THE SANDS OF MIND

Creating beauty with the full knowledge that it will be destroyed might seem like an exercise in futility, but it is quite the opposite for people who embrace and celebrate the temporary nature of life. Yesterday’s post, featured Burning Man, an annual festival centered around the creation of giant sculptures that are are burned down soon after they are made. And the day before, we featured elaborate sand castles and sculptures that artists spent enormous amounts of time and energy building, only to have them reclaimed by the sea.

 

Today, looking at the beauty of beaches and sand, we explore sand painting in the art of mindfulness.

 

Sand is a favorite medium used by artists who tap into that ephemeral quality of the universe. Tibetan Buddhist monks, for example, painstakingly craft intricate mandalas made of colored sand, connecting deeply with their beauty in the moment, and letting go to release them back to entropy.

Photo: Courtesy of Blanton Museum of Art   

Tibetan sand mandalas have not traditionally been available for public view, but that changed, in 1988, when the Dalai Lama dispatched four monks the the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, to create a sand mandala that everyone could see, to help raise awareness about the culture, religion and Tibet’s struggles under oppressive Chinese rule.

 

This summer, monks from the Atlanta-based Mystical Arts of Tibet have been creating sand mandalas for all to see in New York, California, Pennsylvania and Virginia. These are abbreviated versions of the deeply spiritual traditional creation experiences. They are moving and breathtaking nonetheless.

Photo: Dan Machold. Monks using the Chak-pur to create the Mandala

These works take three to five days of patient, slow, ritualistic process, which, in itself, is a beautiful experience. Process becomes performance now that we can watch. For each mandala, a team of four saffron robed monks first chant, play instruments, and recite mantras, to chase away evil spirits and welcome Buddha’s blessings. Then they proceed to get into their mindfulness zones, emptying their thoughts so that they can have only the present moment to consider.

 

The mandalas begin to form around a center axis. The monks use lots of draftsman tools -- compasses, calipers, rulers, tweezers, and pencils --  to create their designs. As the mandalas take shape, geometric patterns of circles, squares, and rays, form the foundational guides. It is important work. The monks are building symbolic palaces for Buddha.

Photo: Courtesy of American Foundation for Tibetan Cultural Preservation.

The monks use thin metal ridged funnels, called Chak-purs, to distribute different colors sand, made of a range different varieties of powdered marble, inside their guidelines. Each color has meaning, symbolizing natural elements of water, fire, earth, and air, as well as the five key aspects of our lives: form, sensation, perception, response, and consciousness. When finished, the mandala will represent a “healthy balance” among them all.

Photo: Courtesy of American Foundation for Tibetan Cultural Preservation.

The “painting” technique is fascinating to watch, as the monks scoop up sand with the funnels, then create little vibrations by rubbing against the funnels’ stems rub with thin metal rods, so that the sand trickles down in a steady, controlled stream, to fill in the mandala patterns, layering colors, creating three-dimensional illusions. It’s not easy. The monks study for at least five years to perfect their craft and to memorize the traditional patterns. It’s also not so easy to engage in such a time consuming repetitive task.

Photo: Courtesy of Clark College International Programs. Mandala progress day 2

When the mandalas are completed, the monks resume their chants, this time to invite Buddha into the mandala “palaces.” The monks then meditate upon the scene, traditionally for several days, but in the public version, only for an hour, after which they proceed to deconstruct their creations, sweeping the sand into swirls, resembling galaxies as they spin in space. The colored sand mixes together into gray piles, which the monks release back into the universe, pouring it all into nearby rivers. Nothing lasts forever. And that is the point that is underscored here.

 

At a recent exhibition at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center, in Niceville, Florida, observers could not only observe, but were offered the opportunity to try it themselves.

Photo: Henry Huey. Blanton Museum of Art Sand Mandala.

In another exhibition, earlier this year, several Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India, created a five-foot sand mandala in the Blanton Museum of Art's Rapoport Atrium on the University of Texas campus in conjunction with Into the Sacred City: Tibetan Buddhist Deities from the Theos Bernard Collection, an exhibition of Tibetan artworks from the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

 

To date, the monks have created mandala sand paintings in more than 100 museums, art centers, and colleges and universities in the United States and Europe.

Photo: Joe Mangrum. Washington Square

Artist, Joe Mangrum, borrows from the sand mandala tradition to create his own unique  sand paintings, as spontaneous creations on streets and pavements in urban settings, as a form of protest against urban grids, which he views as “a dominating force that efficiently partitions the globe into quantifiable sections of space and time, divided by minutes and seconds.” He sees this as ultimately out of sync with the natural world, seasonal cycles and lunar tides. “The result is a society divided from nature and compartmentalized into definable groups, disconnected physically, and spiritually from the whole,” Mangrum explains. “I work to reclaim these divisions by creating sand paintings, in organic shapes, interconnecting the fragments and acting as a catalyst for a synthesis, again.”

 

Mangrum uses a more freestyle methodology of “painting” with sand, using bright “Pop” colors. His paintings are influenced by the natural world, including images of undersea creatures and exotic carnivorous plants He combine elements from contemporary art, culture and technology.

 

Photo: Joe Mangrum

Mangrum began creating in public spaces in New York, in Union Square Park and  Washington Square. Now, he creates about 150 sand paintings a year; some indoors, most outdoors. He has done commissioned work from Beijing to Mexico to Denmark -- to Sesame Street. Watch his full appearance onSesame Street here.

 

Mangrum’s  work has been exhibited worldwide. He has created over 500 public sand paintings since 2009.

 

Last year (2012) Mangrum was featured in “Swept Away” at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, The Flag Art Foundation’s “Watch Your Step” exhibit, and at The Corcoran Gallery Rotunda in Washington DC.  

 

Check out all the BN posts this week as we feature different takes on Beautiful Beaches, across all genres, including, The Ultimate Beach Food: Kelp, Fascinating Beach Dunes Now, Secluded Beaches. Shhhh, Beautiful Beach Sand Sculptures, and Make a Beach More BeautifulNow.

 

Be sure to enter our Beautiful Beach Competition (Deadline: 8/25/2013).