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Opposing Spaces: Reconciling Technology, Culture
and the Sacred in Art

by Suzanne Bishop

Abstract

Is there a place in our society for public art that can fill our cultural void of the sacred? Can our technological culture, public art forms, and private therapeutic expressive arts practices meet on equal ground, one to serve us spiritually? Using Maya Lin, the person, and her art as inspiration I show these opposing forces can work harmoniously to heal public wounds and private scars. Recent scientific measures into our spiritual needs are presented by art therapy researchers. Getting back to our connections to the earth and our inner selves through art, story and forgotten primal myths, we recover a hidden spirituality sometimes missed in our fast-paced world. The historical and political events surrounding the design and construction of Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is itself a reminder of how our multicultured worlds collide in personal and societal contexts. Maya Lin utilizes at an optimal level, and with respect, our current technology to create collective understanding of our culture and earth. Artists Robert Smithson and Jim Butler, and Native American writer Gabriel Horn are cited as well. They are all teachers and collectors of primal concerns and perceptions, their art and research remind us of our vast heritage, and the links that bind us to earth and to our natures.

In Defense of the Sacred

What makes Art a healing force for the individual or group viewing it? The fidelity of that force can be a catalyst for change in one's viewpoint at the most basic level and in consciousness on a spiritual one. The meaning we assign to Art is individual; it is filled with private thoughts and emotions. The culture residing within us has its own reactance to any force resembling the sacred; we can't separate ourselves from our roots. Our privatized culture is not only deeply enmeshed in the material and is its own distorted form of spirituality;
it has even deeper roots tied to patriarchal monotheism, anything resembling a sanctified land mass or an altar sends cultural shivers up its spine. On a personal level the long forgotten collective visions of Man's primordial impressions cut into the land seen only in dreams come quietly to the surface of our conscious while viewing Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty or Maya Lin's Groundswell. The question: Is there a place in our society for public and therapeutic arts that fill our collective spiritual void of the sacred? Can our technology—which has assigned itself as master to our culture-—and the sacred meet on equal ground? Sacred in this context is seen as the harmonic lifestyle with full reverence for life. A reverence that is inherited but lost as we pushed our way into this century and proceeding centuries as well, leaving the primal behind. Gabriel Horn (1996), a Native American writer and astute observer of our times, calls the primal our “original instruction”. This encoded and inherent ability to really understand that we are all connected to a vast divine or to the grand Wah-kon-tah—the tribal abstraction of God—resides within us. It is in this vein of thought that I will try to portray through my writings the meanings behind public art meant for reflection and healing, private therapeutic arts, and our cultural connections to it. On a soul level the public and private art forms that embody spiritual and transcendent ideas help us to rediscover our lost spirit and rich inner magic.

The Public and Private Sacraments of Change

To be an artist and healing force for our times takes clarity of vision, inner strength, and fortitude in resolving the opposing forces of the technological and the sacred. Maya Lin was 21 years old when chosen from a national competition to design the Washington, D.C. Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Her vision for the monument was one of a protected place, one of reverence and solitude (Lin, 2000). Lin designed the memorial to be a mediator between the living and the dead. The rites of mourning maintained in older tribal cultures is lost in our high tech world. This vision was challenged by a public that could not understand the language, her message, although clear, was foreign to them. “I realized that these veterans were willing to defend a design they really didn't quite understand. I was too afraid to tell them . . . . . that a returning veteran would cry” (Lin, 2000, Chap. 4, p. 16). After years of highly charged political debate the challenges to Lin's artistic vision were replaced by official dedication in 1982. One of Lin's artistic concepts for this memorial is the linking of time and space. This is contained within the message of her work by borrowing well-known typographic devices specific to our culture. From Lin, “The Vietnam Memorial is a place where something happens within the viewer. It's like reading a book. I purposely had the names etched right on each panel to look like a page from a book. I also wanted remembering the past relevant to the present. Some people wanted me to put the names in alphabetical order. I wanted them in chronological order so that a veteran could find his time within the panel. It's like a thread of life” (Women's Early Music, Art & Poetry, 2002).

Lin is an artist, architect and sculptor who fades from the label “monument designer” (Lin, 2000). Self proclaimed as retired from monument designing Lin designs one more monument. That will be a memorial to man and his relationship to the environment (Lin, 2000). Her sketches for this idea include ongoing data about the extinction of endangered species transmitted and updated daily through the Internet with sites located in diverse and often remote areas of our world. Lin states, “I am inspired by landscape, topography, and natural phenomena, but it's a landscape from a 21st-century perspective, landscape through the lens of technology”(2000, Chap. 12, pp. 6-7). She alludes to living between a myriad of worlds: science and art, public and private, east and west as written in the forward of her book Boundaries (Lin, 2000). Her art also explains the merging or reconciling of these personal opposites, as well as the opposites contained in nature.

The idea of adaptations to natural surroundings and the reconciling of opposites as evidenced in Lin's work are profound concepts on a deep level that can help heal us. It provides a compass directing us to an awareness and language that we don't know how to understand, the language of the natural laws contained within nature. As Alan Watts the philosopher, minister and bridge builder between the East and West through Zen Buddhism tells us, “the power of water is in following its own weight” (Watts, 1983, p. 95).

The Wave Field, located behind the FXB Aerospace Engineering Building on the University of Michigan Campus is an example of Lin's ability to adapt her art to the natural topography of the land on which it lives—and this can be taken literally as the wave field is an actual plot of land designed with undulating waves of earth and grass meant to represent the naturally occurring water wave of fluid dynamics in aerospace technology. Having been to this site I can only say it was an experience etched into my heart as I went immediately into a meditative and contemplative state—I was connected to the land and also to myself. It is as if her art is ahead of our times—it sits on the other side of our consciousness—she is perhaps creating lasting monuments for us to “read” more accurately at a later time in our history. Lin's work and that of all art has a language all its own. Once we “read” this accurately, we are stunned by its beauty and message. We are changed.

Identity

Who are we really? To teach art, to be an artist or to heal with art are all questions that are raised as artists try to venture into the new century. We are all in such a flux of identity crises. Our world today seems edgy, like we have all lost a sense of ourselves; we are very nervous. Can it be that our loss is not really an important part of our identity after all but a coating or clothing we wear to protect ourselves from the very essence of ourselves? Our religions and dogmas are like clothing that protects us from the others that are not like us. In the end, our confusion and the fear of losing our identities today will lead us to our true natures.

Maya Lin is of Chinese descent, she grew up playing and living among her father's artwork—furniture, pottery and stoneware—art that was in turn influenced by his childhood. Impressions from her ancestral roots are imprinted on her art. Lin's work is the work of all relations that came before her. Today she lives in the United States, having grown up in Athens, Ohio (Lin, 2000) she is forced to confront her changing identity. I assume she will keep what she needs of importance and will leave the remainder behind. Some of the controversy surrounding her design for the Vietnam War Memorial was that she was of Asian descent. The article that was written in response to her design “An Asian Memorial for an Asian War” in the Washington Post stated that Lin's design was clearly influenced by her heritage. The message of her work is timeless and also culturally free in that it is a message of living in truth and harmony with all that exists. So here we have the cultures mixing and meeting, opposites confronting one another—for Horn (1996) it is the diametrical views between the indigenous or primal man and modern or civilized man. For Lin it is the meaning and message of reverence for nature as conveyed through her art within a context of reconciling opposites of our own natures and emotions. Native meets civilized, east meets west. The personal meets the public.

Where do we go from here? Horn (1996) is trying to reconcile the opposite views of our world by teaching others of his Ojibwa heritage and its reverence for all of life and in doing so hopes to save pieces of his heritage so future generations may benefit—maybe even save our planet from ecological destruction. Lin (2000) is teaching us through the beauty of her art that simplicity, quiet reverence and strength of connection to the land are healing forces and available to all as her art is meant for public viewing and healing.

A Topographic Connection

Maya Lin states, “My work is in part trying to mimic natural formations in the earth, complex but seemingly very simple. It is something I seek out in everything I do” (Lin, 2000, Chap. 6, pp. 2-3). Staring out of airplane windows gave Lin an interest in the design of topographic art works. To her the view of the topographic landscape gives us a wider view of the planet and ourselves as well. The photographic ability to capture images from as far away as a satellite to a microscopic image has been influential to Lin's sculpture and land art (Lin, 2000). She, like Horn and Illinois State University lithography professor, Jim Butler, tell us stories about man and his use of the land. Jim's sublime paintings of the Mississippi River articulate the concern about man's use and abuse of our natural environment. Butler is influenced by technology and uses photographic devices that play with light and shadow. His landscape painting is a documentation of how time and man change the topographic quality of the land.

Edging viewers to see their world in panoramic or aerial are reminders to the viewer of our connection to the land. A land that at one time was not separate from us but revered and sanctified as if its breath was our own.

Connecting the Sacred to Public Art
and Private Therapeutic Practices

Our ancestral roots are tied to the need to understand and express ourselves through the arts, healing practices, and through ritual. Understanding our relationship to our social and natural environment, and our understanding in relationship to ourselves was a basic human drive; today public artists help the community grieve, connect and become more fully human.

There is also a connection to the sacred taking place in the private rooms of therapeutic arts practice today. Farrelly-Hansen (2001) and Wadeson (2000) are two art therapists who connect recent scientific psychodynamic theories to ancient, primal practices of healing with the sacred. Our disconnection to sacredness through the influence of the Cartesian view of separation of body/mind/humanity/nature and of objective/subjective is only half of who we as humans really are. Although a holistic view of life is beginning to replace the mechanistic one, we are still under the influence of a belief system that compartmentalizes our human needs and knowledge, leaving out the experience of the body. In the expressive arts therapies, the body has been an integral part of the dynamics of healing. Farrelly-Hansen (2001) recognizes our sensing bodies in our attempts to connect back to the earth. She states “teaching me (in hatha yoga) that the strength of my connection to the earth determined the range of my possibilities for expression above ground in imaginal and mental spheres” (2001, p. 151).

Motivation, for art therapist Horovitz-Darby, came from a search for meaning in life. As part of her search for meaning in life she researched the theories, research and studies of religious scholars Lawrence Kohlberg and James Fowler (1981). The holistic health of the client means addressing the spiritual health as well; the Belief Art Therapy Assessment (BATA) Horovitz-Darby developed provides important information about the client's belief systems and spirituality and can be used as a framework from which to work at the beginning of therapeutic treatment (1994). Horovitz-Darby designed the BATA to be analyzed and converted into mathematical data for validity purposes, a modern bridge between the need for the transcendental sacred and analytical scientific proof.

One of the more powerful art therapy experiences I have had as an art therapy intern was my time with an adolescent girl. Under my direction she designed her own sacred space; one that was self-representational and that allowed her to grieve her past, the trauma of sexual abuse, and empowered her to move her intentions for a new life past mere thoughts into the realm of ritual. The connection she made to the earth where she created this space reassured her that she too had something of the transcendent within her repertoire of selfhood; all self-imposed limits were now free to soar. Art has lost its sacredness and has become a commodity in the marketplace. As with most of the healing arts the strict "bottom lines" of HMO's direct decisions over critical health issues for the common person; brief solution focused therapy has its merits but some healing just takes more time. Time for reflection is required and the body has its own timetable for healing.

The creation of personal altars and memorials are considered to be crucial to the bereavement process according to Wadeson (2000). A self-representational environment that was created for this purpose is included in Appendix B (Wadeson, p. 410). The ties made to the grieving process and to art, ritual, and the sacred echo throughout this paper. Wadeson facilitates for others what Lin has done for the public—providing a safe containment to transcend our limitations through art. C. G. Jung is a recent scientific healer who combines knowledge of our inner psychological spaces with this human need to connect to something greater outside of our corporeal existence. In this sense he is a bridge to our sacred selves much like that of the artist Maya Lin.

A new thought form and belief system can begin on the individual level towards seeing oneself as the primary force of living a sacred life, through ones own volition as a powerful vehicle of the sacred. The reintegration of art, knowledge, and healing into our lives from this drive can help transform us and our humanity-—reclaiming the sacred inherent in our bodies, environment, and future.

Conclusion

Artists and healers today are challenged with the embedded belief structure that man is a separate entity to nature. Perhaps on an unconscious level the artists who perform ritualistic art, create art from landmasses to sanctify the land, create meaningful memorials and documentations of our lives are filling a desperate void. Their art is a calling back to our own true natures and a whisper of hope as our plight into technological territory evokes terror in our hearts. These collective visions are really powerful daimons as forces that move through us and prompt us to action.

Yes, I would say that artists who embark on sacred ground and some expressive therapeutic arts evoke the sacred. Their messages provide spiritual relief in an age of uncertainty and despair.

References

Brooke, S. L. (1996). Belief art therapy assessment.
In: S. L. Brooke (ed.), A Therapist's Guide to Art
Therapy Assessments. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Farrelly-Hansen, M. (2001). Spirituality and art therapy: Living the connection Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd.

Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco,
CA: Harper.

Horn, G. (1996). Contemplations of a primal mind. Novato, CA: New World Library.

Horovitz-Darby, E. G. (1994). Spiritual art therapy. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Lin, M. (2000). Boundaries. New York: Simon & Schuster.

The Learning Place, Biography Center. Retrieved May 7, 2002 from http://www.nwhp.org/tlp/biographies/lin/lin_bio.html.

Wadeson, H. (2000). Art therapy practice: Innovative approaches with diverse populations. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Watts, A. (1983). The way of liberation. New York:
John Weatherhill, Inc.

Women's Early Music, Art & Poetry. Retrieved May 2, 2002,
from http://music.acu.edu/www/iawm/pages/lin/lin.html.

Maya Lin's landscape sculpture, The Wave Field. Lin states, "I work with the landscape, and I hope that the object and the land are equal partners" (The Learning Place, Biography Center).