subtly august beginnings
[ ...being, a luminous digression. ]
One of the best things about living in the lower Russian Hill neighborhood above Ghirardelli Square is the proximity of Fort Mason. I’ve come to cherish the oasis that is the Community Gardens there, a singular spot of tended nature containing personal history in the form of garden beds and plots, many of them half-hidden monuments to whimsy and imagination. The views of the Bay from the bluff behind the General's Residence and the promontory at Black Rock, spectacles I never tire of. Walking through the green of the Great Meadow... the sight of the Presidio, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Golden Gate Bridge and Mt. Tamalpais in the distance, a visual antitoxin.
Then there’s the old military Fort’s repurposing as a Center for Arts & Culture. The old piers and military docks — from where American sailors and soldiers embarked for wars in the western Pacific, including the Philippine-American War at the turn of the last century in 1899 to 1902 — are now spacious pavilions for exhibits, festivals, conferences… even that two-spirit powwow I attended there not long ago.
Yesterday afternoon, I went there to see the Renegade Craft Fair, a veritable cornucopia of arts and crafts, as well as literal comestibles. ::chuckle:: Just walking in to the pavilion with its dozens upon dozens of booths and tables is an overwhelming feast for the senses, but there was just one thing I was there for really, so I wandered quickly through the throngs looking for it.
I’d ran into this young couple the other day at work, who’d told me that they had brought their art to this weekend’s fair at the Fort Mason. Alex and Ben are artisans and designers whose current project at their studio Dwelden are these origami-like lamps. Made of a sturdy paper material called jacron, they have invented these interlocking panels which, when put together in various shapes, call to mind organic desert plants like various cacti. It’s quite striking to see, and even in that crowded Festival hall, Alex and Ben’s humble little table caught the eye, the glowing shapes of the lamps — which feel both minimalist and textured all at once — compelling the noospheric sensibility. ;-)
I stood chatting with them for a while, taking inspiration from their aesthetic (as artists and as people ::chuckle::). Still young in the world (compared to certain others of us that are in their 7th decade of their own walkabout), it’s clear from their vitae that they bring academic and professional experience that’s already expansive but most importantly: an ethic that I think is key to sanity and equanimity in the frenzied human hubbub that is the 21st century CE; i.e., slowing down and connecting with nature.
Which is, I think, precisely what their lamp aesthetic manifests: light, reified in an organic substrate. While {ironically} light is the fastest thing in the cosmos, Ben and Alex’s design somehow slows light down… the contours and overlapping forms of the lamp-leaves catching the lumens of the bulb inside and filtering it out in a way that says: this is light slowed down, to a wavelength that illumines, instead of overpowers… breathes instead of captures.
I wished the artist couple well in their exhibit this weekend, embedded as it is in the staggering array of other crafts-people’s art and works in that pavilion. As well as in their work and life moving forward. These young people are a singular point of inspiration for me, in my own “last light” work in the coming months and years: slow down, look to the plants.
And yes, they’re t•here, in the Fort Mason Community Garden, as well as other gardens and spaces in this astonishing, peninsular city. I just need to look closely at the forms, and imagine they too can be shaped and scoped into light-vessels. Hmm.
Yup.
[ Speaking of cacti as 'light-vessels' ::chuckle:: — I once set the Samādhi of the Lay Sacraments {SLS} onto a spiky ziggurat in the northwest corner of the Garden. That day, the 5th and temporary element of it was Merlin Sheldrake's magical book, Entangled Life. Here's a triptych of it: ]
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