Anthony Curatolo’s “Sacred Marriage Series”

Anthony Curatolo with his painting “L-Stance in B”(1999) gouache on canvas, 24″x30″

Anthony Curatolo

Anthony Curatolo has taken a most extreme path to fame.  A native New Yorker, he entered the spiritual life at the age of 13, when gurus were just beginning to pass through the door from east to west.   An early dedication to a spiritual practice under the guidance of the man would be his teacher for the next 40 years accelerated his gift for visionary painting penetrating far beyond surface reality.  After initial success as an abstract painter in the 1980s, his breakthrough passage into figuration with his paintings of Lakshmi, the Hindu Goddess of wealth and prosperity, brought him to extreme and sudden heights followed by abysmal lows.

In 2009, a trove of 207 paintings, together with promotional materials, were stolen, leaving him without means to penetrate the market where he had previous success.   His “Death Series” (2009) preceded the lost years, roaming through California in his Mercedes Benz, honing his instincts to the natural forces while teaching heart-centered authenticity and painting “The Lost Years Series” (2010) followed by “Rebirth Series” (2011-2012).  On April 15, 2012 the artist’s fortunes drastically changed again when he had a serendipitous encounter with Lisa Paul Streitfeld.  The avant-garde critic/curator acknowledged his spiritual courage and gift for painting a new configuration in the collective unconscious that is the source of her art theory and her Huffington Post (R)evolution multimedia series.

The (R)evolution Project identifies and presents artists giving voice and vision to a 21^st century archetype, the hieros gamos, foreseen by Wolfgang Pauli as arising from under the collapsed quantum wave.  The curator took the unusual steps of tracking down Curatolo’s intact “Lingam Series,” pursuing the 16 stolen cycles of his oeuvre and commissioning her discovery to paint a holistic performance series.  The result is Anthony Curatolo’s dramatic re-entry into the international art world by way of his devastating and raw “Sacred Marriage” painting performances that penetrate to the root of the struggle of humanity to surrender into a new orientation of unconditional love.

Surrendering to the element.  The water drenched “A+” drying in the Sun.  (May 2012) golden acrylic on canvas, 72″ x 139″

Painting performance of “A++” (April 2012) golden acrylic on canvas, 72″ x 104″

FRONT ROW SEAT TO A NEW FEMINIST (R)EVOLUTION

Check out my Huffington Post report!!!

The Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, National Conference: “Creating the Chalice: Imagination and Integrity in  Goddess Studies

San Francisco, California, 2012

Ana Castillo’s KEYNOTE

THE ASTROLOGY OF 2012

Mandisa Wood in “TranscenDance”, an ASWM performance in San Francisco, May 11, 2012

Sid Reger, co-Founder (with Patricia Monaghan, Ph.D.) of ASWM and co-Chair (with Anne Key) of the 2102 National Conference: “Creating the Chalice”

California Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality: A Gathering of Wise Hearts. Top row: Letecia Layson, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Z Budapest.  Bottom row:  AfraShe Asungi, Marguerite Rigoglioso (sitting in for Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum), Macha Nightmare.  Morning Glory Zell, not pictured, was speaking at the podium.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, author of “Goddesses in Every Woman” who is pioneering a grassroots initiative for a UN sponsored 5th World Conference on Women

Mara Keller with her multi-media presentation “Goddesses Around the World”

The lauded poet Annie Finch dramatized her breakthrough book, “Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams”

Lydia Ruyle filled the conference space with the vibrant force of her colorful spirit in her person and her world goddess banners.

Vicki Noble, a mystic healer co-creator of the Motherpeace Tarot delivered a paper on “The History and Development of Matriarchal Studies in the USA.”

Midwife healer Arisika Razak “Calling in Our Bodies” during the evening festivities hosted by the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology: May 11, 2012

Chief Luisah Teish delivering the Opening Invocation: “Honoring the Ancestors of the Dead”

GRRRL BRIGADE presented by Dance Mission Theater, San Francisco

Full Circle with Zelda Kaplan, Expired on the Venus/Jupiter Conjuction

Zelda Kaplan, 95, in a photo taken moments before she collapsed at a fashion show.

It was a fitting end to a New York fashion icon.

Zelda Kaplan expiring in the front row of a fashion show.

On the day of the Jupiter/Venus Conjunction!

 

In her death, Zelda Kaplan met her life’s dream: to be on Page Six.

It was a fitting way to go for this fashion icon who inspired a movement dedicated to the embodiment of the spirit in the material.  We met in the wake of the Jupiter/Venus conjunction in  Taurus in 2000.

In an effort among her friends to propel  Zelda into the position of media style icon that she became in death, I accompanied her to the then hip spot, Bungalow 8 on Sex and the City night.  It was the first time, Zelda ever watched the show and she was not only disgusted but affronted by what she saw. “Those girls are too skinny,” she said.    ”How can they do that to the English language?”

Zelda was the inspiration for my own quest to merge my love of travel with fashion while honoring the sacred tradition of women weaving the world over

The winged Sky Goddess dress designed by myself and Vandara from her hand spun natural dyed Laos handwoven silk.

As the singular person I met at the time who fit right into the art theory I would be developing in New York City art world for another 12 years, she inspired a book proposal, “Zekda, the New York Style Icon”   Here is an excerpt.

For Zelda Kaplan, dressing for herself every morning reflects a forty year journey of transformation of materials discovered in her travels.   “I know what I feel comfortable in,” she says.  “I try to design things which show off my better parts and hide the bad ones. Because I am short, I try not to have breaks in the lines.  If I have enough cloth, I have the jacket cut on the bias.”

Zelda buys exquisite handmade cloth direct from women in countries that most of us never even heard of.  The woman in these countries generally make 9 or 10 meters of cloth to wrap around their bodies; Zelda purchases the fabric and has it made  into custom “couture” on the spot by a tailor.  She walks away with an original form of global fashion that integrates authenticity with innovation.

In transforming her own expression through handwoven material, Kaplan is also contributing to the transformation of those who make the fabric.  Active on the World Affairs Council, Zelda works hard to protect the rights of women around the world.  She always tries to complete the monetary transaction by putting cash directly in the hands of the woman of the house.  “A man will go out and spend the cash on drink while a woman will use it for the running of the house,” she says.

FULL CIRCLE WITH JUPITER/VENUS AND THE WATERFALL

Vandara at the Vanvisa Aquarian Waterfall in Laos. December 25, 2011

SHAMANIC HEALING IN LAOS

Invoking my sister’s prayer on the January 9 Full Moon in Lupang Prabang, Laos: 

moon growing to full on my birthday, 

bathed in my tears as the 8th approaches.  

the loss of my physical-as-I-knew-her-to-be-mother, 

the one whose body

I separated from on the evening of that day 58 years ago

to begin this journey of my own.

 

Her absence tangible, the separation tangible.

even though I know the other side is on this side too…

the loss of her on this side lowers me to weeping. 

 

please take my sorrow and shake it out in the land where you are.

spread it out among all the mothers of the land

that they will gather round

and sing to me of the joy and the sorrow,

the suffering and the grace

the life and the death.

 

The Offering

Calling in the Spirits. I'm sitting between the Shaman and his wife

Healing hands applying the plant medicine

Shaman Gail wrapping with natural fiber, cotton grown, spun and woven by the village women

Laos is the mostly heavily bombed nation on the planet.  They call them “bombes” the cluster bombs dropped by the Americans during the war.

I was invited to an isolated village, 20 km. down a dirt road, near the Vietnam border which only recently has cleared the unexploded bombs from their fields.

SHAMAN GAI wanted to do a shamanic healing on my wound.   I had an accident with my writing hand while trekking with the Black Hmong in the mountains of North Vietnam, just over the Chinese border.  They operated on my wound in the French hospital in Hanoi.

I met SHAMAN GAIL at my friend Vandara’s house in Lupang Prabang where  I was recuperating.  I knew immediately she was a shaman and heeded her call for a healing.  It was a tremendous experience.

I felt the land weeping as I arrived.  A weeping land and I never met such powerful and authentic women, all spinners and weavers, filled with such joy.

How can it be that they not only survived such atrocity but demonstrated such an intense passion for life?

Surrounded by the renegade electron I keep writing about in my Heisenberg essays, these women were the literal face of the authentic feminine I have been seeking in art.  They make art with their hands, weaving from the fiber that sustains their lives.

The gift that Gail gave me for my sister. This beautiful hand spun, hand woven spread is made from natural dye. Such a magnificent work is not typically sold to tourists. The Hmong make them for their weddings. Gail gifted me with one that had unicorns when we met. The Unicorn is the symbol for my Beloved, who embodies the ancient icon of the hieros games, the ever-present origin of my art theory.

 

The twin birds on the top of the spread represent the Gemini evoked by my sister on her birthday.  In alchemy, twins represent the birth of the New.

Chiron, the wounded healer, rising on the ascendent with Neptune in Pisces, reborn as the fully empowered female shaman that I experienced in the jungle of Laos, is the energy that guided this post, written with my renewed hand!

 

 

 

Crescent Moon

 

 

"Hieros Gamos: Crescent Moon Boat Created from the Mother/Daughter Tree of Life" a mythical vision of Lisa & Susan Streitfeld; Sketch by Susan Streitfeld for a sculpture sponsored by Nagi Osta to commemorate the birth of an art theory

Scorpio New Moon: Transformation!