Collective Sanity

Artist’s Statement for “Collective Sanity”

In “True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art” the Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche describes heaven, earth, and human as an aesthetic scheme symbolizing the union of the basic elements of our universe into the world we live in.  In this series of sculpture-photographs, the photograph symbolizes the spacious heaven principle.  The sculptural frames represent the earth principle, and the figures represent the human principle.  All our human actions involve the material earth in some form, and those actions occur within all accommodating space.  There’s no specific “meaning” between space and human activities, but space is always there.

My sculptures depict figures in environments because I prioritize the interconnectedness of people and the non-human world we work with.  The figures have four arms to suggest awareness of and skill with those connections.  Their bright primary colors reflect human diversity and the ultimate equality of skin color.  Race is a social construct, not a biological one.

The exhibit title refers to the four sculpture-photograph combinations inspired by the four karmas of vajrayana buddhism: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and destroying.   Traditionally, these energies describe the flow of human actions or the arising and passing away of all phenomena, but like an artist collaging sacred art into some other context, my sculptural frames may not reflect traditional understanding of the associated energies.

The only thing I am “saying” in this show is that most people on Earth could probably agree on these six slogans:

We want to live.

We want to work.

We want to play.

We don’t want to lie.

We don’t want to steal.

We don’t want to kill.

I built these sculpture-photographs with this logic in mind:

View – the interdependence of humans and all living things with our non-living environment.  We are alive because of all the things around us, not despite them.

Meditation – Heaven: the realm of all possibility; Earth: the primordial material from which things arise; Human: the energy and volition that visualizes and builds by connecting possibility to primordial material.

Action – by recognizing and appreciating interdependence, we can cool our fear and anxiety, cultivate collective sanity, and relax in appreciation of our rich and accommodating world.

I’m imagining a world of peace, overall harmony, and diligence.  If we want a peaceful world, it helps to envision what that might look like.

Charlie R. Olson