Here is something we have had in the offing for some time. ‘ART’. Art can lift the spirit. Art can be life enhancing. In the eye of the beholder it can evoke emotion and a beautiful piece of Art can evoke feelings of wonder and deep appreciation.
What we are doing at the studio is ART to us, it is creative and expressive of an inner feeling when we endeavour to find our best expression of a pose in our unique bodies; that outwardly expression of asana wholly dependent on our internal experiences in that moment. It is momentous ! Our art doesn’t ‘hang’ around tho’ 🙂 , as in the same moment of its creation it is ‘gone’ forever, the visual of it perhaps only appreciated briefly by one person (the instructor) ~ you could say that the fact there is an onlooker to appreciate it makes it a ‘Performing’ Art? {yup I like to streeetttch things a bit sometimes 🙂 }. It is not an Art in Motion but an Art in ‘Action’ (a tremendous action/effort being required to maintain the Stillness of an Asana). Perhaps? For us Yoga is definitely a ‘Fine’ Art, a ‘Healing’ Art, a ‘Spiritual’ Art. Every time one ‘practices’ they are endeavouring to attain ‘Mastery’ of the Art.
WE WANT TO ADD ‘STILL LIFE’ ‘VISUAL’ ART TO YOUR EXPERIENCE AT YM.
As much as we feel the obligation to try to cancel out any negative effect running our studio may have on our environment (see our blog Trees for Life), we also feel the obligation of running a ‘space’ that exists to enhance the lives of others. We feel it important to try enhance that space so that it is conducive to keeping spirits elevated every which way it can and so we want to provide lovely surroundings for you to practice in. We want you to feel like you do when you enter your favourite room in your own home, your sanctuary. It is ALWAYS personal for us. It cannot be just a nice ‘room’ to look at, it needs to feel like a ‘welcome home’. We place art in our home ‘home’ and so we will place art in our studio home too. Over a period of time (probably years) we will be commissioning small pieces (relative to studio size 🙂 ) from LOCAL artists depicting the Asanas that we have a special relationship with. Each Asana, although part of a whole, is unique and so we will have individual conversations with the artists about what we hope for each piece. We will ask them to apply their skills to create a ‘STILL FOREVER’ visual for your viewing pleasure. Of course we would not want to influence the artistic processes 😉 , but we do want to give the artist a feel for what is entailed for the practitioner in the creation of the poses and the energy involved. So far as we have seen an artist’s work, we immediately knew which posture we wanted them to work on in our belief that their particular style either highlights an energy aspect of the pose or they have the skill to create a beautiful, wonderful ‘thing’ to gaze at and mull over and provoke discussion.
These pieces are, most importantly to us, LOCAL and RELEVANT. We present here our first three pieces for your viewing pleasure. Of course the photo doesn’t do them justice; I am not a good photographer; but please do look at them at the studio.
IAN ROLLS has done a spectacular job of capturing the energy and power required to build and sustain the spectacular STANDING BOW PULLING Pose. A posture built ‘for falling out and getting back in’. Ian has created a very fine picture indeed. http://www.ianrolls.com/home/
LAUREN RADLEY has illustrated the wonderful CAMEL & RABBIT poses in a contemporary fashion. They definitely come as a pair; Rabbit being the essential counter pose to Bikram’s deepest backward bend Camel; a wonderful PERFECT coupling you can see. Lauren’s picture makes us smile. https://laurenradley.com/
MATT FALLE has depicted STANDING LEG HEAD TO KNEE. A posture that comes in ‘parts’; each part being an expression of individual’s Yoga in its own right. One can spend years working on one part before being ready to move on to the next part. We love Matt’s ‘people’ and his abstract style is perfect to capture the ‘it is complex but simple really’ characteristics of this posture. Matt’s picture draws the eye and will have us mulling it over for years. http://www.mattfalle.com/
We engaged the friendly Carlo at ‘Framing and Arts’ (see fb) 61 New Street who is very talented in the art of framing, to help us present these works in a simple manner. His shop is lovely and full of beautiful things (not just frames); worth popping in to see what they have to offer in the way of something different wethinks.
We hope you will find these works as diverting and engaging as we do. We are delighted to own these pieces. We believe they will enhance the environment we practice in and that in time they will be a fabulous unique collection. Please do share your thoughts of this idea. We are looking forward to having much discussion with practitioners about them as they appear in the studio over the years.
Om Om Om Behold! YogaArt Wonder-Full
Namaste
Trisha & Darren