement, with a community or project of our choice, in a location of our choice somewhere in the world. I traveled to Austria to work with a social artist named Johannes Matthiessen. It was here that I worked with Johannes and a group of other students from many places in Europe. In creating sculptural land art that performs a social function in bringing people together in a participatory way, as well as to inspire creativity. We built a seminar park for a hotel where we worked with our art to bring a cultural and imaginative creativity onto the land through sculpture. The second influence towards direct community development came towards the end of my second semester at Goddard when I returned to Emerson to participate in the community. It was there where some of my friends studying different things such as agriculture, education, or art, set ourselves the task in coming years of developing an educational community like Emerson along looser broader guidelines that we felt we could not find in Emerson’s strict Anthroposophical setting. This however did not turn me away from the idea of social art, it instead broadened my concept of art to encompass the pure beauty of social dynamics. I believe very strongly that social renewal is the artistic task of our age. How can one educate art into the youth of today, so that it is never again an abstract and out of reach subject left to those with the proper qualifications, or monetary privilege to be used as private property. I am striving to find how art permeates our cooperative and individualistic function as human beings. How the concept of process can bring fluidity to our community dynamics, be they on a local or global scale. The investigation of bringing culture and art together was one of my first impulses as a goddard student. Before my first semester began, I worked in an aboriginal community in Australia. Once again with Johannes and another global group of students who came together in the outback of western Australia, to investigate how our role as artists could be infused with the aboriginals role as in indigenous culture. They told us their stories and showed us their sacred land, and we, together with them sculpted their story of creation and placed these archaic symbolic images into the land. The few weeks we spent with the aboriginals was at first a cultural confrontation in my inner world which led to many questions, and a desire to know more about cultural development. Questions that became prominent to me were, how do these concepts of rite of passage, of mythology, and especially this connectedness and sacred respect for the land, fit into our culture, what forms have similar impulses that hold true for all human beings taken in other cultures? Especially western culture. The biggest question for me was regarding this strong spiritual earth related consciousness that I was feeling when I was there, and how to find it in other things and develop it in other forms, especially in education. I began my studies at Goddard by studying books on aboriginal culture and incorporating many thoughts that had written down in a journal during my stay in the community in Australia. I ‘d had a very unique experience and opportunity to immerse myself in this community as a friend, a teacher, a student, and eventually as an equal member of the community with a family role in their generational system of individual tasks and social positions. This situation is one of the strongest examples of a recurring situation I have had during my studies, where I have had a learning experience that became interwoven into my life and identity, in such a way that it almost speaks a language of its own. This language is a dialogue of feelings and expression that can hardly be put into an academic form of study. A question for me still to this day is whether I did my own knowledge more good than harm in trying to fit such a pure knowledge into Goddard’s format of acceptable cultural observation. It gave it a clear academic rigidity that I find unfitting to the pure process of cultural experience. I found myself struggling with a big question during this time. How does one separate cultural experience from cultural definition? Or maybe how does one infuse the two in a world where culture is being rapidly diffused along processes of human evolution. Back in the states I found myself in a landscape and cultural surrounding where this aboriginal experience was a fairytale away from my memories of this rite of passage I had experienced in the Australian landscape that I have felt a strong connection to since my childhood growing up in south Australia. I was once again questioning this idea of cultural equivalents. This concept that had dawned on me that certain human truths shine through each culture and manifest themselves in different forms. For example my own American generations desire to be a soldier in a war, is maybe another manifestation of an indigenous warriors striving for meaningful accomplishments in his existence. Tying this back into an educational sense how can we build inspiration in a youths education to strive for truth and meaningful accomplishment in this sense of indigenous right of passage, while still meeting the inherent needs of a human being that have led to controversial and harmful cultural differences. Differences that meet the individual needs but not community needs. I wanted to find ways of connecting the individuals needs with community and environmental needs through a flexible framework or social archetype that could be adaptable to different environments and cultures to form community individuality as well as maintaining this new inevitable global consciousness. My next study involved finding the same indigenous concept in the American landscape. A book that had always fascinated me was Tom Browns book The Tracker. In this book Tom Brown speaks of his childhood and youth growing up in the pine barrens of new jersey being raised by his apache grandfather who taught him the ways of the warrior and the shaman. In my second goddard packet I approached this literature once more in another of Tom Browns books; The Vision in this book tom brown spoke of his spiritual development throughout this time. I was fascinated by the connections I found between the aboriginal stream of consciousness and that of the Native American. As an adolescent I had been to a couple of camps that were based on the teachings and ideas of Tom Brown and the Native American way of survival, tracking and rite of passage. For me it was a very inspiring experience at the time but in a very different context given my age and level of contextual knowledge at the time. During this second packet I found myself immersed in re-exploring this realm. For me, and I think I speak for most people who have had a right of passage experience, it is a process that is hard to put into words and into academic contexts without losing the feeling and true embodiment that comes from the experience itself. The first part of this study I spent in the wilderness of upstate New York with a small group of friends. We organized a retreat with a short experimental curriculum of native based activities. I organized the retreat and led some of the activities such as evening discussions, a silent walk, and artistic exercises connecting this intuitive understanding of the land to the fluid creative impulse. I find this to be a clear example of a transition that is taking place in our age. As culture diffuses we can let it die as it has a tendency to do in certain social patterns in contemporary society, or we can take it into a new cultural impulse and preserve it through a fluid process while adapting to the new global cultural formations of today. For the study itself I also read other books on native American traditions and way of life as well as about Native American spirituality. One observation that I made was that in these indigenous cultures the spirituality is rarely separated from everyday traditions and lifestyles. I left this cultural limb in my studies, although not in my everyday consciousness, and moved in the direction of trying to find the relevance of something like science to this spiritual and intuitive way of observing the land. The function of science in the context of my semester so far was at first a difficult adaption but soon gained smooth passage when I decided to look for the connections. I focused on botany and plant ecology from the point of view of Goethe who spent a lot of time exploring ecological and developmental archetypes and patterns. His methods of plant observation and the discovery and understanding of natural patterns and their functions beyond the abstract forms that science takes on in its separation from a knowledge of evolutionary patterns as well as spiritual and archetypal consciousness. I also studied contemporary breakthroughs in plant science such as explorations into emotional reactions and the variations of growth patterns in different mental environments. For me it is always interesting to find the similarities between the patterns of nature, and that of human society. It especially amazing to observe these organic similarities as an artist. I then became immersed in the political dialogue of today’s current events. Something very unique is happening in today’s world. Something evolutionary which can only be understood from a greater historical understanding. History itself becomes abstract without the permeating threat of understanding evolutionary process and spirituality. I felt in this study that I lost this thread a little bit too much. I found myself becoming too involved in the given context of today’s politics and dialogue that I like all those who participate in this system debating its inner workings, and forget the need for outer growth and evolution. This is the death of true community when we begin to look at the world in a separate dialogue that doesn’t account for anything spiritual, and must be avoided at all costs. I would like to find another way to do a similar study at some point so I can maintain the subject of the current impulse of this age without being drawn into the self perpetuating whirlpool of right and wrong within given guidelines that maintain borders and categorizations with little connection to the reality of the human condition. I educated myself in this packet on a greater contextual understanding of current events within the systems limitations which often don’t allow a great variety of possibility. My greatest lesson of this time was that the search for a complete restructuring of our social and political community is necessary. One thing that stood out to me when analyzing the current political landscape was that everything is shaped around economic structures. Different aspects of this came at me. One of these aspects was the current state of human rights and economically based repression of the human condition in general regardless of class, but also how our education and ways of thought and social development have been shaped around such mental frameworks. The second aspect of this was class based repression. Economic inequality has taken on geographic forms through the global structuring of nation states and concentration of economic and consequently military power. How the issues of human rights and social repression and of course more prominently war, is tied into economic patterns. And last but not least the defined function of economy in general. I did a packet regarding this topic. I looked at the historical context of world trade, the development of free trade agreements, the patterns of militarization and economic gain. And ended the study with some short insights into future change. I did however know that the issue of future change was a more long-term constructive answer I aimed to come by through later studies. In the time between my first and second semester I traveled and was involved in many artistic projects and other experiences took place that contributed a lot to my self development and coagulation of ideas towards a greater social goal through my work at Goddard. I began with the completion of our two year project building the spiritual seminar park in Vienna for a hotel that had before been a business meeting place and now infused this spiritual concept of wonder and inspiration into seminars for personal development in the minds of these corporate executives who became almost like children again when experiencing this park. It was a park that incorporates concepts such as a Native American earth snake with a sacred totem circle at the end. A medicine wheel called the place of the four winds that lies in the center of a small glen of trees in the woods. In another glen scattered amongst the trees are a number of giant stone heads that we sculpted, it is a magical place of fairytales where the archaic looking eyes stare out through faces that spark ones feeling of imagination. If even it is only for one second. There are many parts of the park that resemble such deep cultural concepts of these and inspire one to thought and peace even if it is only brief these encounters need to be created and fostered in today’s age by the artist. From there I traveled to England and once again spent a month at Emerson College. During my time at Emerson I observed the workings of the anthroposophical community and especially the concept of the educational cooperative college for social renewal. It was not just the successes of such a place as Emerson that inspired me but also the failures of the rather rigid curriculum that gave me motivation and self determination that a non hierarchal community process could heal such a downfall. As Michael Spence, a retired teacher from Emerson said in a recent lecture. “It is important to realize that all people walk with questions and our way to communicate and manifest ourselves successfully among people is to intuitively work to understand the questions of the individual, and not think to have the answers but to guide them into a process where they will know the answers themselves.” This concept keeps coming back to me of constant process and transformation through individuals in the social body to individualize the community as a whole to fit a time line of collective transformation and development. The curriculum must be transformed each year to challenge the teacher to further address and understand the individuals needs and questions. A process must take place in both the teacher and the students to find the questions of each individual and work cooperatively towards finding these answers. What came out of this realization and determination was and idea that came from many ideas that a few friends at Emerson, and myself had over our time at Emerson. Being that we were all working towards specialization and qualification in different fields the possibilities for a broadly based educational community opened themselves before us like a blueprint. The ideas for social development are always present in society but why not open up a space for it in the educational community, or maybe in this case outside of the educational community if the standard of social development so requires especially in the early stages of gaining clarity and experience in guiding the educational process. The idea has been left broad and the next few years have been left open for us to learn in our own individual fields of interest towards the development of this community. It also gives time for the idea to gain a dialogue of interested people and transform to the entity it will become in the future. This gave me clarity that my purpose at goddard was to find my role as a social educator and community developer in the direction of social renewal. I then left Emerson and traveled to Greece with Johannes where we organized a project with the 12 th grade from a Rudolf Steiner School in Stuttgart. This project involved bringing this class of students to this Greek community to work with their hands in creating a project for and with the local community. It was an interesting community where we were in Greece and like many islands and places in the country was very split between the community of locals and the constant disorientation of tourists coming to take photo’s and pass through with cultural apathy. The fact that 57% of Greece’s G.D.P is made through the tourism industry, has turned many local communities into commodities. The effect of this has a dangerous social impact because culture takes on the form of a commodity and its role in the balance of the human condition becomes solely economic. However regardless a local community still did exist in the village where we stayed. It was harder however for us to establish ourselves in such a community as true and interested individuals with a concern for cooperative development. We as visitors had to break free of our pre-established role as economic commodities. The project we were involved in entailed many parallel processes of what I would define as social art. One of these processes was the process of the development of the local community to adapt and embody acceptance and enthusiasm towards this new combination of creativity and the opening of a passage into the beautiful and unique local environment. Another of these processes was the development of the young students who had pre-established dynamics that naturally had formed over their 12 years together as a Waldorf class. Another important process was and still is the undeniable fact that tourism is a constant factor in the life of this social body. The question in this case that needs to be addressed is how one can bring a higher sense of consciousness and inner development to the average passerby. Another process was the combining element of those three dynamics. It was the finding of these answers that defined the success of this project and taught me invaluable lessons regarding the new possibilities in a culture of global travel and its effect on local communities. It also answered a question that many have posed before me. The question of social privilege. Many seek to impose guilt on those with privilege in this world despite all of our mental consciousnesses are being weakened by deteriorating elements of social imbalance at an equal rate. What I learned through this experience was not to blame the weight of a guilty conscience on social privilege but instead on my previous lack during my travels of social participation to promote and heighten social regeneration. Social privilege and access to knowledge only heightens my responsibility to incorporate it into my life to benefit the greater social body. The project itself involved the rebuilding of a path up a mountain that had been devastated by a fire some years back and the bath had been abandoned and overgrown. We re’ established the footpath and from that perspective we established the artistic element. Along the path we created the topic of metamorpohisis. One who comes to this path, be they a local, a resident from another part of the island, or a tourist from somewhere else on the globe, they encounter this concept of metamorphosis and experience it as a journey up to this solitary chapel high on a rocky crag above the ocean. Engraved in marble plaques on the way up are writings of the greatest teachers and discoverers of human evolution. On giant marble stones as one ascends the mountain are the carvings of beautiful transformational archetypes. At the base of the mountain is a stone with carvings of mathematical patterns and concepts of geometry and physical formation. Halfway up the mountain is a huge marble stone onto which is carved the image of the archetypal metamorphosis of the plant by Goethe which coincidently I had studied in my botany studies a semester earlier. And at the top was carved an archetype that was originally drawn by Rudolf Steiner regarding the evolution of man and the resurrection of a human impulse that is symbolized in our culture by the biblical impulse of Christ in each of us. Although has other cultural manifestations along a similar stream of consciousness. Both the community and the students took part in creating this journey of permanence in the local landscape. The students could not have comprehended when they embarked on this creative journey, the immense effect it would have. Upon the projects completion they whole local community threw us all a huge celebration followed by festivities, dancing, a sharing of culture, and above all the restoration of faith between communities, that tourism and the treatment of human intermixing as a commodity, desensitizes in all of us. This concept of bringing students out of their classrooms and into world communities an a constructive and creative fashion of transcending the defined borders of economically based social interaction is a concept that education must embody in today’s age. This is what Johannes Matthiessen bases his traveling concept of social art on, and this case is a premium example of the effectiveness of such an idea. This group of students underwent a transformation that had permanent effects of their collective will. They experienced themselves entering a community with the knowledge of cultural divisions and with subconscious barriers that western society has imposed on us. They had the opportunity to experience the dismantling of such social constrictions and the opportunity to see themselves succeed in community enhancement. It can have quite a strong permanent effect on ones social and individual will to see himself succeed. All of these developments together are what come together to form what I would define as social art. From there Johannes and I traveled to the mountains of Austria where we embarked on a new project. The background of this project involved a lot of money and expectation. Johannes had bid his idea among many other contractors who were presenting their ideas to the famous ski resort town of ramsau on how the town could develop more features of attraction for the coming year. The concept itself offers a lot of financial and community restraint because certain individuals had invested in it and had expectations along the lines of a theme park. This of course also offered us opportunities to once again expand the idea of tourism and within the concept itself offer a place for people to react with wonder and inspiration. Especially prominent in our stated purpose there was to create a place for the “entertainment” of children. The way of transforming these economically based theme park ideas into something of any meaning, is where the role of the artist can either flourish or die. Many artists in this modern day and age can easily take a job such as this and create images of utter perfection based on the monetary imperative of following strict guidelines and directions. An artist is always going to have boundaries set for him, and a successful artist is not one who is able to work within those boundaries through a wider variety of economic opportunity, or in many cases corporate sponsorship for the use of art to endorse economic profitability. This is a path of refuge most artists take. The true creativity an artist must harness is the transformation of the boundaries. Too many artists take on the concept of art from a selfish and elite striving for privilege and recognition. If we are to physically envision the boundaries of our creative social environment as we can do more than well in such a situation as building tourist features in Ramsau(which is the type of situation most artists find themselves in for financial viability) , we have two extremes that the artistic crowd would tend to drift towards. One of these would be the extreme of obedience to the demands of preset social expectation. As Picasso stated; this would lead to solely decorative function of art. The other extreme is the alternative taken by strong individualist artists many offer self oriented abstractions of introverted self experience. I would relate this to what Kalle Lasn author of Culture Jam and editor of the magazine Adbusters would call design anarchy. Art is presented to us everywhere we look, on billboards, in magazines, advertisement is all around us and done with a superb aesthetic plan, we are bombarded with this extreme aesthetic desire while we constantly fight against and increasingly associate art with the self interested economic strategy of capitalism. What Kalle Lasn proposes in his theories is complete design anarchy changing everything and anything so it can no longer represent economics, and toss art into such dissarray that in reforming it will gain meaning again. But there is a middle ground that few artists are able to find which is not within the set social boundaries or outside of the boundaries. It is working with the boundary itself to transform it These few weeks in Ramsau working with Johannes and a group of other students and workers from all over Europe were a struggle and success of just these questions. The answers lay in the breaking down of the objectives themselves. It was the social attraction that they were looking for and they were playing to the element of thrill. Thrill itself then can be dissected into a broader concept and even its synonym; wonder. Especially the task of creating places for children’s entertainment incorporates this question; how can we incorporate ones sense of wonder, questioning and exposure to the concepts of beauty and truth. We manifested our ability to recreate pre set ideas and our artistic element was able to blossom and offer wonder to the people there. We had 5 giant steel structures built and over them we sculpted with cement to create giant archaic heads that are scattered out on the ski slope each of them about 40 feet tall for the children to ski down through each of them has a door where one can go inside and read the fairytale of the ancient spirits of the mountain. In another ski slope higher up by one of the alpine lodges we designed and with the help of excavators and local contractors dug out part of a hillside and constructed it like the head of an eagle and in one eye and out the other constructed a cave that one could ski into and stop to look out through the eyes of the eagle over the beautiful valley and then back out. We also built another cave on a slope nearby where one walks inside and coming between the rocks there are crystals lit up from inside. One spirals inwards in this cave of boulders and crystals and it feels as if he goes deeper and deeper into the earth. For the child who’s life is marketed and targeted by media and a dead culture of cartoon thrills and amusement parks this real experience of ancient tales in the land will stir true imagination in the child and a desire to truly wonder about the world, to truly desire a connection with real stories something that childhood battles with today. A true artist to day is an activist because he is responsible for transforming his mental environment and creating mental environments for his surrounding social body. Another part of this project I always mention separately because even though it is a place of wonder for children it also has an amazing effect on all people. This part of the project was out in the middle of a field at the resort right by the area that also is used as a swimming beach during the summer. In the middle of this field we constructed a zodiacally oriented stone circle. The idea of this project and the existence of something like this seemed like a fairly simple concept to begin with but something spiritual that I cant yet comprehend how to explain guided this project through a process that seemed to achieve something predestined. The landscape was shaped in the forms of the zodiac symbols that fit their respective positions. We had 13 stones weighing between 10 and 15 tons each, which when laid out in the most appropriate positions to fit the different zodiac signs. They also fit perfectly both with the landscape and the gesture that is seen manifested in the zodiac symbols. Our working process became very spiritually tied to the transformation of the space. When the circle was finished it looked beautiful with the 13-15 ton granite boulders standing around majestically tied to the zodiac which met at this 13 th center stone shaped like a table. This was enough to be proud of alone but soon afterwards it gained acclaim from spiritualists some local and some from other places in Europe. One man claimed to have been led there from his home in France by dreams. Another Austrian man said he had had a vision about this place. The owner of the resort, almost sarcastically intrigued by this, offered to have a geomagnetic reader come and measure the energy of this place. Johannes agreed and the next day a man with dowsing instruments came and measured the energies of the place. I personally witnessed the man stand between the stones and his instrument remain still. It was when he stepped in front of one of the stones that his instrument began to spin with such force that he claimed later too have never seen such a strong concentrated energy outside of Stonehenge or Chartres cathedral. This energy radiated out from all of the stones and met in the center where it condensed and shot up when the man stood on top of the center table his tool spun at such a speed that he immediately stepped down not wanting to bend it. For the first time in my life I asked myself the question what is the humans role in the evolution of the earths energies. What is the artist in relation to the earth? The final project of the summer took place in the town of Neumarkt Austria where one of Johannes’s most famous parks is situated. The concept we were working on was human biography. So immediately a new field of human and community evolution springs forth when we look at the biographical development of the world. Just as countries have their biographies and communities have biographies, what’s interesting to observe, is the pattern of human biography. When we meet and experience another human being we often subjectively size them up in relation to our self without realizing we are meeting another biography. We are meeting someone who has manifested along similar patterns as our self and the term biography becomes a study of variables. The purpose of this biography park was to define constant human patterns and growth processes and build a biography garden where one can clarify these patterns and begin to analyze the variables of each. It is currently used by healers as an experiment in alterative therapies. It is formed around the concept of a therapist or psychologist becoming the role of biographical counselor, exploring the inner and outer landscape of the human being, and giving the person an opportunity to see the process as a whole. This project was significant for me not only because of the new things I learned on the subject of biography (Johannes encourages an active study by all the project members into the topic we are working on through discussions, lectures and readings) but also because Johannes had a conference to attend in Brazil and left me in charge of over seeing the project. It gave me both an opportunity and a challenge to feel and fully embody the process as my own within the group. Many people participating in these projects finish with an amazing sense of group accomplishment, but the self accomplishment is always harder to comprehend. The park itself included many little gardens walkways, courtyards and sculptural concepts. When one walks down the steps into the bowl shaped garden of white flowers and white stone, one experiences the first seven years of life, childhood, high intuitive and spiritual knowledge, but no clear definition. From here starts a counterbalancing process. The next garden is yellow, with sandstone walls and sweeping shapes it’s the garden of exploration finding balance, of leaving the comforts of childhood with a leap of excitement towards what’s ahead and often very little recognition of what’s behind. It is this colorful joyous time that needs little definition just a pure experience of growth. This is also one of the most fundamental times of education of refining and preparing these boundless energies for what lies ahead. When one comes to the end of this garden he is faced with a stone dolmen which he must crawl through. Engraved in the stone floor is the golden figure of a young adult. This is the place where the human being is initiated or finds his rite of passage. He struggles to fit his young soul into this fast growing body that is now experiencing puberty and must come to terms with feelings of sexuality, of new sensitivities and responsibilities towards other human beings and the world around him. When he exits out the other side he is now in dialogue with all the other ages in this labyrinth of interactive dynamics he gains his first sense of overview and immediately acts accordingly. The shape of the path coming out of the dolmen is square with a square well in the middle that represents the beginning of fluidity. The stone walls it is built upon are a grey squarish shape. A lot of kinetic energy is held in this formation, especially with the central element of water. This will form itself when the being grows fully present in the body which happens usually at the age of 21 when the ego is finished incarnating and a direction is clearly chosen towards ones desires and goals. The human impulse in these young adults then shoots forward into a triangular shaped garden that is perfectly formed and shaped like a ship the stones now have a red quality and the tip of this triangle is the beginning of an impulse while the back end of it is struggling with the developmental inhibitions of childhood. From here the garden takes on spiraling forms and majestically sweeps in an organized fluidity in what makes up the largest part of the garden two giant spirals that eventually meet and have to fit through this tight space to go on. This is a crisis point. From here there are a variety of paths one can take all leading out of the stone formations and into the garden of old age which is surrounded with uneven hedges and an archaic type of wisdom. Everything is made too look worn and is softening with a new life. This is the most living part of the garden. It’s peaceful and shady and very inward. From here one exits into the garden of death. The garden of death is once again a nurturing bowl but in the center stands a tall jagged piece of stone 15 feet tall reaching into the sky, a formation among the clouds. These gardens and their designs speak stories, patterns and processes. When one walks through this garden one experiences all of these phases of his life past present and future and begins to get a physical understanding of their proper associations. A therapeutic exercise one might try is to understand the feelings and comforts or discomforts associated with different phases of life. For example one may feel comfort in the yellow garden of childhood which would maybe lead to thought on how the transition to puberty and adolescence was addressed in this persons development. Maybe one would feel comfort in this stream of choleric energy in the triangular red garden and maybe this would lead to one reflecting on how rhythms and patterns were established in the transition to a full fledged process of long term manifestation of ones mid life process. In this garden there are all the stages of ones life but more importantly it shows the places of transition. These are always what biographically challenge us the most. It shows us also a very important community aspect. We see an aspect of self healing through biographical understanding, and one of socially fostering and allowing one anothers transitions. This is an aspect I hope to look at more in the future and is something that we need to incorporate more into our education and our culture as a whole. There is something in these projects with Johannes that is a very unique manifestation of the anthroposophical movement. It is an idea that Johannes presented at a major anthroposophical conference at the Goetheanum in Dornach Switzerland which is the center of the anthroposophical impulse. Johannes was asked to speak alongside the two most renowned leaders of the anthroposophical society and he presented this new concept of what he was doing. It is an idea that confronts the anthroposophical methods of action in the world but also an idea that achieves the same social effect. Amongst anthroposophists this choleric way of confronting the world can cause friction within the established social environment, and has done so, but should not always be ignored or toned down as some anthroposophists choose to do. In each of these projects there is a harnessing of an immediate impulse and the will to achieve it in the freshness of the impulse. Any artist would question if you as an individual have weighed out all the factors long enough or thought deeply enough into the desired effect as well as the inevitable unexpected side effects, and within reason. However there is something really unique in that sense of choleric willpower because not only does it bring emotions and social juxtapositions to the immediate forefront, but it also brings dialogue to this same immediacy, mentally and verbally. Within this energy these moral justifications seem to resolve themselves in most of these projects through an accelerated process of social will. An example of this was in the building of the stone circle in Ramsau. There was a good deal of controversy about whether one can bulldoze part of a hillside and in the space of two weeks create this stone circle to the fullest of its conscious potential and yet we succeeded in doing so. The coordination with the land and the uniquely powerful energy that we created, is not confined to that single project. It is present in all of them. The biggest question I among many others who have worked with Johannes have to ask is, why? Johannes would describe it, as well as myself through my own experience of such a project, as a meditation that comes out of this working impulse. One becomes so deeply involved in such an engaging way with the social group and the material he uses, that it becomes as if some greater force of the planets destiny is working through us. When we work socially and collectively with our creative impulses we must do something that many anthroposophists cant do, we are forced by the equality of the human group and the forces of environment and material, to stop perpetuating an egotistical presentation of our individual knowledge. Instead we recognize that we as artists are not the source of the creative and transformative evolution in the world, but rather that evolution works through us, we have the absolutely personally enriching opportunity to become a part of it this is how the human being evolves mentally, and I wouldn’t neglect consideration as to whether some of these other places of strong energy such as Stone Henge or Chartres Cathedral were transformed through a similar harnessing of this evolutionary and meditative social working impulse. There is no “do not harm” law for artists and their environment only do not harm without creating healing with purposeful care and consciousness of why you harmed in the first place. One should be able to socially, and within the whole of ones conscience justify the process in the end. In anthroposophy one would joke that this is a formula for being a choleric. Footnote A Returning to Goddard in the fall all of these concepts and questions were still fresh in my mind along with this new sense of what I was doing. I was also, as I always do watching the worlds workings around me. Events and mentalities I began to see in a new light the relation of science to transformation, the relation of the social element to this same process. And most importantly the individual human condition in relation to the universe, the community, and the perpetual transformation of what it means to be a human being in our modern age. Out of these questions I developed my study plan. I started out the semester with this thought of human biography in the community sense. Another way of describing that concept would be history. In this historical biographical sense I started by analyzing what I am trying to affect as an artist and social activist. The most immediate culture that I have contact with, and is constantly shaping me as much as I am trying to shape it, is American culture. In this first packet I looked at the writings of Howard Zinn because of the way he writes history and shows the perspective of the american people on transforming america into what it is today. This is what I can relate to best as someone who uses the word transformation a lot in each paragraph and strive myself to be a part of this cultural and universal transformation. I was very interested to observe and compare such historical writings by the likes of zinn and chomsky to what is reported in the average history textbook that defines the most widely accepted comprehension of history. I did however find it difficult to highlight critical comparisons because the textbook left out any sense of better process, it defined freedom in exclusive and narrow terms in showing the accomplishments of history and gave what I would best describe as a skeleton of social theory that ignored the etheric forces of human manifestation within that system that fought for women’s rights, for racial rights, for labor rights, and most commonly ignored indigenous rights, the right of cultural freedom itself was built out of the ashes of a culture that once would have never questioned hierarchy To study human community and internal workings alone forgets another very strong aspect of life. The impact we have as a race on our surrounding environment. My second packet regarded this. Especially in an evolutionary and historical sense. An author that specializes in this type of analyzation is Jared Diamond. I spent time reading Diamonds theories of social development and its use of the planets resources. He shows many examples which I later looked further into. One of these examples is the rise and fall of a large and abundant civilization on Easter island. He also highlights similar examples of the Anasazi Indians of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, or The Mayans, as well as the Greenland Norse and the brief settlements of the Pitcairn islands. Diamond then compares these older social and ecological patterns to some of the drastic human situations of today. One of these examples is the nation states of Africa that geographically developed under colonial powers into, not only patterns of exploitation, but also an imbalance within itself of population and sustainable use of resources. Rwanda is one of the most extreme examples of this, especially the connection between population and resource balance and the drastic social unrest during the genocide there a decade ago. The division of Haiti and the Dominican Republic is another clear cut dissection of the rise of civilization along different patterns. I also investigated the connections between global warming and other current ecological issues that are affecting our planet currently and could possibly jeopardize life as we know it eventually. All of These nation states if anything have served as separate social experiments of success and failure. One cannot isolate them in today’s global age because we are permanently intertwined in our cultivation of resources, and our national responsibilities for previous devastations of one anothers civilizations and cultures. The biggest question that arose out of this study was what are the biggest issues and how can we fix them. The biggest problems of today’s socio/ecological patterns fit into two categories. One of them being the effect of exploitation and the political boundaries that allowed the forming of unsustainable population-resource availability and use that is always accompanied with social unrest, unless a far more brutal repression creates...well, quite a similar effect. Sustainability has become one of my main points of interest in the field of social renewal and cannot be forgotten by any artist who seeks to remain abstract with his role in society. By this point I was feeling a bit trapped in a microcosm. Ever since I was a child, and I have observed it is the same with many people, I have sat outside at night after the sun goes down and wondered whats beyond this planet and how it all relates in a universal sense. The typical question “how did this all come to be” is what I addressed in my third study that semester. Following the guidance of a Waldorf teacher friend of mine who regularly took me out to teach me about the constellations and movements of the stars, I looked at astronomy from the point of view you would learn it in a Waldorf school. I started with the cultural impact of universal discovery through the ages. In understanding the scientific theories of how things came to be and how the micro and macrocosmic patterns within the universe work, one must first become connected with the process of deductive reasoning and historical discovery that has shaped and formed this knowledge. Only then can the student be an active participant in further discovering the world of science for himself. If science is taught as a process instead of abstract concepts it can be much better understood by the student and applied to life itself to give spiritual understanding a grounding effect. I went on from there to write about the concept of art especially as Josef Beuys and Rudolf Steiner had defined it in relation to the evolution of the planet, the human being, and the cosmos. I had documented a couple of lectures and discussions with Johannes regarding the topic, and also read Rudolf Steiners analyzation of the seven social arts. These arts are architecture, sculpture, painting, speech theater, music, dance, and thinking. In that particular order they are listed in a human evolutionary sequence, connected at the end by the golden thread that streams through all of them and connects them all to one another; thought. One of the most important things I learned was how these arts fit into the universe and the human being in patterns that shape our culture. I also accompanied this study with full descriptions of the seminar park we built for the resort in Austria. Part of the project there, was to not only build these sculptural concepts for one to experience sacredness, but also to describe to the visitor, its philosophical or cultural origin and connecting thoughts. For this project we came up with texts that will be mounted near the sculptures that also give people an opportunity to challenge the more literal thought and apply it to themselves. It bridges the gap that excludes the less educated people from the knowledge we seek to manifest with our art. These texts were made up of poems, quotes of past thinkers, or other cultural connections, and we also described how one would connect such a concept to a cultural origin or a self healing inspiration. For me the reflection on the projects always gives a brand new perspective that develops the ideas of future projects with a fresh strength. Throughout my time back in the states during this semester I immediately felt like my artistic tree had lost its leaves and quite literally the seasonal change brought me to a very inward state, which was personally a very difficult transition having been involved in all these social art projects and brand new ideas of community, society, activism, and the beginnings of understanding how to approach them as an artist. It was here where art had to become a bit more literal for me and I knew that the routines of school work and running my stone masonry company would push the creative impulse out of me. Two aspects needed to take form within me one was how to keep my school work and masonry work artistic, and the other was initiating something new to replace what I had temporarily left behind for the winter. My new process was painting and I started painting with acrylic and some watercolor. I started this exploration of my inner world in late September and I painted this process increasingly throughout the fall closing time of my outward social manifestation. During this process I analyzed the needs and reactions of my state of being, and especially noticed the patterns become parallel in many of those around me. This study for me was presented in the form of a process paper but it also opened windows for me in terms of fostering and nurturing the transition to winter that has its delicate sensitivities in both the individual and the community. How I was able to experience this seasonal transition towards inwardness was through art. The question now for me is how can this seasonal transition from social art to fine art be incorporated into education and social development so that it nurtures the individual and the community into an understanding of soul process of breathing as a community. Throughout this semester and the winter break following it I kept my art going at a steady pace. My painting spree continued through to march when I once again went through a transition towards the social impulse of art. and without meaning to gave painting a rest at a well needed time when I felt satisfied that I had completed a developmental phase through it. Throughout this time I was also running my stone masonry company on a daily basis and a local holistic healing retreat having heard abut my work with land art asked me to come and do a very large artistic stone project. Together with the leaders of the establishment I came up with a plan to build stone terraces into a hillside running down to a beautiful shady pond. On top of these different stone terraces they have now planted herb gardens, rose gardens, an area with a gazebo, and other environments of the sort. Each of these terraces has an individual environment and function. The stone work itself is the main art however in the forming of this land sculpture. In total, 280 tons of stone were precisely laid together in walls as high as eight feet tall with structural integrity so it will stand for 100 or more years. These terraces are designed like giant earth snakes. Some with sweeping curves, some with more acute inward curves, some with narrow flights of steps going up between the walls, some with double sided walls and flowers planted inside, and in all of these walls we built little features and designs such a shelves, or in another I built a giant stone flower. I worked with a crew of about 5 people so it ended up taking on the social element of a working meditation. But something was unique for me as an artist in this situation and it was something I had constant struggles with internally and artistically. I was the leader. Not only was I responsible for a 30,000 dollar art project but I was also responsible for steady employees and being a fair leader, which is always hard because I don’t really believe in hierarchy but on such a project because of the different levels of skill and physical ability I had to evenly distribute labor and skill so people could enjoy their working time and,out of the willingness and friendship I developed in the group, everyone was doing the work as an artist, and to the best of their potential. This for me holds economic truths that should be incorporated into how and why we work together as a society and conduct trade. I returned to Goddard for this semester after a winter filled with a lot of needless conflict within my friends and I began to wonder how to address these problems in a way where I can express my true feelings and voice them without creating unnecessary defensiveness from friends, and how to better understand others needs and feelings to achieve ways of working with them. I studied non violent communication and conflict resolution alongside a historical and political study of the social workings in Israel/Palestine. I incorporated a fictional account of the black civil rights movement in the south of the United States as if events had evolved along similar patterns with the blacks being the jews, the whites being the Palestinians, and America still being a British colony. This study came at the beginning of my transition from winter inwardness to summer outwardness as well as entering my adult life at the age of 21. It wasn’t so much the non violent communication that I was impressed by but the knowledge of how to find empathy in another human beings needs and that all differences can be worked with collectively. The social structure of a community that seeks to cast off the dependence and interconnectedness we are bound to by this system of modern civilization, is another very fine line to walk. This system is ingrained in our patterns of thought, but what would society be without these patterns of thought? What would society be if we have nothing to lose? Only a world to gain learning from the mistakes of the failed system and with our social empathy find new ways of working together? The Zapatistas can show us. It was very inspiring for me to read about the social developments of the Zapatistas and learn how these methods of non hierarchal, cooperative living can exist within the present system. Many lessons can be learned about their participatory democracy, their spirituality and love that they will arm themselves to defend, and most all their ability to just say in the most artistic and creative way; “ya basta” when enough is enough, when the price of their money is blood, and the price of any sustainable future whatsoever is community. My most recent study was a study of peoples power and the courage of a 500 year peoples struggle in the Republic of Haiti. I started out the study wanting to know if a Zapatista type of situation was possible there. To know the answer to such a question one must look at how the current global situation has been historically ingrained into Haiti’s culture, economics, and politics. This study ended up really being a biography of Haiti, and had a lot of emphasis on the actions, ideas and leadership of Jean Bertrand Aristide as a political figure. I was inspired by his view of participatory democracy, and his clarity of class consciousness. He walks a fine line that we can all learn a lot from the successes and failures of. This confronts another really big question how does one manifest ones ideas on a more global scale dealing with the elements that come with that. Power and its effect on one as an individual, an understanding of the workings of the power struggle within elite and socially prominent positions, as well as the introduction of inclusion in the political spectrum, is the biggest question in Haiti presently, as it is in many places worldwide. And now here I am back at Emerson College drawn back to the other half of this social group that I see myself working with in my life. What could be a more perfect time to sit down and assess my process so far, as well as question my current streamlines of thought and where this is all taking me in the future. Some discussion has arisen amongst a group of us regarding community ideals especially addressing them in the spectrum of Emerson college because this vision of an educational community is physically vague but within ourselves we must look at the social patterns at Emerson College and discover transformation within this to achieve our beliefs because our basic ideals are nothing unless they can dialogue with the ideals of the other. They will always find their similarities. So from here where do I go? Geographically I must strive to solidify my sense of place and right now I would say I am still in the early stages of this. My travels continue from here to Australia and later in the year, South Africa, where I will explore communities and landscapes and socially and spiritually seek connections and universal teachings to further multiculturalize and challenge myself and my development of an educational and cultural and cultural foundation that I can initiate on a social level. Another of my immediate goals is to maintain a dialogue of ideas with other people with similar striving and interest in participating in this idea of social renewal. My ideas are coagulating and solidifying and it is a very good thing, I am privileged to have had the opportunities I have had. But that’s only half of the challenge, what comes next for me is the social aspect of this impulse. How do I properly share it with others in a way that I feel my individuality and educational belief system are understood as well as making space for others to bring their ideas into this dialogue with no less strength than mine? The answers lie in the process to come.