South Orange and Maplewood Studio Tour

Hi everyone! Please come out this Sunday June 2nd from 11am-5pm and enjoy the South Orange and Maplewood Studio Tour! With over 70 artists (including me) participating it's going to be an awesome day!Tour details and map: http://www.studiotoursoma.orgTour Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/StudioTourSOMAI'll have my sculptures, a new series of paintings called "Holy Bones", illuminations, etchings and a new series of abstract landscapes. There will art for sale in every price range, but no purchase necessary. (See samples of older work at the end of the post, my newer work needs photographing :)I'll be showing with:Wendy Bellermann and her fabulous black and white paintingshttp://www.studiotoursoma.org/artists/wendy-bellermannand Thea Clark an amazing jeweler and artist. You will NEVER see jewelry like hers. It's completely awesome and not to be missed.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkJpgy60olYMaps will be available for the rest of the tour here...I hope you will come out and enjoy a glass of wine or juice, some good conversation and some beautiful art with me!

Jewelry by Thea Clark

Interview with Sybil

Below is a new video interview about the meaning behind my work. I hope you enjoy it. Blessings, SybilLink for email subscribers.

Windows on Heaven Contemporary Icons Artist Talk

A small excerpt from Sunday's artist roundtable from the show Windows on Heaven: Contemporary Icons. I speak from 4:43 on how my sculptures relate to Icons and how taking Icon painting classes at the School of the Sacred Arts influences my work. (The sound is a bit off for the first minute or so but it gets better) It was an honor to be included in this show! Link for email subscribers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dXF3j-VyVk8

St. Francis Mid-Way, a Poem

The Healing Nature of Wounds by Sybil ArchibaldThis is a poem I wrote last year when recovering from losing so much blood. I felt great deal of despair and I found solace and hope in the example of St. Francis. I know I've posted a lot about St. Francis in recent months, but I promise this will be my last post on him for at least a few more!

St. Francis, Mid-Way, Speaks

On Stigmata

As the warmth spreads softly through your hands

You cannot realize how much it will burn

For years it will burn

Brighter and dimmer in rhythm with a secret cycle

but always aflame

always searing

bringing the spirit to boil

I am the pot for a sacred recipe I will never know.

My side cries the blood-red tears of a mother for her Son.

I will never forget.

My feet produce a holy smudge as I walk

Each step is a sacred stab

Painting soil, rooting me,

My palette: blood mixed with the trod upon earth,

Earth and man are one.

On Internal Boiling

I keep these ever bleeding wounds hidden as best I can

My secret shame that I should be singled out for God’s mark.

Many times I feel I cannot bear it.

Many times I wonder if I can go on.

But I do

There are moments when the pain and anguish subside, like the brief parting of clouds during a grey winter’s day

Then I am flooded with Your Light

I forget to wonder

I forget embarrassment

There is only You

My joy

Then the clouds close and blood fills my eyes.

I am here on earth again.

And the best I can do is bask deliciously in the echo of that moment.

Putting one wounded foot in front of the other,

Trusting that the pigmented marks I leave, my sacred painting, serves a purpose.

What the Ordinary Person Says of their Wounds

I am wounded to the core and my fever burns unceasingly.

I keep these ever-aching wounds hidden as best I can

My secret shame that I should be singled out, that I am different.

Is this God’s mark?

Lord, let my expectations and my mark be one.

Grant that my unfulfilled and broken plans

Dissolve in your sacred boiling pot.

I have endured all manor of physical pain.

But nothing compares to the suffering of lost dreams.

I throw myself on your mercy.

Let this small, circumscribed life have meaning.

Dear Francis, show me the way.

- Sybil Archibald 2012

On An Artist's Responsibility to the Light

The Teacher: Opening to Love

Light

by Allama Prabhu

Light
devoured darkness.

I was alone
inside.

Shedding
the visible dark

I
was Your target

O Lord of Caves.

[English version by A. K. Ramanujan, Original Language Kannada]

My esophagus and I have had a lovers spat. But after 3 months on a liquid diet I am happily eating solid food again. What a trying time. Some days it took more than 2 hours to drink a single cup of fluid because it simply didn’t want to go down. Each time I go through a difficult spell with my health, I know that there is divine purpose. I always come through healed in mind and soul as well as body.Though my esophageal quarrel was extremely difficult, I made it through because of painting. Painting allowed me to connect to the deep well of creativity that regenerated me even as I felt my body slipping away. Painting became my anchor to life and each time I lifted my brush I felt I was reeling myself into safe harbor. This time made crystal clear the personal value of making art and also made clear why art is so important to the world. Anyone who has read this blog will know I believe art and healing are deeply connected. As an artist is healed by the process of their work, that energy is captured. This energy resonates within their piece where it has the potential to heal its viewer. This is my highest goal, to create work that heals. I also think that is what art does at it's best. Art can do other things: educate, shock, bring beauty. But all these fall aside when measured against the sacred calling to heal and transform. This may seem a lofty goal that is not often reached but it is important to set lofty goals as Henry Moore says:

The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.-Henry Moore

I would change that quote slightly from something you cannot do to something it seems you cannot do. It is too easy to limit what we can do by dismissing goals as unattainable. Art has the ability to change people on a very deep level and therefore artists have a great responsibility. Some might say they have a responsibility to themselves or to their vision, but I would disagree. Instead, artists have a responsibility to the Light / Creativity that they shepherd into the world. It is a flickering flame that must be cradled and cherished that it may heal and guide us forward. Unfortunately, the art world and many artists have often forgotten the sacred nature of their charge. Many are trapped and blinded by history’s model of the bohemian artist shocking the world.

Today, it is almost impossible to shock anyone. We have all seen countless murders and even really war causalities on TV. We are even jaded to the point of numbness. Yet many artists still doggedly cling to this notion of shocking the establishment. No longer able to shock the public at large, artists have settled for shocking the artworld with increasingly self-reflexive works that are no longer accessible or meaningful to the average person. Works that paradoxically become more and more cerebral the less they mean.

It seems to me that as a society all we can see the darkness: the murder and crime, the wars, the destruction of our environment. When I said artist’s have a responsibility to the Light it meant it. We need to start carving a path of Light out of the darkness we are mired in. Artists have a unique opportunity to actively engage in their own healing through their work. This healing energy then spills out and effects everyone in their lives and everyone who encounters their work. We must acknowledge the darkness in ourselves and our world and transform it. We can hold the world’s darkness on our canvases along with its Light, the pain and the joy, in a way that allows the release of the pain and the movement toward joy. Being with was is, our own pain and shadow side, is an act of courage and faith that there is something more, that transformation is possible. This adds Light in the world. The more we focus on this Light and praise it rather than complain, the more we add to a movement of healing that will in time reach a tipping pointing where darkness and Light can rebalance in a healthier way. So artists, I say, be brave, be ever so brave and enter your own darkness to find your path to Light. The world is depending on us. With love,Sybil

Hat City Kitchen Opening

It is important for artists to support their community so I was thrilled when I was asked to exhibit a painting in Hat City Kitchen as part of their 3rd anniversary kick-off.Here is a picture of me and my painting:(I'll get a better picture of this painting up as soon as I can... But I love this one because you can't see any of my jaw issues! )It is my first attempt at a large abstract ever. How much fun it was and what an adventure! The greatest part of making art is the adventure. That is one reason I never plan anything. I just get to work and I'm always surprised with what I end up with. The other reason I don't plan my work is I don't want to control my creative output, I want to just flow through as it did with this painting.Hat City Kitchen is part of the ValleyArts district, a newly forming knot of galleries, artist studios and interesting places to hangout. My work is featured in the ValleyArts blog about the event.

A Poem- the artist on Break

The artist on Break
Quiet and
still
A tattered glove
lays in wait
for the fiery hand of
The Artist

This is how I feel today. Some days are for working. Some days are for patiently waiting.

On Beethoven

Beethoven: Listening to God's Heartbeat

Sometimes I am so terribly tired of being sick, of laying in bed while other people take vacations and walks, while they go to shows and out to dinner. I feel like stone in a river while life rushes by me. I want to scream, to tear my hair out, to throw myself from a window and end this prisoner’s life. But then I think of my beautiful husband and son. I feel their deep and abiding love and I know I must soldier on. They make me remember what is good and why I am here. But there are some days I still wonder how am I supposed to go on.That's when I think of Beethoven. Beethoven who lost the world of sound so essential to a composer. Losing your hearing as a composer must be something like losing your sight as a painter: an unimaginable, potentially spirit killing loss. But it didn’t kill him. He endured his loss and many other ailments to produce music that is filled with Light, not clothed in the darkness of his illness. His music heals and lifts up its listeners. It surrounds, embraces, and fills us with love. But he had to transcend his pain to get there. In a letter to his brother, he wrote that his hearing loss:

… brought me to the verge of desperation, and well-nigh caused me to put an end to my life. Art! art alone deterred me. Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? And thus I spared this miserable life — so utterly miserable that any sudden change may reduce me at any moment from my best condition into the worst. It is decreed that I must now choose Patience for my guide! … This is no slight trial, and more severe on an artist than on any one else. God looks into my heart, He searches it, and knows that love for man and feelings of benevolence have their abode there! Oh! ye who may one day read this, … , and let any one similarly afflicted be consoled, by finding one like himself, who, in defiance of all the obstacles of Nature, has done all in his power to be included in the ranks of estimable artists and men. Beethoven’s Letters (1790-1826), translated by Lady Wallace, pp. 45

His art is what kept him going through all the darkness. I understand because art also keeps me going. Beethoven is an exemplar to all struggling artists. He inspires me to keep going. My sculpture, praises his great efforts and perseverance in the face of such enormous limitations. In my dark and desperate times I think, someone stayed the course and brought Light from darkness, maybe I can too.Sometimes I wonder if Beethoven needed his illness to produce the work he did. He listened through unstoppable ear ringing blocking out the world and heard deep and true silence. In that silence, he heard God’s heartbeat and translated it for the human ear.This accomplishment of Beethoven's is my goal too. Art is my way of seeking the Divine. By journeying toward the source of all creativity, I hope to leave tracks for others to follow as Beethoven did. Any contact with the "Divine Artist", touches the deep well of generative creativity that cannot help but be healing. My greatest desire is to create art that is healing for its viewers. To heal through art is a lofty goal that I may never reach, but Beethoven spurs me on in art and life. When I paint or sculpt, I find all my feelings of despair evaporate and there is only now, this present moment where everything is good and I am. Bless you Beethoven where ever you are.