Your Presence Is the Best Present

moonlit elven magic

photo by doctor oblivious

(that's me in the photo on last year's Winter Solstice, 

spinning lights around the full moon!)

What is the greatest gift you can give to others?

Do you think you can buy it in a store, or online?

Is it a thing?

The best present is your presence.

In this world full of technology, distraction and multi-tasking, giving your full attention is a very rare experience.

Anything that is worth doing, is worth doing with your complete attention. 

If you are driving, just drive, and keep the road safe. 

If you are cooking a dish, put good intentions into it, and it will taste wonderful. 

However, if you are distracted, with your mind elsewhere, you could make mistakes, you could mess things up, or you could miss out on something important that someone is saying.

 

My friend Tom always says: "Be here now." 

And sometimes he also says: "Just be."

It sounds so simple, but it's actually very difficult. 

The mind likes to distract us and scatter our attention every which way. We like to feel important, with so many things to think about. 

But the most important thing is being right where we need to be right now, doing the thing we are doing. And if what we are doing isn't important, than maybe we need to examine why we do it at all.

When you're having a conversation with another person, do you feel the difference between when they are truly listening to you and responding to what you say in a thoughtful way, and when they are playing with their phone, texting, thinking of other things, or tuning you out?

Which way do you prefer to be treated? 

Which way makes you feel honored and important?

I'm working on bringing more of myself (attentive, present, open, honest) to every interaction, and as I do that, I feel others responding positively and in similar fashion. 

Relationships improve, bonds strengthen, and communities form this way.

Being present is the gift I give to myself and others.

Present

Interview with Mark Estes, Photographer "Witnessing Suffering and Beauty"

Mark Estes

all photos courtesy of Mark Estes,

used with permission

There's someone I'd like you to meet. 

This is Mark Estes, a photographer from the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Mark is my friend and someone who is a great inspiration to me, both as an artist, and as an exceptional human being.

The Dalai Lama

photo by Mark Estes

Mark recently announced that he has enrolled in the Chaplaincy Institute for the Arts and Interfaith Ministries, with the intention of becoming an interfaith minister, and providing spiritual support to critically ill and dying patients and their families. He will still continue his photography career. He plans a non-traditional ministry that will integrate counseling, compassion and the creative arts.

Because Mark is such an intelligent and thoughtful person, I thought he would have a lot of good insights to share with artists who are committed to a spiritual and creative path. 

photo by Mark Estes

 "I don't make pictures of people, I make pictures with people.

It's a collaboration."

- Mark Estes

In our interview, Mark talks about The Artist's Way, how artists can help heal the world, working with the Dalai Lama of Tibet, being a hospice volunteer, and his life's mission, "to witness suffering and beauty."

photo by Mark Estes

"Being able to go where the emotion and the collaboration leads you

is as important in portrait photography

as it is in working with people in the hospital,

or in the hospice, or on the street." 

- Mark Estes

Read the interview, and view more of Mark's work, on Artists Up Rising. 

Mark Estes Interview

Analog Girl in a Digital World

 Phoenix Fire

digital image by Rosa Phoenix

I grew up in a mostly analog world. 

I was born around the time that the first personal computers were coming onto the scene, although most people didn't have one at that time. 

My family's first computer was a Commodore Vic 20. You couldn't do much with it, except play some primitive video games like Frogger. I learned how to type on a manual typewriter in my dad's medical office.

When I was a kid, I learned BASIC programming. My brother used it to create a picture of the space shuttle, programming it line by line, pixel by pixel, a slow and arduous process.

In high school I created a zine. I printed out the text on the computer, in columns, and literally cut and pasted them into my pages, and I used the photocopy machine to produce some blurry copies.

I learned photography with real film, and we processed the film in a darkroom, with chemicals. You wouldn't see your image until you saw it emerge in the chemical bath, under the eerie red light of the darkroom.

I moved to New York in the 1990's. When I was 18, I took a summer film class and we filmed with 16 mm black and white film. We edited by literally cutting the film with a blade, and splicing the cuts together with tape.

"When we go to digital, everything will change" the instructors were always saying. 

Everyone in the film industry was looking forward to this magical future age, when everything could be changed with the push of a button.

BookBook MacBook case

by Twelve South

I worked for a publishing house for a little while. 

The people there, editors and publishers, also spoke of the coming digital age. 

They weren't looking forward to it. Publishing was already a dying industry. 

They knew these were the last days of print, that e-books would kill the publishing business. They didn't know how much time they had left, but they knew that it wouldn't be long. Soon their jobs would be obsolete.

Everything about the publishing house was agonizingly slow. Stacks of manuscripts were marked with red pencils, and then they were typed all over again with the corrections. Paper was everywhere. 

Going from manuscript, to galley, to published book, to distribution, could take a year.

Unsolicited submissions came in the mail in big mailbags and bins, and were promptly thrown in the garbage.  

These wanna-be authors didn't know how to get their novel in front of the editors. 

They didn't have an agent, they didn't know the editors, they didn't have the right connections. 

No one had the time to read their words and stories.

digital collage by Rosa Phoenix

Now the digital world is here. Our whole world is changing fast.

There is nostalgia, there are things that I love about analog. 

I prefer the tactile pleasures of painting with paint and brush, to making digital art on the computer. 

But I love my computer too. I love the creative programs like PhotoShop and Illustrator, with its layers, the Undo button, changes that can be made with the click of a button. To me it's magic.

I love books and print, but I don't miss the cultural gatekeepers who determined which stories would be told and shared with the world, and which would never see the light of day.

fire girl image by MISHA
digital collage by Rosa Phoenix

I love self-publishing on my blog and my website.  

I love the democratization of expression that the digital age makes possible. 

 I love reaching people all around the world, who I would never get to meet in person, and share my art and ideas with them. 

I love not having to go through the middlemen--the agents, the editors, the cultural gatekeepers, who have to look out for the bottom line and ask the question "will it sell?" 

That isn't a concern that I have.

I know now that I've been waiting for this day to come, all my life.  

I was born in an analog world, and I am also a part of the digital revolution. 

I love to use my hands and heart to create, and I also love my computer, which is another creative tool, that also allows me to reach the wider world.

P.S. the title of this blog post comes from a song by the fabulous Erykah Badu, who has embraced digital media.

365 just show up: How to find your Muse

Burst of Blue

painting by Rosa Phoenix

I'm guest blogging on 365 just show up. It's a new blog about the creative practice.

Maybe some of you also follow Audrey Low, who has the fabulous blogs Papaya Tree Limited and Wildhoop Productions. Audrey created 365 just show up to encourage people on the creative journey. (Audrey creates a lot of fascinating work herself, as an ethnographer, writer, photographer and documentary filmmaker!)

Click on the link below to read my post, How to find your Muse:

http://365justshowup.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-to-find-your-muse.html

Jim Marshall RIP

Jimi Hendrix
photo by Jim Marshall

from www.sfgate.com

I saw this story in the news today. If you like rock and roll you should check out the photos of Jim Marshall.

LINK

Rock Photographer Jim Marshall Dies - San Francisco Chronicle

Images Used in My Website

digital image by Rosa Phoenix

For my website www.rosaphoenix.com, I created images in Photoshop with the help of talented photographers.

digital image by Rosa Phoenix

This is the background of my website, which I created myself by scanning a piece of paper with torn edges. I colored the edges in Photoshop.

I used this burn hole as a frame for my images. Photo by michael1959.

 digital image by Rosa Phoenix

Home page image. Rose photo by Paul Kemp. Color enhancement and photomontage by Rosa Phoenix.

 

digital image by Rosa Phoenix

Design page image. Photo of eye by Andrejs Pidjass. Color enhancement and photomontage by Rosa Phoenix.

digital image by Rosa Phoenix

Art page image. Photo of paintbrush by ara. Color enhancement and photomontage by Rosa Phoenix.

 

digital image by Rosa Phoenix

Words page image. Photo of quill feather by Olivier Blondeau. Color enhancement and photomontage by Rosa Phoenix.

digital image by Rosa Phoenix

Action page image. Color enhancement and photomontage by Rosa Phoenix.

 

digital image by Rosa Phoenix

About page image. Fire girl graphic by Mikhail. Photomontage by Rosa Phoenix.

 

digital image by Rosa Phoenix

Contact page image. Photomontage by Rosa Phoenix.

digital image by Rosa Phoenix
 

Shop page image. Photomontage by Rosa Phoenix.

See my website at www.rosaphoenix.com.

Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams at SF MOMA

Georgia O'Keefe, painter, met Ansel Adams, photographer, at Los Gallos Ranch in New Mexico in 1929. This show at SF MOMA compares and contrasts these two kindred spirits who were attracted to the same settings and subjects in the big open spaces of the American Southwest.

It's easy to see that for both of these artists, inspiration came from nature. Ansel Adams is known for capturing many of this country's greatest natural monuments in the early days of photography. O'Keefe is best known for her macro-view paintings of flowers and other natural forms.

The works are loosely grouped by subject matter: Taos pueblos and churches with crosses are powerful images in the O'Keefe and Adams works. We also see how both artists were fascinated by the twisting forms of trees, and by the barren hills and riverbeds of the desert in New Mexico.

O'Keefe was a painter who was influenced by photography. She often zeroed in on her subject in close-up, as a photographer would, to capture detail. She also played with scale, making small subjects like flowers and bones monumental on large canvases.

Adams the photographer was no doubt influenced by abstract painters. Many of his photos were taken at times of stark shadow, creating extreme contrasts between darks and lights. This creates abstract rippling lines of shadow in photographs of barren hills and sand dunes.

For me, the O'Keefe paintings outshine the Adams photographs. My eyes feast on her palette of colors, ranging from creamy yellows to rich warm earthy reds to expansive sky blues to velvety purple blacks. Adams' smaller prints seem to shrink in the shadows of O'Keefe's large, glowing paintings. Even her tiny flowers expand and radiate light. It would have been nice to have seen Adams' work on a grander scale, with large-format prints.

Georgia O'Keefe has been my lifelong inspiration. I was delighted to see old favorites and new ones in this show. She painted in a symbolic language that is like that of Chinese painters. A few lines, clouds of color, and spiraling shapes could create a landscape, or a flower, or a skull, or a hill. I admire her economy, spareness and simplicity. Yet her colors are so luscious and luminous, that her paintings truly come alive.

"Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities" is on view at SF MOMA through September 7.