Want to be Jackson Pollock?

Today, a more intimate imaginal dance than galaxies dancing with one another — instead, an artist who tangoed with paint and canvas, flinging, spattering, tossing, dripping paint as he danced above it, the lines emerging from the movement in his body.

There even has been some wondering aloud by scholars that he was capturing a sense of chaotic motion and the mathematical nature of chaos — before Chaos Theory was even imagined. 

He wrote about his creative process:

When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

For me, the sense of his action while painting has always been as interesting as what he created.

And now you’ve got a chance to be Jackson Pollock, dancing with your computer and mouse! 

Click here to explore your inner Pollockness…brought to you by artist Miltos Manetas.

It may be the most fun you have all day!

Stephanie Pope: Mythopoetics

On her website, mythopoetry.com, poet Stephanie Pope is creating a place where the intersections between mythology, psyche, and poetry come to life.

Mythopoeia translates to “the making of myth” — the Greek root for poet is “poiein” — “to make.”

As a poet, Stephanie is a maker, and specifically a maker of myth, weaving strands between the art of imagining and the deep stories that shape our psyches.

And she is a maker of community on her website, inviting and sharing poems, essays, blogs, book and film reviews, and dialogues about the nature of myth and making.

In a culture that is tempted to believe that our myths are dead, artists like Stephanie are important Imaginal Activists, not only standing witness to the power of myth, but bringing it to life in rich, relevant, fecund ways.

While I’m trying to reach outwards into a broader definition of how imagination exists in our world, as we have tended to see it as the provenance of the arts and artists, it is also important to remember and honor the makers in our midst who play with the palettes of the arts.

You can get lost wending your way through the well of words on Stephanie’s site (and it is a lovely lostness!), but be sure to read some of her poetry on your journey there. It is where her heart sings.

You can visit mythopoetry.com here…