This is our daughter doing her adrenaline high, 20th birthday. Skydiving is as creative a pursuit as art, writing, filmmaking, photography, dance, sculpture or anything else you can think of.
The fourth secret in 7 Secrets is called The Creative. It’s about how the creative process lies at the heart of synchronicity. As writers, we usually think of the creative process in terms of writing. But it applies across the board to any creative endeavor. From the traditional creative pursuits – art, photography, film, dance, writing, sculpture – to what we manifest in our daily lives, creativity is about imagination. If you can imagine it, then you can manifest it.
So yesterday (November 9) my friend Nancy Pickard and I drove across the state to see Megan. This will be the first year that she isn’t coming home for Thanksgiving – (boyfriend)- so I wanted to see her before she comes home for Christmas break. Megan is an art major, only one of nine at her college. All fourth years (otherwise known as seniors) have to do a thesis. It’s an all consuming process that for most majors involves an extensive thesis on a particular topic. For art majors, it means a thesis plus 10-30 paintings that express the core idea of their thesis.
The fourth year art majors have their own studios on campus, where they paint and draw until they’re half nuts with what they’re doing. The art they create is supposed to express their thesis idea. The challenge is to know what your core idea is. You’re supposed to arrive at this by allowing your artistic expression free reign to explore, to experiment. The risk is that you do a whole bunch of paintings and not a single one speaks to you. Not a single painting whispers, Hey, I’m the core idea. For writers, this is the equivalent of writing 300 pages of a novel that collapses before you reach the end.
Nancy and I toured the studios, looked at the art, were really impressed. Painting, after all, is not all that different from writing. You create characters, moods, textures, colors. You tap into visceral emotion. Nathan, a tall, thin man with passionate eyes, is creating a series of paintings that enable us, the viewers, to tap into Jung’s collective unconscious. In one painting, a figure is hunched in a pool of water somewhere, maybe in a jungle, maybe in your back yard. You immediately know something dangerous lies in that pool.
Nathan definitely understands that in the Jungian school of thought, water represents the unconscious.This painting of the guy in the pool of water is surrounded by much smaller paintings of Niagara Falls taken from webcam images. These hallucinogenic images, at least to me, symbolized the passage of earth time, the passage from ice age to life as we know it now to something altogether different.
Missy, one of the other art majors, plays with waves – images of water and light – to depict the passage of time. In one painting that captured my attention, she has a bottle or can at the forefront of her painting that you immediately know has been there for decades, maybe centuries. Its shape and texture are marked by time’s passage through corrosion, shrinkage. Her advisor told her this painting was too much of a cliche, that it wouldn’t count toward whatever number of paintings she needed for her thesis. Yet, to me, the painting smacked of a Jungian archetype. Anyone looking at it feels the passage of time that goes beyond wrinkles on a face, creaks in the bones. It’s like a Coke bottle 500 years in our future that washes up on a beach. Cliche? Who cares? We get the message.
Megan’s thesis is on dolphins.How have we used these magnificent creatures for our own agendas in the military, in research, in captivity? How have we turned them into anthropomorphic versions of ourselves and our own struggles? Megan’s studio was filled with paintings.
This one, for instance, shows dolphins as armed soldiers, a comment on how the U. S. military taught captive dolphins to carry explosives. Nancy remarked that these dolphins look like WWI soldiers, and Megan laughed and said yup, she’d painted them from WWI photos. Her advisor called this a sketch (i.e, doesn’t count toward number of paintings for thesis).
This was my favorite, and spoke of the harm we humans have done to dolphins, inadvertently, through our corruption of the environment – think BP, Exxon Valdez – and through our experiments on dolphins in captivity. The advisor also considered this one a sketch. Megan gave it to me to bring home.
The advisor also considered this one a sketch. Again, it’s a takeoff on the military use of dolphins.
In a sense, these “sketches” are like outlines for books. They’re blueprints Megan’s muse will use to take the work in other, unexplored directions.
In the next painting, Megan uses a myth from the Amazon about the pink dolphins. In that myth, the pink river dolphins are believed to emerge from the river on the nights of the full moon as human males. They cover their blowholes with a hat, then seduce the prettiest women in the village and carry them back into the river to be their mates. When a woman in the village becomes pregnant our of wedlock, she can say the dolphin did it!
With this one, she stained the paper with tea and made it look like a page from an old manuscript.This one is also a personal favorite.
There’s something magnificent about watching her talent unfold.
OK, so here’s the synchro. Every January, kids at her college are supposed to undertake some sort of independent study project that relates to their major. One January, Megan worked at a wildlife preserve in Ecuador. While engaged in her thesis project, she applied for a January internship at a dolphin facility in the Florida Keys. And she landed the internship!
Re: "Skydiving at graduation? Gulp."
I can't wait to see that photo on this blog (…and no photo-shopping ,Trish.-)
I've promised myself to go tandem hang gliding at Byron Bay next year,but you'll never get me skydiving…not in this life,anyway.
Good luck with getting your parents out of the plane,Megan
…but if you don't,I can't say that I blame them.
Cheers /Darren
hey, megan! Glad you came by!! Skydiving at graduation? Gulp.
– mom
Hi everyone! Sorry it's taken me so long to come on here! School keeps me busy, that's for sure. I'm so glad you all enjoy my artwork. I can guarantee you that it is still in the unfolding process, but I feel that I finally have a more focused idea.
Despite my mother's clear distaste for my adviser saying my pieces are sketches, I can vouch that compared to the work that I am now creating, those pieces are most definitely sketches.
In fact I was most surprised at my mom's enthusiasm for the lavender colored piece as I worked on it for approximately eight minutes and didn't consider it anywhere near even a sketch. But then I guess art is subjective, is it not?
I'll be sure to keep you guys updated on the progression of my work. I'm focusing more on abstracted images of dolphins at the present moment as a means to influence individuals to challenge their established perceptions of dolphins.
And while I am attempting to show through my artwork that there is much more to the dolphin then the perpetual smile, I must say that that is what I love most about them…that I feel like I can relate to them. If anything, my work is allowing me to create deeper respect for these amazing, intelligent creatures.
And as for the skydiving, I think I'll just let everyone know that my parents promised me they would go skydiving with me on my 21st birthday…which was almost three months ago…..so I'm sure that when I actually convince them to jump out of a plane with me for my graduation, you'll see a post on here about how much they absolutely loved it! I know they will. I KNOW YOU WILL MOM! Thanks so much for your kind comments!
Have a Happy Thanksgiving all! I'm off to Alabama tomorrow to spend the holiday with boyfriend, and even though I know my parents will miss me, I think it's good for me to let them know that I'll miss them too!
All is well,
Megan
I am so impressed to see your daughter sky diving!
How wonderful to work with dolphins, she is very lucky and obviously very talented.
I Love! the water color dolphin.
Congratulations!
A bit too adventurous for me!
Ray – i agree about dolphins in the wild. They're beautiful to see. I can't imagine how anyone could strap an explosive to a dolphin.
First, your daughter is a very brave and adventurous girl for jumping out of a plane. How exciting.
I love her artwork. She is very talented. This is a great post. The information you provide about the dolphins is news to me. Wow. It really makes you think.
Congrats to Megan on her internship. I wonder if the instructor doesn't like dolphins.
I love dolphins in the wild. I have watched them for hours swimming between two ships during underway replenishment.
I just read that many of the dolphins who beached themselves were deaf. The Navy was/is doing research with underwater sound that killed whales and dolphins. I don't know when if they ever stopped, but they refused to stop when what they were doing was discovered.
Ray
Good observation, Marguerite! She's a double virgo, pisces rising. But that moon is a new moon, a day after an eclipse. That tends to make her more like an aries when it comes to adrenaline highs.
We're excited for her with this dolphin internship.
Wow, that pic of Megan skydiving is incredible! Not a typical Virgo activity, so she must have other influences!? As a former art major in college, I can relate and appreciate all that Megan is doing. Her art work is fantastic and I love her attention to detail. And the internship sounds perfect and I wish her all the best with it!
Congrats Megan! What a wonderful opportunity to work with dolphins.
Your artwork is amazing!
Best wishes on your new endeavor…and keep up the creative process. I have complete faith that the youth of today will change today's current lack of support for the arts. And that in the future it will be valued with greater respect and utmost importance.
Wonderful news of Megan's internship. If it is the dolphin facility on Marathon Key next to the Jolly Roger RV Park then I can vouch that it's a wonderful facility. I toured it over a decade ago when my folks were wintering there.
Here's a charming dolphin/porpoise story by Dick Van Dyke–move the slider to the 8:40 minute mark.
Oh…I'm sorry,too.
Congrats Megan,on your internship and I hope you learn a lot about the plight of the dolphins while there.
Cheers /Daz
Re: terripatrick's comment,
"How awesome to be surrounded by magnificent creatures with perpetual smiles."
The perpetual dolphin smile is an illusion,much like the sad clown with with the painted on smile,he might look happy on the outside,but could be crying on the inside,you would never know by just looking at the "smile" of the dolphin (they're like The Joker's smile from the Batman comics).So like the Charlie Chaplin song "Smile" they could be smiling,even though their hearts are breaking,unfortunately.
I know I've plugged the movie "The Cove" before on this site,but here's a write up on the movie by Jaron Gilinsky on his blog site;
https://www.jaronreport.com/2010/03/cove.html
which I would urge you to read even if you don't think you could watch the film.
Cheers / Darren
WV = santion (sanction)?
Thanks, all. We'll make sure she takes plenty of pics at the dolphin facility!
oh, dear, i am so sorry to have failed to add congratulations to megan for her internship! absolutely wonderful! congratulations, megan! they are very very lucky to have you! and very neat synchro!!!
It certainly is a joy to watch them unfold, especially children of the light as Megan obviously is.
I agree her choice of subject matter is a beauty, as are her 'sketches'.
Re: the localities of internship – life imitating art?
Congratulations Megan, go you! 😀
wv = pleadhup plead up?
Congrats on the Internship!
How awesome to be surrounded by magnificent creatures with perpetual smiles.
wv: undmard
(this makes me feel dolphins are unmarred (under marred) by the horrors we have reaped upon them)
I love these "sketches". The work is beautiful and it evokes powerful emotions. I agree with Nancy- Megan is "connected".
Congratulations on the internship, Megan, what a wonderful opportunity!
Thanks for sharing this with us, Trish.
Awesome sketches. I can't wait to see what the advisor will accept as a painting that counts for her thesis. 😀
Dolphins – what a wonderful choice for a thesis.
Those 'sketches' are spot on. Love the WWI pic with the helmets – it says so much … the innocence of the dolphins over shadowed with those helmets and guns. Just like some of the very young human soldiers today.
That thing about a picture painting a thousand words – very true in Magan's case,
I asked her to check in on the blog today. She'll love these comments!
how magnificent to behold the process of our children becoming/developing and being – and megan certainly has a firm grasp on being and becoming – totally agree with nancy on how she is not only so gifted, but so connected, something to which we can all aspire – i love her connection to the dolphins – to their spirit and to their experiences – all made visible in her work – and my own particular favorite of favorite pieces here has to be the purple/lavender one – just love it!!! you'll frame it, of course! 😉
I love dolphins. I have always sent positive energy out for our dolphin friends. I think your daughter is putting a voice and a face to the anguish many of us feel about the treatment of these magnificent mammals. This syncho is perfect – the universe hears her call. She is not only gifted, she is connected.
Thanks, DJan. Rob and I can't take any credit for her artistic ability. Neither of us can draw anything!
Yes, your daughter is incredibly talented, but who would have thought she would turn out otherwise, with two such accomplished parents?? Wonderful sketches and art. I am also fascinated by dolphins and appalled at what we humans have done. Thanks for sharing this.