Selling Our Souls

The fascinating ongoing exposure of our modern world's true spiritual alliance keeps revealing itself daily.

I truly believe we're now in a new era of a covert Satan getting more bold, having spent centuries (eons!) shifting man closer to him.

Art is the first to indicate this, plodding into the sulfurous liquid of evil.

Here's what's going on at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario.


Ted Fullerton
Untitled #12, Memories and Visions, 1997
Compressed charcoal, ink, oil and lithograph on paper
22.5" x 30.1"
Collection of the MacLaren Art Centre

My questions on the piece "Memories and Visions":

Memories -
of the Garden?
after the apple?
of the fall?
of Satan's underearth abode?

Here is a sculpture by Fullerton with that horned entity once again, titled Anima Mundi.


Ted Fullerton
Anima Mundi, 2016
Cast Resin (Bronze), Steel, Antler
9’ x 5’ x 2’
Bau-Xi Gallery, Toronto
(More on Ted Fullerton here, and his works here and here)

About the phrase Anima Mundi:

"Anima Mundi is an occult and spiritual belief that everything in the Universe is connected by a world soul."[Source: Rationalwiki]

More...

Goat Head Symbol: The picture of the horned goat head is a symbol used by Satanists to mock Jesus, who is known as the 'Lamb of God', who gave His life for sinners. The goat-headed figure is called 'Baphomet', which represents the deity of Satanist and the power of darkness. The goat head is the Satanists' way to mock the expression 'Lamb of God'. [Source]

More...

Baphomet is an enigmatic, goat-headed figure found in several instance in the history of occultism.

[...]

Baphomet is a composite creation symbolic of alchemical realization through the union of opposite forces. Occultists believe that, through the mastery of life force, one is able to produce magick and spiritual enlightenment. Eliphas Levi’s depiction of Baphomet included several symbols alluding to the raising of the kundalini – serpentine power – which ultimately leads to the activation of the pineal gland, also known as the “third eye”. So, from an esoteric point of view, Baphomet represents this occult process [Source].

The Evil of the Environmentalists

The spring/summer brings beautiful flowers, cute birds and, actually, some lovely bird songs (including the haunting mourning dove's, and the cardinal's brief visit). But there are "bird parasites" which through man-made accommodations (such as expansive foliage in apartment landscaping and bird seeds left by clueless residents) nest and breed in "safe" places when they should be out in the woods and under the natural control of predators - hawks, foxes, etc.

There are two kinds of people who allows this to happen:

- The "oh they're such lovely birds" apartment dwellers who feed them with bird seed (which should be illegal unless you have a caged parrot)

- And the "environmentalists"

I met the latter at the recent Mississauga City Hall National Public Works Week Family Fun Day:

Do you know what it takes to keep the city moving each day? From providing clean water to building roads and bridges or planning for mass transit, to removing snow on roadways or devising emergency management plans, public works services contribute to a city's quality of life. Join us for Family Fun Day - a celebration of National Public Works Week (NPWW).

I went because I saw all the activity from a distance.

It was generally informative and I showed the Peel Regional Police who were there at the "Square" that I wasn't the demon that I have clearly been made out to be thanks to an email blitz by the administrators and leaders at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. I actually care about the place I live in. The cops were kind and helpful about some questions I had about how to contact them for services.

But it was this woman, Melanie Kramer, whose business card describes her as "Program Coordinator, Residential Outreach at Credit Valley Conservation" who merits attention.

I waited for her to be free from other questioneers, and started gently. I wanted help after all.

I asked about the flood control activities we as residents can get involved in. One of course is to plant species that can help with flood assistance, such as plants with deep roots.

But all this fascinating information (which I also got from other experts at the fair) is for another post.

The woman said: "Well we want to make sure that we protect our wildlife"

"But these aren't wildlife. True wild birds don't get their daily feed from seeds scattered by humans."

She insisted on her perspective.

I got impatient and irritated by this clearly "green" person who believes that all animals are benign creatures who require our help AT ALL COST.

Sounds like those AGM people who believe that all "immigrants and non-whites discriminated against by racist white Canadians require our help" AT ALL COST.

Back to these cute birds. They can carry germs. They can be conduits to all kinds of health problems for humans, for animals, and those precious trees this fascist woman is protecting.

Still she wouldn't budge. "You can call us for educational and other assistance" she said and gave me her business card.

I got furious.

"Well thanks. What I will do is just spray rat poison on the areas where they congregate."

Then I smiled and walked away, leaving her befuddled.

Kramer's education, according to her LinkIn page is:

University of Guelph
Degree: PhD student Field Of Study: Rural Studies - Food systems
Dates: 2012 – 2016

University of Toronto
Master of Landscape Architecture
Dates: 2003 – 2006

York University
Master of Environmental Studies
Dates: 2000 – 2003

And her LinkedIn page has an arrow pointing to "more," and this is what I saw, which led me to a small burst of laughter:

University of Waterloo
Degree: Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Field Of Study: Philosophy

ALL CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE FUNDAMENTALISTS: I.E.: THEY RELIGIOUSLY BELIEVE IN WHAT THEY SAY AND DO!!

Of course environmental studies should ring a bell. This isn't the environmental studies I studied when I was a biology student for my undergraduate degree, where we really studied the environment. It was called "ecology" then.

This is a pseudonym for "GREEN," meaning a movement for all those who religiously believe in "climate change" and how we should change our God-given earth to accommodate for this "greening effect" caused by man-made evil. These fanatics change their titles to suit the realty: What was "Global Warming" now is known as "Climate Change." I'm not going to provide any links to these ideological adjustments. Go and find them yourselves.

And of course all modernists are fundamentalist religionists. This is clearly the case with the God-rejecting Art Gallery of Mississauga staff and directors, who have found their god in the "other," the non-white immigrant, the dedicated believer in a supernatural being, something which the can never be.

I should add here that I confronted another "environmentalist," Reinhard Reitzenstein, yet another Art Gallery of Mississauga invitee, when I asked him during and AGM-sponsored panel discussion in 2015 about his "environmentalist" positon.

I said: "People want to preserve their environment. All of us are concerned citizens. How can you get away from the split: "pro-global warming good: anti-global warming bad?

How can we get away from this dichotomy and get together as a concerned citizens who want to preserve our countries, our landscapes, the nature around us, our earth?"

He really had nothing to respond to my question, even in general such as " well we can start citizen committees," and muttered something about environmentalism and the importance of nature.

I left it at that with no comment, no suggestions, and no "solidarity," and left the event soon after.

Such is the hypocrisy of the "environmentalists." Fundamentally what they believe is that our God, who created this nature, is evil and nature is good. And that the Gaia goddess will right all the wrongs of our God.

In the meantime, Reitzenstein cannot do without any of the amenities that the civilization our God has created: his smart car, his complex image recording devices (computer, camera, wifi, digital discs) and the civilization where he can sit on a panel and debate civilly in front of an audience without a riot breaking out or someone throwing a rock at him (of course rock throwing happens, and it is ALWAYS "his side" which is the aggressor).

Welcome to our Post-1984 Brave New World. Orwell and Huxley must be turning in their graves. And Satan would be smiling, with a wide grin!


Reinhard Reitzenstein
Transformer

Transformer was built for the Sculpture Symposium Cime et Racines, held at La Gabelle Park near Trois Riviers, Quebec, Canada. During the site visit to La Gabelle I was instantly inspired by seeing the two abandoned hydro-electric towers at the edge of the escarpment above a hydro dam. My idea for this project immediately entered my mind and I inquired about the possibility of suspending an inverted tree from the two towers. The title Transformer means the same in both French and English and compels the work to be read as a critique of hydro Quebec forestry practices and clear-cut strategies when establishing corridors for their lines. It also references the history of logging and log chutes along the river. The project could be seen hovering on the escarpment from miles away and often lured visitors from the highway to witness the spectacle. [Source: Reinhard Reitzenstein's website]

Canada Created by Pioneers and Settler Farmers

Image posted at the article
Multicultural Historian: Early White Canadians Were Lazy Colonizers, Not Hardy Farmers
by Prof. Ricardo Duchesne
On the website Council of European Canadians
With the captain: Lazy Euro-Canadian boy pretending he is working the land; this is a myth, he is a colonizer.

---

Ricardo Duchesne, who writes at the Council of European Canadians and who is a professor at the University of New Brunswick, has this to say about Daniel Panneton, a "Historian & Outreach Officer at Multicultural History Society of Ontario," who reviewed his best-sellng book Canada in Decay (of which I have a copy):

Daniel Panneton, a "Historian & Outreach Officer at Multicultural History Society of Ontario," calls extremist my view that Canada was created by pioneers and settler farmers. He says it is "racist" and a "myth" to say that Canada was created by Euro-Canadians. The only historically accurate view of Canada's past is that it was a "culture of white supremacy, a culture that is continually replicated and reshaped by our political and cultural institutions."

[...]

He condemns my best selling book Canada in Decay for allegedly arguing "that multiculturalism is a covert plot to wipe out the white race by the globalist left." It is obvious Penneton did not read this book, and I would be surprised if he has carefully read and fairly evaluated any book that portrays Euro-Canadians as hard workers who created the very comforts Penneton enjoys without being grateful to his ancestors.

I repeat, not a single source, book or article, is referenced by Penneton the "historian" of the "Multicultural History Society of Ontario". This is what passes for "historian" nowadays. When graduate students are celebrating diversity and condemning "white supremacy" they are not required to cite sources and employ facts. It is a self-evident truth instilled upon children the moment they enter primary school that "diversity is our greatest strength" and that "white supremacists" control Canada. Penneton imagines himself a true "hardy" Canadian challenging the dominant "white supremacist" establishment while expressing these self-evident truths.

Museums

Having completed an MA in History, Penneton is currently doing "Museum Studies" at the University of Toronto. I wonder if he knows that museums were invented by Europeans. With origins dating back to Hellenistic Greece, museums really took off during the 1600s when Europeans went about displaying all sorts of natural objects, plants, animals, artifacts, brought back from their amazing voyages of discovery. During the post-WWII years, museums were built in city after city across the West as amazing storehouses of natural and human history, and as centers of education.

Who would have known that as Western nations are being forced to populate themselves with millions of diverse immigrants, museums are becoming places dedicated to the celebration of the far lesser achievements of non-Europeans, officially committed to diversity in the West, coupled with exhibitions of Europe's achievements as if they were the "achievements of humanity", and the transformation of all museums into ideological weapons to encourage Europeans to view their nations as the "common home" of humanity?

The program Museum Studies rang a resounding bell. Where had I heard of it before?

Oh yes!

Right here, posted at the following LinkedIn page:

Kendra Ainsworth
Experience
Art Gallery of Mississauga
Curator of Contemporary Art
Art Gallery of Mississauga
Mar 2016 – Present
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
The Art Gallery of Mississauga is a public non-profit gallery located in Mississauga's Civic Centre. We are committed to presenting work by regional, national and international contemporary artists in accessible, engaging exhibitions and public programs. In this position I manage all aspects of exhibition planning and curation, including grant writing, budget management, loans, shipping, insurance, partnerships and publications. I am proud to work at an institution that values accessibility, inclusivity, diversity, and working collaboratively with artists and communities.

Education
University of Toronto
Master's degree, Museum Studies
2013

University of Toronto - Victoria University
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Cultural Anthropology
2002 – 2006

The curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Mississauga about whose (the gallery's) activities I have posted recently here, here, here, here, here here, and here among other posts and references, holds a Masters degree from the program whose graduate Duchesne describes as: "This is what passes for "historian" nowadays."

Of course students come and go, but if the institution they hail from is now getting "outed" for providing this type of "educated" graduate, even one, then we have to consider the merits of ALL the others.

The Well Dressed Lady: Part II

I returned to the store yesterday afternoon to pick up Moonlight in Paris along with some other book that would make my total purchase $5 (or more...).

I looked and looked. I searched via the store's computer catalogue. I went into sections where I knew the book shouldn't be but tried anyway.

Finally, I asked one of the store assistants to help me, but to no avail.

I was very disappointed. This, according to my email notification, was the last day to redeem my "free" dollars.

I took a couple of breaths, and looked again at the $2-5 stacks.
Then I found this!
The Well-Dressed Lady's Pocket Guide
By Karen Homer

Wow!

It is a tiny book, 4x6.5", hardback, and with a creative illustration, a wispy ink drawing on the cover. (The lady's earring and the book title are in a metallic silver, which looks grey when I use photoshop.)



I skimmed through it and I liked the chapters (a good start):
- Shapes and Silhouettes
- Dresses
- Skirts

The final one being: "Your Wardrobe."

But you can't have it all; there is a section on jeans. How can you be a "lady" in jeans? Maybe they got that song title wrong: Lady in Blue and thought it meant "blue jeans."

Anyway so far so good despite glitches.

The introduction ends like this:

With the disappearance of universal fashion etiquette and previously unimaginable social mobility of the last 50 years, it might seem the wish to be well-dressed, with its connotations of snobbery and elitism, has fallen out of favour. But many women realize they want a style that endures - essentially classic, yet still individual, giving a nod to fashion but always appropriate. And while good clothes can be more expensive when compared to the disposable attitude to fashion - buy it cheap then throw it away - compiling a well-thought-out wardrobe that wll cover any occasions more economical in the long run. And that's exactly what this pocket book for the well-dressed woman will teach you how to do.

The Well Dressed Lady: Part I

Since when have women been called "ladies?"

I went to my local Chapters Indigo (mega) bookstore to redeem a $5 "top-up" they emailed me (I've been a pretty good customer averaging about 5 books/year). Actually I went yesterday to search through the choices and was delighted to find that they are doing their periodic sale of unsold books and putting them up for $2 $3 $5 $7, the highest for $10. They have put them is semi-subject classifications. But all that really amounts to is "fiction vs. nonfiction."

I found what looked like a nice story called Moonlight in Paris for $2 and went to buy it.

The lovely lady (yes a lady) at the cash said that I would have to find a book $5 or more to redeem my points, otherwise I would have to pay outright.

"That defeats the whole purpose!" I said. "I think I will just go back and look for some more."

At this point I usually take the book in hand and put it back where I found it so that I can locate it easily next time around, but I forgot to do so.

"Your hair looks lovely!" I said to her. She usually has it up in a bun and now it is a low cut bob. It is grey (white). I thought it made her look younger and her light blue eyes were more prominent. I didn't say all this though!

"Yes it is a summer cut. It used to be really long. I had it wrapped up in a bun."

I said my goodbyes and resigned to come back the next day after I looked up books on the store's online catalogue.

I wish I had taken my camera with me.

There is a booth for the Rogers digital communications in the middle of the Square One mall.

I rush through that congested area to get to the exit at the other end so I can finally get home in one piece.

Well, I saw one of the promoters, a young Hispanic-looking woman, in tight dark pants and a black t-shirt with a logo. I guess the company allows ths getup. She was talking on a cell phone.

Somehow, this didn't look like a business call, nor one where she was helping connect (with) a customer. She was exuberantly talking and gesticulating, excitedly moving from one spot to another. She has no regard for her collegue, a young man, nor was she soliciting his advice (nor consulting other online or catalogue information).

She was laughing, walking back and front, talking then listening. The "mobile" (resolutely immobile) appendage never left her hand and her right ear.

I walked past sensing something odd (what I described above). I stopped a few steps behind the booth and observed the booth.

The young man was sitting slouched with his wrist under his chin and his elbow on the counter. He wasn't quite looking at the women, nor was he looking away. He looked bored. But above all, he looked resigned to the situation; to his fate.

He was not needed (nor wanted) and was glanced at only when problems occur - and they always do although not so often, thanks to the fastidious programs that Rogers and their engineers have devised. Some of these infrequent technical and digital problems are big, and only he can rectify them. Those are the problems which require creative intelligence, and not some charming fast talking by Maria. But then there are also those problems of compassion and sacrifice, when a spare body is needed to fill in for those endless cultural holidays, or when an angry customer threatens to walk away in the middle of a lucrative deal. And when he has to sit and "man" the post when his "colleague" is off on some personal ethnic call.

How he wishes he could be like that: confident, happy, "in the moment," and even a woman. Women always seem to have less care, and less pressure for responsibility than men feel. Look at his sisters. And look at Mary, who has surpassed him with promotions, and talks of moving to New York for a job with some new text/voice/ gadget that is just coming into the market.

How he wishes he didn't have to worry all the time about everything: Should he padlock the safe or just take it home with him? Is the mall food court hummus safe? How can he have passed so many weeks without visiting his parents? Mary, his girlfriend, is always talking about her parents. She lives with them. He thinks that is nice although he moved out a couple of years ago as soon as he finished his college computer programming technician's diploma. It is always easier and more acceptable for girls to stay on indefinitely with their parents, not matter what Gloria Steinem would say.

He went through the "usual" - so say his friends - McJobs before he landed this one. But why couldn't he have got it right away? He was top of his class. And all those Indians, whom everyone thought were so savvy, always came up to him during the take-home assignments. The Chinese were cleverer, but he still was always several points above them in the tests and grades. And look at them all now in head office jobs in Toronto, driving their latest car models. He still moves around in his mother's car (she "loaned" it to hm). But more often now he is using public transportation to avoid spending so much money on gas.

But these fast trackers aren't quite the honchos, and it is still youngish white guys (were they once like him?) who run the show. It's a little like what he's doing here. But he's too nice (or too scared?) to put his foot down and tell Maria that he's really the boss here. The "real" bosses have made it clear that Maria should front the stall, answer questions, small talk to clients to bring him to the deal when she thinks more than just talk is required. She's clever that way. But he could do it too. He used to run a lawn mowing business (snow plowing in the winter) throughout high school. He went to Newfoundland one summer and worked on a new digital store they were starting out there one summer. He had to be savvy and clever AND know his computer geek stuff.

He is just a business strategy here. With so many multicultural people coming through the mall, his bosses feel (they never said so but he knows) that he might intimidate some of them. So the "trapping" the clients goes to her.

But the funny thing is business is slow. There are all kinds of knock offs that people can buy for dirt cheap either online or when they travel to their home countries. Rogers' gadgets are really for people like him who would use all those apps and accessories. And not just for long distance phone calls (which he never makes anyway - who to??). Even the children of these mall shoppers, his former classmates, don't use technology to its fullest. They always seem to be a step behind, mastering the last version when the new one has hit the market. And he studies the new one BEFORE it is out. That is why he got this job!

But what if he left tomorrow? What if he got hold of all those quiet computer geeks, who like him are in a daze about their future prospects, and started a movement saying: no more McJobs manning booths. Let as be MEN and MAN our own stores. Let Maria do something else, or just sit at the cash register. He (and his friends) would be the bosses and decide all the important things, such as: no personal cell phones on the job. Period.

All those mocked millennials, those "Angry White Men" can start a revolution!

He'll have to think more about this. Wow! Sitting down staring into space pretending to work can produce some interesting ideas!

As I walked past, I looked back. I happened to glance at the glass window of another store, and saw the young man watching my reflection through the glass. He is of course as clever as I thought he was. He didn't have to turn his head all the way around (and risk me seeing his stretch back) to watch me as walked off. He must know that he had found an ally!

Our Father

Matthew 6:9-13
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.


City Hall Entrance, Mississauga
[Photo By: KPA]

The image here is the entrance to the Mississauga City Hall with directions to the voting area. Elections are in progress.

The board behind the door is the sign leading to the Art Gallery of Mississauga with and image by Tom Dean, who has work in the AGM's permanent collection, and whose work was up for auction last April 26.

There is no information, either at the auction house nor at the AGM's website what auctioned works got sold and at what price.

Dean's work, Night Party, from which the sign is taken, has amoebic pre-life forms and graveyard ghosts circling around crosses. In the background, it looks like a nuclear bomb has exploded.


Tom Dean
Night Party 1999

The confluence of art and politics cannot be more visually presented: Will we, through the power of the people, common sense, and a grounded Christian spirituality, have enough courage boldness and resolution to be rid of these forces that are circling around us like vultures, ready to pounce peck and debone, leaving a cavity for evil to fill in?

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
For ever.
Amen.


Willem de Poorter (Dutch, 1608–d. ca. 1660)
An old woman at prayer with vanitas objects nearby
Oil on panel
14.5 x 11 in.
Private Collection

Goth Rapes and Social Consciousness: In Search of Satan

In seeming jest, the Art Gallery of Mississauga's Curator of Contemporary Art, Kendra Ainsworth has put this on the AGM's official Facebook page:

Some evening reading for you on this #WorldGothDay! A fascinating look at the Goth movement through #music, #film, #literature and visual #art. Also, everyone looks good in #black.

Yet she chose to put some benign (dreaming) writer wth background owls to illustrate her "pop culture" point.


Screenshot from Art Gallery of Mississauga's Facebook page

The article she links to from Britain's The Independent, references more disturbing "goth" paintings than Goya's owls.

Here is one:


The Nightmare (1781)
Henry Fuseli (1741-1825)
Oil painting on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

As I've sad before, the macabre, the alien, the monster, Satan, is often linked with sex, and often gruesome sex which by all standards is rape. Look how the Hollywood sluts have demonized Harvey Weinstein whose mottled face (from alcoholism?) fits perfectly with their rapist/seductor. They charge that Weinstein "forced" them into sex while they were young and innocent (one at least says she was underage). But then all went bejeweled into his chamber to bedazzle the monster.

The #MeToo movement suddenly made them aware of the corners they cut and the favors they garnered when the went onto the couch of their "director." And who's to say they didn't enjoy it?


Mandy Salter Director and Curator of the Art Gallery of Mississauga

wearing a #MeToo solidarity black at a gala event where all the guests (see the audience)
came in colorful attire, if not in jewels, which "ethnics" self consciously display honoring themselves
and their surroundings with respectable presentation

[Photo from Art Gallery of Mississauga's Facebook page]

This "rape of the virgin in virginal white by the monster creature" is just another example of the "eroticism" of women who dare foolishly to enter such charged quarters.

They swoon, but with pleasure.

This painting is clearly of this creature's "score" after he raped the woman in virginal white.

This is the demonic, Satanic, God-rejecting art that the Art Gallery Of Mississauga's goth "aficionados" have channeled.

The monster and the swooning maiden, coming from self-declared feminists. The irony is lost on them!

But more serious than the AGM's staff monster-sex proclivities is the posting of such demonic imagery and alluding to such woman-beast/monster fornicatlon. Serious because such pornography is posted on an official site of a public agency which is accessible to an audience where "this is x-rated material" does not apply. Young underage (12-year olds) can access this material anytime, anywhere. The physical AGM gallery space, in the City Hall's space, has the billboard "those under 18 cannot attend this exhibition" at the entrance of the AGM's current exhibition seeping upwards, rupturing the surface (lack of uppercase letters normal for titles is a deliberate "subversive" tactic), and without blinking an eye. It's too close to all those grant-granting counsellors!

Let Kendra Ainsworth, the gallery staff who posted the image and article link, do what she will on her private (or not so private) "social media" page, "sip slow" all the beer and wine she wants, and read all the class-conflict "goth" novels she desires (on her patio no less - irony is lost on these people).

Leave the public galleries clean.

White Young Man in Square One: Ally for a Mocked Millennial

I wish I had taken my camera with me.

There is a booth for the Rogers digital communications in the middle of the Square One mall.

I rush through that congested area to get to the exit at the other end so I can finally get home in one piece.

Well, I saw one of the promoters, a young Hispanic-looking woman, in tight dark pants and a black t-shirt with a logo. I guess the company allows ths getup. She was talking on a cell phone.

Somehow, this didn't look like a business call, nor one where she was helping connect (with) a customer. She was exuberantly talking and gesticulating, excitedly moving from one spot to another. She has no regard for her collegue, a young man, nor was she soliciting his advice (nor consulting other online or catalogue information).

She was laughing, walking back and front, talking then listening. The "mobile" (resolutely immobile) appendage never left her hand and her right ear.

I walked past sensing something odd (what I described above). I stopped a few steps behind the booth and observed the booth.

The young man was sitting slouched with his wrist under his chin and his elbow on the counter. He wasn't quite looking at the women, nor was he looking away. He looked bored. But above all, he looked resigned to the situation; to his fate.

He was not needed (nor wanted) and was glanced at only when problems occur - and they always do although not so often, thanks to the fastidious programs that Rogers and their engineers have devised. Some of these infrequent technical and digital problems are big, and only he can rectify them. Those are the problems which require creative intelligence, and not some charming fast talking by Maria. But then there are also those problems of compassion and sacrifice, when a spare body is needed to fill in for those endless cultural holidays, or when an angry customer threatens to walk away in the middle of a lucrative deal. And when he has to sit and "man" the post when his "colleague" is off on some personal ethnic call.

How he wishes he could be like that: confident, happy, "in the moment," and even a woman. Women always seem to have less care, and less pressure for responsibility than men feel. Look at his sisters. And look at Mary, who has surpassed him with promotions, and talks of moving to New York for a job with some new text/voice/ gadget that is just coming into the market.

How he wishes he didn't have to worry all the time about everything: Should he padlock the safe or just take it home with him? Is the mall food court hummus safe? How can he have passed so many weeks without visiting his parents? Mary, his girlfriend, is always talking about her parents. She lives with them. He thinks that is nice although he moved out a couple of years ago as soon as he finished his college computer programming technician's diploma. It is always easier and more acceptable for girls to stay on indefinitely with their parents, not matter what Gloria Steinem would say.

He went through the "usual" - so say his friends - McJobs before he landed this one. But why couldn't he have got it right away? He was top of his class. And all those Indians, whom everyone thought were so savvy, always came up to him during the take-home assignments. The Chinese were cleverer, but he still was always several points above them in the tests and grades. And look at them all now in head office jobs in Toronto, driving their latest car models. He still moves around in his mother's car (she "loaned" it to hm). But more often now he is using public transportation to avoid spending so much money on gas.

But these fast trackers aren't quite the honchos, and it is still youngish white guys (were they once like him?) who run the show. It's a little like what he's doing here. But he's too nice (or too scared?) to put his foot down and tell Maria that he's really the boss here. The "real" bosses have made it clear that Maria should front the stall, answer questions, small talk to clients to bring him to the deal when she thinks more than just talk is required. She's clever that way. But he could do it too. He used to run a lawn mowing business (snow plowing in the winter) throughout high school. He went to Newfoundland one summer and worked on a new digital store they were starting out there one summer. He had to be savvy and clever AND know his computer geek stuff.

He is just a business strategy here. With so many multicultural people coming through the mall, his bosses feel (they never said so but he knows) that he might intimidate some of them. So the "trapping" the clients goes to her.

But the funny thing is business is slow. There are all kinds of knock offs that people can buy for dirt cheap either online or when they travel to their home countries. Rogers' gadgets are really for people like him who would use all those apps and accessories. And not just for long distance phone calls (which he never makes anyway - who to??). Even the children of these mall shoppers, his former classmates, don't use technology to its fullest. They always seem to be a step behind, mastering the last version when the new one has hit the market. And he studies the new one BEFORE it is out. That is why he got this job!

But what if he left tomorrow? What if he got hold of all those quiet computer geeks, who like him are in a daze about their future prospects, and started a movement saying: no more McJobs manning booths. Let as be MEN and MAN our own stores. Let Maria do something else, or just sit at the cash register. He (and his friends) would be the bosses and decide all the important things, such as: no personal cell phones on the job. Period.

All those mocked millennials, those "Angry White Men" can start a revolution!

He'll have to think more about this. Wow! Sitting down staring into space pretending to work can produce some interesting ideas!

As I walked past, I looked back. I happened to glance at the glass window of another store, and saw the young man watching my reflection through the glass. He is of course as clever as I thought he was. He didn't have to turn his head all the way around (and risk me seeing his stretch back) to watch me as walked off. He must know that he had found an ally!

"No racists allowed here!"

Art Gallery of Mississauga's 2018 Auction Night at the Square One Mall
April 26, 2018

I am always polite and pretty formal with the staff in Walmart, even when I ask them how they spent their holiday or if their daughter/son/mother-in-law (yes I ask about people's lives!) is OK or coming soon or graduated from high school.

I have very little interaction with the Indian tellers or managers. I have trouble communicating with them not just linguistically but culturally as well. I prefer the sweet Portuguese lady (I speak French and Spanish so I can get around her language shortages) and a lovely Russian Orthodox woman whom I wish "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Easter" during our Orthodox holidays. Her English is accented but excellent.

These past couple of days, some of these usually friendly tellers were a little "off." They were slow to answer my questions and unusually pushy as though to get me out faster.

I was confused. Then I GOT IT!

Walmart must be reacting - belatedly - to the police report filed by the Art Gallery of Mississauga's director Mandy Salter a couple of weeks ago on the unfounded accusation that I displayed antagonistic behavior toward a couple of the AGM's artist exhibitors. I have documented this here.

I shop at the large Walmart for the fresh produce and dairy that they bring. Walmart has been given a "low class" status, and I have never seen any of the AGM's latte sipping, white wine preferring elitists shopping there.

Actually, I have never seen them in the crowded mall. The gallery is about fifteen minutes (walking) from the mall's entrance and since no-one walks anymore, about five by car. There is a pretty good "food court" there as well as half a dozen sandwich and snack places.

News Flash: They don't really like to go there!

What would they do with the cacophony of languages spoken in the mall (by shoppers and salesmen)? And how much patience would they have with that English-as-a-Second-Language speaking Indian teller, whose countrymen's arts they portray with such "connaissance?"

Walmart has about 85% of its workers as Indians, and the rest are a mixture of blacks, whites and a few Chinese/Filipino. Almost all of its frontline staff and managers are Indians. So they pay attention to communications from other agencies around the mall that there is a "a woman on the loose who doesn't like the multi-culti folk."

Who cares in Holt's, The Bay, Laura's, or David's Tea! Who cares really!!

There are more pressing dangers around the mall now, like muggers , pickpockets, store robbers, etc. There is a small band of vigilante police walking in pairs around the mall every day. For people like me? I doubt it, although such a reaction from multi-culti Mississauga will not surprise me.

Today at Holts, I was looking for a gardenia scent and saw a young saleswoman filling in a log. I walked around and waited for her to finish. Then she turned around and asked "Can I help?"

She was heavily pregnant!

"Oh! You must be ready to have the baby any minute now!"

"In July."

"Well I won't bother you too much. Can you tell me where the gardenia-scented perfumes are? Someone at The Bay said you had a new collection here."

This young woman walked me around the store showed me a couple, then told me one that she preferred which had a mixture of flowers.

"What are you having?" I asked her.

"I preferred not to know."

"Oh. Of course! I never used to ask! It is lovely to have a welcome and loved baby!!"

"Yes," she replied wth a sweet smile.

I wished her all the best and left.

So does such a store really care about negative mail concerning an innocent shopper, and believe some corner agency sending it out? I think not.

I suspect ordinary folk are a little uncomfortable about all that "art" on display.

Walmart only paid attention because that is the multi-culti way for a multi-culti staff.

"No racists allowed here!"

The Envy of Poets

The Envy of Poets
[Photo By: KPA]

Not to be a bore with the details, but I had to find some kind of leafy cover from the sharp daylight so that my little bird didn't come out as a silhouette. Then I did some tweaking with my digital dark room (that is exactly what it is. Artists - photographers (and painters too, and Greek sculptors) have tweaked their images since time immemorial. But without those little birds for whom we wait patiently in their impatient flutter to fit into the frame - the frames we outline and find suitable for them to sit in, such things as digital keyboards would just be another gadget destined for the garbage truck.

---

The trick with photography is often waiting. There were many birds fluttering around these blossom trees, often reacting to a passerby, or some distant rumble (Wind? Sea? lion? I don't have their sensitivity.)

But they get used to me, my stillness - I could be a magical tree or something - and my long (I use a zoom lense) protrusion, and they hop around from branch to branch, impatient and never still for long.

"Free as a bird" isn't quite true. Yes these birds roam the sky as they apparently wish, but they have to find food. shelter, mates, nesting material, and protection from hot and cold temperatures, not to mention rain.

They are simply themselves. That is what we (and poets) envy.

The Goal of The Art Gallery of Mississauga: NOT to Emulate Homer Watson

Installation
Reinhard Reitzenstein
Bonavista Biennale at Knight’s Cove,
Nine upside-down, ochre-stained trees along the water and ATV trail.
Image source: Canadian Art in Newfound Land, Photo By: Lean Sandals
August 23, 2017
(Article By Leah Sandals)

---

Here is a post I drafted almost a year ago (it is dated September 5, 2017 and I left the draft article in my files). I am pretty sure I didn't post the essay because I was concerned about augmenting the negative interactions I had had with the Art Gallery of Mississauga, which started soon after I attended the Summer/Fall 2016 exhibition and panel discussion on Canadian painter Homer Watson and other contemporary Canadian artists. The exhibition and the panel were titled: Beyond the Pines: Homer Watson and the Contemporary Canadian Landscape. I attended both.

Given the antagonistic nature the gallery continues to take towards me, especially in view of recent events, it is all now par for the course.

The artist I am profiling is Reinhard Reitzenstein, whom I briefly discuss in a recent post about a week ago here. I had heard him speak on a panel on the exhibition Homer Watson: Beyond the Pines, where he also showed some of his work. I discuss him along with some others from his panel and the Homer Watson exhibit in an August 2017 post Reinstating the Artistic Legacy of Homer Watson, about a month after I attended the exhibition.

In this particular draft I published (posted) today - see below, I write about the small interaction I had with him when I asked him a specific question about his work, and the reply I got from him.

---

In our postmodern era I would be defended as a discriminatee.

My non-White, Third World background would automatically place me in the "victim" pigeonhole where my word against my white "antagonist" would preside, NO MATTER WHAT.

That is, until I start to defend this "white" monster and say he is the one being discriminated against.

Then the wrath, slow though it may come, is full on!

Especially if it is a white women who is regulating the discrimination channel.

This happened to me recently after I attended (and participated in) a lecture at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, where a group of artists were to discuss the works of Homer Watson, a late 19th early 20th century painter from southern Ontario.

I wrote about the exhibition and the panel discussion here: Homer Watson, Native Son. But I left out my questions to the panel.

As wrote in the post:

Last year, I attended a panel discussion on the exhibition Beyond the Pines: Homer Watson and the Contemporary Canadian Landscape at the Art Gallery Mississauga. I had visited the exhibition numerous times, going through Watson's work one by one, to study his technique, his evolution as an artist, his views, his concerns, and his Canada.

The exhibition also displayed works by contemporary Canadian artists to bring this pine "narrative" to the fore. Some were reasonably good, but none reached the overall skill and beauty of Watson's paintings.

I was gong to leave it at that, just a personal observation (not naive or untutored, since I have a solid background in the arts), hoping that I would gain some insight from these artists.

But I should have known better.

The catalogue the AGM produced for this exhibition prefaced with this objective:

Contemporary Canadian artists looking at landscape must also find a way to access the ‘truth’ of a subject that is not only strongly represented in our national artistic history, but one that is both deeply political and personal.

So the "truth" of a subject is now mandated to "represent" not just our nation "objectively" but has to incorporate political and personal views as well.

A tree is not a tree is not a tree, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein .

I asked Reinhard Reitzenstein, one of the panelists, who is a pretty good sculptor (and who is white), if he believes that Homer Watson's standards, and art, set an example for artist in general or if his English (Western) heritage is insignificant. This was of course not what I was asking, as Reitzenstein clearly understood. I was asking him if he thought that Watson's work was good, was superior.

Reitzenstein talked for a bit and finally admitted that he doesn't want to emulate the now archaic art of Watson. We are in the modern age after all!

So, irrespective of technical expertise, artistic beauty, or individual ingenuity, as long as an artist follows the "archaic art" of Watson, his work can not be deemed "good."

This is the tired discussion of art which has reached now such a comical zenith that works are exhibited in museums and galleries simply based on their mockery (and not simple rejection) of this Western tradition. And many artists have become wealthy doing so.

But the public isn't with the program, which is why the Art Gallery of Mississauga has to go through loopholes to get people to visit its exhibitions, including set up committees and workshops to "study" this lack of museum attendance.

I received a "newsletter" email about a year after this exhibition from the AGM, one of the few I have received from them to invite me to participate in two workshops titled: Collections Through The Prism of Diversity Series (here are day one and day two of the schedules).

But I was given about a week's notice for a two day workshop, where would have had to pay $250/day to attend. My first reading of the email, before I saw the dates, was to figure out ways could come up with the sum, including asking for a reduced fee. Soon after, I realized that I was put on the list as a "visible minority" participant.

Here is the email I sent the gallery:

I can only surmise from this late notification that the AGM is getting some kind of monetary benefit from this "email list" which it seems to use haphazardly to meet with its program mandates.

In my case, the mandate appears to be that of a minority female artist who can participate in the discussion on how to add more "diversity" into the art collections of the region.

Through your lack of appropriate notification, you indeed lost the participation of a minority female artist (myself) who would have made a unique and substantial contribution to this discussion.

And the reply I received from Mandy Salter, AGM's newly selected director:

The AGM prides itself on its high professional standards and its strong relational manner. We provide a safe and accountable space for our diverse staff, volunteers, artists and audience. All of this supports the democratic nature of the work we do at the AGM.

Moving forward, if you are able to visit the AGM in a congenial and supportive way I encourage you to do so. If at any point in the future, you visit the AGM and create an unsafe, critical and or threatening space, we will contact security who will request that you leave the premises. If you do not comply they will be entitled to further legal action under the Ontario Trespass to Property Act. I have cc’d senior Security Officers at the City of Mississauga on this and other incidents regarding inflammatory and false statements made by yourself.

The AGM prides itself on embracing diversity and inclusion as a core institutional value. We strive to create an accountable and inclusive space that supports like-minded individuals.

Diversity counts at all costs, even if it means getting the "diverse" complainant out the door!

The irony of the AGM's position of course doesn't occur to its staff: that they are discriminating against me (shutting down my "voice" ) in order that they might continue with their program is exactly what they are accusing the white inheritors of Homer Watson.

This time though, they have found a whole different story: An "ethnic minority" who supports a white tradition, and an immigrant no less!

Sex and Freedom at the Art Gallery of Mississauga

When I went to the Art Gallery of Mississauga ignoring their warning to me (actually I forgot that it was a final warning and thought I would simply get a "Final Warning") about ten days ago to see for myself the lesbian-infused and death promoting exhibition that is now on display under the pornographc title of slippery screens, juicy machines, and feminist notions of rupture, it was clear to me that all modern adults KNOW what "slippery" means, what is "juicy," and where "rupture" leads in the world of pornographic sex.

The AGM's programmers had put up a prudent, and prurient, "disclaimer" at the exhibition's entrance telling, "warning," us innocent viewers that the show was not for the under-eighteen, and all the rest of us beware of the sexual material. There are also "security" cameras recording activities in the gallery - taping the expressions and behaviors of these forewarned visitors can be quite artistically stimulating. This facade of a sign was there to comply with the Human Rights Commission for pornography, which some of these pieces were, although not overtly so, and instead full of the subliminal erotica of flowing fluids and tweaking fingers. And the AGM does not want to be sued over art! Although it can do the suing for discrimination against "freedom of expression" should anyone or any body, question their judgment. Sex is a human expression after all! But government agencies and art institutions have symbiotic, almost incestual, relationships, and neither can afford to harm the other, so erotica "art" in lofty, taxpayer-funded galleries will continue for the foreseeable future.

There is a subliminal message here from me to the lucid reader (and I apologize for having to spell it out). Talk to your local councillors and municipal representatives, as have I. And if they are too "artsy" for you, preferring to convive with the best (the worst) of the AGM crowd, then write to others. Or start a blog, like me. This is MY freedom of expression! as yours could well be yours!

Even a Rodin nude, or a Caravaggio youth don't close their doors to the "under-age." There is something more than just contemplating sculpted genitals that makes classical works bigger than porn. Kenneth Clark wrote a book titled The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, to help us to see a little beyond our natural prudishness. But his historical samples had very few protrusions to cover up, covered up as they were! True artists, and truly artistic cultures, know that some elements detract from a piece of art. The pagan Greeks and Romans themselves, who gloried (and worshiped) nudity reduced their naked gods' appendages to metaphorically boyish sizes.

And so here is one of the images standing under the banner of a "disclaimer." And as its creator purports to stand n the gaze of "art" she clearly used slimy metaphors to depict her erotic urges.

But the "metaphor" stops with the slimy flower (normally a beautiful peony). Unlike what the Greek masters and our classcal ancestors would have done, this photographer showed us her REAL finger to show a REAL action. Such is the impatience and small mindedness of our contemporary artists that they cannot see that people will see their intent if they, the artists, are intelligent and artistic enough.

This photographer spent time on the slime, the shape the exact roundness of the peonies center, the supersaturated film for the supersaturated pink, but she couldn't, wouldn't, metaphorize her elongated index.

Below is a photographic image that the AGM put on their main website, their Instagram, their twitter page, and their Facebook as part of their publicity.


Finger, from the series grass, peonie, bum.
© Maisie Cousins.

Photoworks: Is the use of close up frames a way of heightening the themes of intimacy and voyeurism in your work?

Maisie Cousins: Absolutely, it’s also what I find interesting as getting unnaturally close up to things really excites me, you get to see every detail you would miss with your naked eye.
Text source: Interview: Maisie Cousins
Published on 18 May 2017
Photoworks

But the interesting thing is that they have put NO labels for this image on any of their "social media." And there is no identifying information of who the photographer is.

Turns out the the internet has ample resources and a "google image" search produced this, Maisie Cousins, who has posted this same image on her website under the heading grass, peony, bum.

Her name on the internet produced this interview and a title to the piece: Finger.

I had nailed it! I wrote the whole piece before finally finding the titled work on the Photoworks interview page.

Why is the AGM not precisely titling and referencing its images? It could simply be that they are working with interns and volunteers. But surely someone has to review the material before it goes on a public website?

I think it is more than a careless (or overworked?) administration.

If there is a title visibly placed on the AGM's various online sites, parents and prudes will start to realize that the pretty pink flower is actually a clitoris, and no matter how many disclaimers the AGM may put on their physical gallery space, some will say that a "virtual" space is just as real as an actual place. And pornographic finger paintings cannot be allowed on either of them.

Freedom of expression, curtailed by billboards of disclaimers and potential lawsuits, begins to rear the ugly truth.

---

Maisie Cousins: I don’t think anybody would see my work if it wasn’t for the Internet. What I think is so great about social media is that you broaden your audience – the public, the art world, the commercial world, other artists, they all get to see it. It makes art less exclusive which I think is so important and needed for art to progress. I also think it’s extremely important right now with the current government in the UK making huge cuts to the arts. [Photoworks interview]

Skin: Kim Lee Kho and the Snake

[All images from Kim Lee Kho's Flicker album]


I recenlty re-posted a 2015 article I wrote on artist Kim Lee Kho here where I discuss her "technique and intent."

I was preparing for other projects and filed away my notes on the exhibition for a later post.

Well perhaps it was that there was a LOT to dismantle.

Of course Kho is concerned with ethnicity and race because she is half Chinese and half white. But rather than address those issues directly, she started a series of work based around "skin" and barbed wire, as a metaphor for imprisonment and a harsh barrier (to the racists white-centric world?).

She uses her own scantily-clothed body that she presses onto a wired frame, distorting her skin with the pressure.



She then uses photographs of these images for a variety of projects.

One of them is to make a repeat pattern of the image.

At first there doesn't seem to be anything interesting with her exhibited patterns, unless, perhaps one gets close to them and realizes their origin.

Recently, when I looked up more of these patterned works, I realized that they resemble the patterns on snakeskin.

And in fact, a couple of her exhibitions have them hanging as though a snake had shed its skin. Or some enterprising shoe designer had prepared them for a future project.

I have written about snakeskin in contemporary fashion and correlated it to Eve's ploy with the serpent.

Kho is clearly not after fashion. She has no desire to make herself "beautiful."

What she has discovered is the supernatural, and the serpent and its nefarious influence gives her an entry into that world.

She fits well with contemporary artists' and their unblinking glare at evil, where we have, I believe, entered a new era of art.

Kim Lee Kho: Technique and Intent

Below is a draft of an article I wrote after attending an exhibition "walk" at the Art Gallery of Mississauga in later summer 2015.

The exhibition was titled Chains Unlinked, and the artist, Kim Lee Kho.

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Photo By: KPA


[I am in the white hat and yellow striped straw bag]



I attended the Art Gallery of Mississauga's Walk the Talk series to listen to Kim Lee Kho, the artist who is "walking the talk."

I had visited the gallery's most recent exhibition, Be a Sport and Pan American Photo Exhibition in honor of the Pan American games which are being hosted by Toronto and surrounding region, which includes Mississauga, but I couldn't understand why Kho's Chains Unlinked was included in this exhibition. I still don't, but my conclusion is that it is a separate work, sponsored by a separate body, as the online program notes inform me:

The XIT-RM is a project space dedicated to showcasing the work of emerging artists in the GTA and Mississauga region.
Six artists are selected annually by the gallery’s curatorial team to exhibit work that honours the mission and mandate
of the AGM, with an emphasis on contemporary art and critical engagement.

Thanks to generous funding provided by the RBC Foundation, each exhibition features its own opening and is
accompanied by a published catalogue with a curatorial essay.

The AGM has to accommodate six artist from the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) and Mississauga region. Exhibitions which have to be displayed due to special events cannot be moved or rescheduled. And Art Galleries are eclectic places after all, so concurrent exhibition will only add to the interest.

But, the gods have co-operated, and Lee fits in more than it seems.

Kendra Ainsworth, in the the AGM's program notes describe her thus:

The chain link fence is a ubiquitous structure, found in ares both urban and rural, demarcating property lines, enclosing or separating spaces, people, and objects. In her first solo museum show, Brampton-based multi-disciplinary artist Kim Lee Kho engages with this every day item both physically and symbolically, examining the formal elements of its composition and its semiotic significance, crafting an immersive installation in she not only emerges the varied media of her practice, but one i which the viewer's negotiation of the gallery space echoes the thematic content of the work.

Kho has often taken up the concept of barriers or enclosure, and images of chain link have appeared in previous works. However, with the multiple components of the Chains Unlinked installation, Kho offers a more in-depth and nuanced examination of how we confront and interact with barriers of all kinds - physical, social, psychological. Each of the works in this exhibition can, in a way, be viewed as a discursive strategy i the language of negotiation with the many barriers that we encounter in our lives.

Anchoring the installation is a large-scale wall drawing, Boxed In #21, an extension of Kho's earlier series. The static figure, trapped both within the frame of the image and on the wall, suggests that one possible reaction to encountering the restriction of confinement is that of abject submission. By contrast, the video Can't Ge In/Can't Get Out 2 illustrates a struggle (perhaps futile) against the physical - or metaphorical - impediment; the subject (the artist) throws herself repeatedly against the fence, attempting to either break through or scale it. At the same time, the viewer embodies the role of the captive figure, caught in between and forced to navigate through a series of hanging installations. However in Insubstantiated II and Chains Unlined, the form of the chain link fence is transmuted, becoming mere shadows on sheer panels of fabric, and the individual wire components dismantled, becoming abstracted, minimal forms. Here the seemingly resistant form of the barriers is both adapted and adapted to, as Kho suggests that barriers can be flexible, even beautiful, and rather than only being structures that are imposed upon us, perhaps barriers are sometimes boundaries we need to create for ourselves, for our own well-being.

By leaving the metaphor vague - is the fence a form of physical imprisonment, a barrier to access, an emotional wall built by us or others? - Kho allows the viewer to imbue the struggle to unlink the chains of the fence with personal significance. The fence itself is a universal signifier; our chains and how we unlink them, intensely personal.

I asked Kho a couple of questions, right at the beginning of the "walk," after, which I went in the background, and just watched and listened.

My first question was essentially a technical one. I couldn't figure out if the perspective of the nude figure was deliberately distorted so that her arms appeared longer and thinner than the rest of her body. Kho looked perplexed at the question and said something like she intended to draw a representative nude. I surmised from that that Kho possibly rushed through her charcoal sketch to prepare it in time for the exhibition, although later on I thought that she may not be such a skilled drawer of large scale models.

The second question was more on method, or artistic intention. I asked what she felt about the piece having no permanence. After the exhibition, these charcoal drawings would be erased. And she could never re-create them (or them "exactly"). This didn't seem to bother her, and she sad that she was documenting the installation with photographs.

I have worked with installations several times. But each time, I started with tangible pieces and assembled them in the respective rooms. Three were with photographs and one with a video. Only one was "site specific" where I don't think that it would work anywhere else (it was in a plant conservatory). All the others can be installed in any other space.

There is something odd about ephemeral art, which I think speaks to one's "objectives" on art, and all the philosophies behind that.

Finally, I asked if the model was based on her. If the piece was a "self portrait." Again, she didn't know how to answer the question.

In any case, Kho continues with her art.

"On Supernatural Evil"

Henry Gillard Glindoni (1852–1913)
John Dee Performing an Experiment before Elizabeth I

The scene depicted is set within the house at Mortlake of Dr John Dee (1527–1608). At the court of Queen Elizabeth I, Dee was revered for the range of his knowledge, which embraced the fields of mathematics, navigation, geography, alchemy and chemistry, medicine and optics. He was a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and later one of the original Fellows of Trinity College (he declined a lecturing post at Oxford), and he had an international reputation. [Text Source]

On Supernatural Evil
Michael Martin
Posted on January 11, 2018
Angelico Press

"Dear children, keep yourselves from idols." ~ 1 John 5:21

Much of my scholarly work has been invested in a retrieval or at least recognition of the supernatural in a positive sense. Indeed, sophiology is a philosophical/theological discourse interested in the disclosure of the Glory of God in nature, the arts, liturgy, and the sciences (among other things). But not all of my work on the supernatural has been concerned with such an optimistic and beautiful milieu of creation. Not every encounter with the spiritual is tinged by grace.

In Literature and the Encounter with God in Post-Reformation England, for example, alongside John Donne, Sir Kenelm Digby, Thomas and Henry Vaughan, and Jane Lead - all concerned in one way or another with an experience of God marked by truth, beauty, and goodness - I explored the career of the Elizabethan magus and polymath (his was a multifarious genius) John Dee and the “Actions” (conversations) he had with spirits and took to be from God. In the chapter entitled “John Dee: Religious Experience and the Technology of Idolatry,” I argue that Dee, an occasional counselor to Elizabeth I, deluded himself into thinking the spirits with which he and his assistant, Edward Kelley, discoursed were of divine origin (they clearly were not) and that, even though he was in his essence a very good and pious man (if a little vain), he let himself be talked into the danger of mortal sin.

The sin in question was adultery. But not just any adultery. The primary spirit, identified as Madimi, in fact, ordered Dee and Kelley to swap wives. As I write in the chapter:

On 17 April 1587, a series of very bizarre Actions began which encouraged Dee to think he and Kelley were “above the law.” That day, Kelley reported, “I saw Madimi, Il, and many other that had dealed with us heretofore, but shewed themselves in very filthy order; and Uriel appeared, and justified all to be of God, and good.” In the crystal, Kelley saw a globe covered all over with writing. One message read, “Souls joined toward the better.” The session ended with a shocking pronouncement: “All sins before me in this are disregarded: having been made mad for my sake, he is wise: on the contrary, committing adultery on my account, he is blessed in eternity and he will be touched by a heavenly reward.” The injunction must have caused Dee and Kelley no little amount of anxiety.

The spirits appeared the next day en force, as Kelley reported: “There appeared Madimi, Il, and the rest.” The majority of the spirits, however, straightaway vanished, leaving Madimi alone. She at this point exhibited some uncharacteristic behavior. According to Kelley, “she openeth all her apparel, and her self all naked; and sheweth her shame also” which was definitely outside the norm, even for the Actions. The vision unsettled Kelley and a fascinating exchange between the physical and spiritual participants of the dialogue ensued:

E.K. Fie on thee, Devil avoid hence with this filthiness, &c.
Mad. In the name of God, why finde you fault with me?
∆. [ Dee identified himself by the Greek letter delta] Because of yesterdayes doings, and words are provocations to sin, and unmeet for any godly creature to use.
Mad. What is sin?
∆. To break the Commandment of God.
Mad. If the self-same God give you a new Commandment taking away the former form of sin which he limited by the Law, What remaineth then?
∆. If by the self-same God that gave the Law to Moses, and gave his New Covenant by Christ, who sealed it by his blood; and had witnesses very many, and his Apostles instructed by his holy Spirit, who admonished us of all cleanness in words and works, yea and in thoughts, if by the same God, whose former Laws and Doctrines be abrogated, and that sufficient proof and testimony may be had that it is the same God: Then must the same God be obeyed: For only God is the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, and Governour of all things.

Dee knew he was walking into tricky theological as well as legal territory, and we can see by his response to Madimi’s question that he knew he had to be completely clear about what was at issue. Madimi capitalized on his anxieties and avouched for the trustworthiness of her message: “The Apostle Paul abounded in carnal lust: he was also offensive unto his brethren so that he despaired, and was ready to have left his vocation, untill the Lord did say unto him, My mercy and grace sufficeth thee. Beleeve me, that we are from above.” Madimi was right, Dee would have agreed, God’s mercy should be enough (2 Corinthians 12: 9). Paul had transgressed the law in order to maintain the intergrity of his vocation, and Madimi commanded Dee to do the same:

Behold you are become free: Do that which most pleaseth you: For behold, your own reason riseth up against my wisdome.

Not content you are to be heires, but you would be Lords, yea Gods, yea Judgers of the heavens: Wherefore do even as you list, but if you forsake the way taught you from above, behold evil shall enterprise your senses, and abominations shal dwel before your eyes, as a recompence, unto such as you have done wrong unto: And your wives and children, shall be carried away before
your face.

This was rather a threat.

Even though Dee knew what the spirits were asking was against God’s mandates - he articulated as much - he nevertheless went along with the spirits’ demands, compromised as he was by the pride and promise of being God’s new messenger.

Most of us don’t compromise our principals as a result of direct communication from spirits. We have our culture for that. But that’s not to say that we aren’t led into these compromises by more indirect spiritual means.

Indeed, it doesn’t appear to me that we are appropriately aware of the presences of spiritual evil around us. The medieval period and Renaissance had precise taxonomies of the demonic realms: we have, in general, psychologizing or a sort of bland, generic affirmation that diabolical entities are “out there” somewhere. The cartoonish antics of SNL’s “The Church Lady” and The Temple of Satan aside, I think it’s as important to be cognizant of supernatural evil as it is to be aware of the sophianic glory that also abides in Creation.

My interest in Dee’s story was no doubt connected to my own experiences with supernatural evil and the temptation to sin and pride. In my early twenties, I spent months transcribing similar “actions” with spirits (the details of which I am not willing to divulge) and have heard first-hand accounts of similar experiences - that ended much more tragically - which took place under similar circumstances. Though at the time I had fallen away from the Church, I attribute my fortune in escaping total calamity to a persistent habit of saying the Our Father and the Hail Mary and the trust I placed in St. John’s admonishment to “test the spirits to see if they be from God” (1 John 4). I escaped not unscathed, but at least alive.

In recent years, I have found Rudolf Steiner’s conception of Lucifer and Ahriman very useful in diagnosing our own struggles with the Spirit of the Age. Though I disagree with Steiner on certain aspects of his Christology and the persistence of Blavatskian theosophy in his, especially earlier, work, I think he’s on to something with Lucifer and Ahriman.

For Steiner, Lucifer is the principle (or spiritual being) that tempts us with promises of “freedom,” the desire for self-expression, individualization, and an absolute creativity. Ahriman, on the other hand, is the principle (or spiritual being) that promises order and a kind of technological and corporatized efficiency that enslaves us to the subhuman, turns us effectively into machines. Between these two polarities, Steiner points to Christ as that principle which guides us through the perils of the promises made by Lucifer and Ahriman and helps us abide in the real.

When I look at our own culture, I can’t help but think that Lucifer (however one wants to understand the term) tempts us to a freedom of expression and selfhood that inevitably delivers us to Ahriman. That is, in order to “become who we really are” (or so we think) we turn to technology and scientific/medical interventions which enslave us to a lifetime of injections, prescriptions, surgeries, and technologies that inure us from the Real that inheres Creation. This is most obvious in some of the diabolical interventions foisted upon certain children in the name of freedom, but it also acts in subtle ways upon all of us.

Even though demonic possession as often depicted in film (The Exorcist, The Rite, Deliver Us from Evil, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) is certainly a reality, in general, the fallen angels work in much more invisible ways to lead us away from reality and, therefore, from Christ. It’s easier that way. I know this from experience. But, as St. John tells us, “We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).

A traditional protection against evil:

Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered: and let them that hate him flee from before his face.
As smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. (Psalm 67:2-3)

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Michael Martin is a biodynamic farmer, philosopher, theologian, poet, and musician. He is the author of The Incarnation of the Poetic Word: Theological Essays on Poetry and Philosophy/Philosophical Essays on Poetry and Theology and The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics as well as other works. He edits Jesus the Imagination: A Journal of Spiritual Revolution and can be reached at mmartin@jesustheimagination.com

Lucifer in Contemporary Art

I have started a new blog which I've titled: Lucifer in Contemporary Art.

I will be documenting art exhibitions, art programs, artists, and other related topics that are now (almost) openly using Luciferan imagery and concepts in their work and exhibitions.

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities"

Ephesians 6:10 - 18:

10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

Vulgarity, Sex and Satan

Ephesians 6:10 - 18:

10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

[Image Source: Tradition in Action

Here is a recent post of mine, of a story from The Thinking Housewife about Pope Benedct. The post discusses the pope's discomfort with being around people who could outshine him, relating that narcissistic trait back to his lowly upbringing in Brazil, which was magnified "in the class-conscious society that is Argentina’s legacy from its oligarchic past."

But in view of my more recent posts on the Satan's ploy to use sex (in all its guises) as a tool to capture the minds and souls of humans, here is an especially interesting point on this pope, from Marcantonio Colonna's The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy (quoted at The Thinking Housewife) about his self-consciousness on his "lower class" origins:

He dealt with this self-consciousness] by affecting an exaggerated vulgarity (thus leading to the complaints about coarse language mentioned in the Kolvenbach Report)

Satan chooses his advocates carefully.

The sexual vulgarity-laden language of this highest official of Christ is indication that Satan is in charge here with his human ecclesiastical mouthpiece, who has shown exemplary aptitude to be his advocate.

The other component of Satan's "sexual freedom" ploy is homosexuality. If God-fearing Christians can be convinced to accept homosexuals (and of course with that comes acceptance of homosexuality) as God's creatures to whom we should bestoy love, understanding, forgiveness and ACCEPTANCE, then we have really began to live in the Devil's world.

Well, we are already doing so. Try to denounce homosexuality in public forums and see what happens to you!