Artists and Altars

As the Opening nears, I've had the opportunity to collect a few more thoughts on just what these ALTARS are all about.

First, I believe we all are making altars all the time. Just look at our desks, dressers, window sills, car dashboards...

Altars are places where something special can happen; where there is a concentration of attention, care that allows and stimulates something sacred and intuitive to happen. Altars are places to learn and tell stories about deep living.
• They are sacred, energized, special places for prayer, expression, meditation, retreat
• They are carefully chosen or assembled to allow for the changing of objects and materials which can take on sacred guiding capacities.
• They are spiritual work areas, Laboratories , literally: places to work, express and pray—to seek the intercession of spirit in human affairs
• They are portals between the worlds of Matter and Spirit.

What to do with an Altar?
• Express, Manifest, “Matter” personal and group concerns
• Seek Blessings for self, others
• Give Expression to the missing, deferred, rejected, overlooked
• Honor the Departed
• Honor Truths:
o Impermanence (decay, change, rebirth)
o Suffering (practicing to hold opposites as one)
o Egolessness (practicing living in the present. Using gerunds)
• Express Appreciation for nature, change, living, beauty
• Sacrifice as a reminder of our oneness with everything

Ways to Compose, Re-Compose altars
USE the Mother-Father Model (MATER-ial PATER-n)
Select Materials which have meaning and put them in some Pattern on the Altar.
Do this many times

USE the Haiku Model:
o Use something Seasonal-Sensory-contrast/compare
o Express a Universal sentiment-allusion to Nature
o Be brief-technical-expressive subtle-indirect- yet with piercing clarity

What to put on an Altar start with the Elements:
• Water -- the life force: a tabletop fountain, sea shells, a chalice, bowl of purified water, fresh flowers or flower petals
• Air: feathers, wind chimes, reeds, incense, pictures of birds, fragrant herbs, music, leaves
• Fire: candles, fiery gemstones (onyx, ruby), Images of the sun (male) or small dragon figures, lights, ashes, charcoal
• Earth: honor the element of earth, houseplants, potted herbs, pentacles, stones, obsidian, red jasper, crystals, glass, mirrors, nests, salt for purification
• Spirit/Aether: photographs, toys, trinkets, religious symbols, important personal objects

Artists and Altars

Altars have a extra meaning for me. My workbench is an altar; my desk is an altar. The shelf above my desk is an altar.

There are many more. And yes, they are about the Dead, but they are mostly about weaving Memory and Longing into the present. Much of my artworks are altars. Oh, they just look like chairs, tables, shelves and carvings, but really they function as doorways to and from Elsewhere, to the thin places of imagination and memory. And like all doorways, things can pass both ways. 

I put them out there a fragile hopeful declarations of a brief existence and then I wait and learn from my objects and the people who use them. At a funeral, as we grieve the dead, aren’t the tears also for our own mortality, so bluntly confronting us?

Budda is quoted as saying:  
Things are not as they seem, nor are they otherwise. 
Altars are the places where this exquisite ambiguity takes place: 
Things are dead, and alive.

Daniel Mack