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Alex Grey Interview by Mike Tuinstra |
Alex Grey’s work now spans over three decades and ranges from performance art to bold depictions of higher states of reality. He is a visionary artist as well as a modern day mystic. His paintings transmit a message of the universal oneness of life and his Sacred Mirror series is devoted to this principal. Alex has an amazing gift for replicating the psychedelic experience on canvas. These paintings work as a reference point for those who have been there and serve to help educate those who have not. He is the author of several books including Transfigurations and The Mission of Art. We here at Wide-Eyed were excited to catch up with Alex and hear about his current projects.
Wide-Eyed: Thanks for taking some time today to do this interview. We here at Wide-Eyed are all big fans.
Alex: Thanks for your interest in the work. I love the artists that Wide-Eyed has featured in the past.
WE: You’ve been working on the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors for quite a while. Can you take a minute and fill us in on how that’s going?
Alex Grey: Sure. The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, CoSM opened about four years ago in Chelsea, an art gallery and nightclub district of New York City. Thousands of people have visited the Chapel gallery during the day and attended nighttime Full Moon, New Moon, or Entheocentric events. Our speaker series features conversations with artists, authors, and wisdom masters. All-night parties feature live painting, D.J’s and V.J’s. It’s revolutionized Allyson’s and my life to run a cultural center and balance that with our painting career. Allyson and I have lived and worked together for 33 years, and this is the fullest incarnation of our aesthetic so far. Building the Chapel was based on a vision that we had years ago on an mdma trip where we saw the paintings exhibited in a new kind of church-like environment. We shared the vision with artist-friends and have worked to create something beautiful together, building the space, painting on walls and ceilings, sculpting architectural elements for this installation. Hundreds of artists have exhibited at MicroCoSM Gallery. Creating sacred space is the work of a community.
We are proposing that art can be religion, a spiritual practice. Art expresses the soul of the artist and the soul of the collective. Many artists reach for a new evolutionary edge in their work by continually seeking original approaches. Religions often run counter to that with fixed notions about the truth, demanding dogmatic adherence to a faith, and fear of other faiths. The experience of wider unity with humanity can be lost. One of the hallmarks of the mystical experience is a sense of interconnectedness with everything. Artwork and ceremonies at CoSM emphasize the core values of love and creativity shared in all wisdom traditions. We’re building a bridge between art and religion.
Cross-fertilizing the fields of art and spirituality in a pop culture like America, is a challenge. The art that most Americans encounter daily is corporate-controlled advertising. This leads our culture toward cynicism, skepticism and mistrust of iconography and art in general. We see an image and our first question is, “What are they selling?” So we put up mental barriers. Sacred art is based on the trust the artist and viewer have with the creative force.
Individual artists, musicians and painters are the whisper of conscience within the shrill spectacle of corporate culture. Artists at CoSM are making a new kind of sacred art environment not just an imitation of previous sacred art traditions. Each religion has its own wonderful iconography and approach to art. Learning from them all, we seek a personal and transpersonal approach to portraying the divine, integrating truths and imagery of science into a unique spiritual offering. Treating X-ray bodies, and evolutionary diagrams, cosmic star clusters and galaxies as sacred symbols expands our consciousness. Perhaps the greatest icon of the 20th century is the Apollo photograph of the earth: that blue mandala hovering in space. Reflecting on that image affects our perception of planet earth and catalyzes a sense of unity with the web of life beyond national boundaries. Expanding our identity to include a planetary perspective through art is part of CoSM’s mission.
WE: I’ve had the pleasure of attending one of the two live painting events that you and your wife, Allyson have hosted here in Los Angeles. Is that the motivation behind doing these live paintings - to form a creative, communal sacred space?
AG: Absolutely. The celebrations are an outreach to a wider community where CoSM can honor the individuality and unique creative contributions of artists outside of New York City. Looking at art is the easiest way to expand our consciousness and experience the inner world of artists from other places and influences.
WE: I’ve seen photos of you painting at Entheon Village at Burning Man. Do you regularly attend Burning Man?
AG: We’ve been a few times and will be at Entheon again this year. We love the Burning Man community and feel very connected there. Burning Man is an art festival operating outside the ‘legitimate art world,’ of museum and galleries, a maverick, renegade aesthetic that runs through both the tattoo world and the graffiti world. Many people in the Chapel community are buzzing with that view as well.
WE: I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’re currently working on a new book. Is there anything you can tell us about that?
AG: The book is called Art Psalms. It’s a fusion of creativity and spirituality, poems and mystic rants, combined with drawings and paintings. Most of the artwork and poetry has never been published before. The book is about the power of art as a transformative path, a path in which both art’s creation and observation can be a practice of love and communion with the divine. Included are three drawing portfolios – “Meditations on the Divine Feminine,” “Meditations on the Masters,” and “Meditations on Mortality.” An angel woke me up at 5 a.m. and dictated “The Plan,” and “Guidance For Servants of God.”
WE: I remember in your book The Mission of Art, you mention that “art can be a form of worship or service.” Is this book an expansion on that thought.
AG: That’s right. Art can be a spiritual path.
WE: Do you find a parallel between visionary artists and indigenous shamans, in the sense that both will go far beyond the 3-dimensional space most people are living within and document imagery and experience for the people to absorb?
AG: Visionary artists have a kinship with shamans making artwork directly from visionary realms. Most sacred art traditions are founded in the visionary world. Through spiritual practice, an experience of the visionary world can inspire an aesthetic product, evidence of that realm. Contemporary visionary artists have greater means to transmit these inner worlds, a wider range of mediums and powerful tools like the computer, film and video are available.
WE: You have had a significant influence on many artists. What or who has had a strong influence on you?
AG: My wife is the most influential artist in my life. I admire her painting and her system of making art. We contribute to each others’ aesthetic view. I met Allyson the first night I took LSD and it turned my life around. In one night, I found God and divine love in the flesh. I went from a desperate existentialist to a mystic. All of my artwork from that day on has been influenced by Allyson. I realized that happiness was possible.
Michelangelo has always been my master. Allyson and I have pilgrimaged twice to Italy to see all of his works and draw them. There’s a lot you can learn by drawing from masterworks. In Art Psalms I share some of the drawings I’ve made from masterpieces by the art saints Goya, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Picasso, and Van Gogh. In the Tibetan Buddhist practice, guru yoga, transmissions by the guru give the practitioner a zap of wisdom energy passed down from the source. Masterpieces of art are like batteries of consciousness. If you open yourself up to them they can empower you. These artists have been very influential to me. I also admire the symbolist and mystic painter, Pavel Tchelitchew from the mid 20th century, a Russian artist who dealt with anatomy and occult energies. Transfiguration is what I call figuration in relation to spiritual light, a tradition in both Western and Eastern art.
Holy people glow with halos, radiances and auras. Symbolist painters of the late 19th century, such as William Blake and Jean Delville were visionaries that incorporated subtle energetic or transfigurative elements in their work. I think my work follows in that tradition. I’ve even imagined that I may be a reincarnation of Jean Delville, a Belgian symbolist painter. He died in 1953, less than forty-nine days before my own conception, falling within the Tibetan Buddhist period of The Bardo – the period between lifetimes. When I look at Delville’s paintings I feel as if I painted them, a reaction I’ve never had to another artists’ work.
WE: You've created some amazing work for the band Tool. How did that relationship come to be?
AG: In 1999 I met Adam Jones. He came to my art exhibit in L.A. and expressed interest in my work. He introduced the idea of working on the Lateralus album art. I love the music of Tool and it was an honor to meet Adam. A long friendship began which continues. Adam had the idea of creating a booklet of acetate overlays of anatomical systems. I had made an anatomical booklet like this in art school and was always interested in doing overlays of body and soul so the idea resonated with me. The imagery created for that album became like an icon for Tool. Soon after the album came out, I started receiving emails of flaming eye tattoos. I’ve seen the symbol tattooed on every part of the human body over the years. It’s been quite amazing.
WE: What can you say about the role of the unconscious mind and how it plays in your work.
AG: Would the super-conscious be part of the unconscious?
WE: I would personally think; yes.
AG: I agree. The unconscious is whatever is out of range of the conscious mind -- the subconscious, the super-conscious, or other realms of multi-dimensional awareness. When we take LSD, the doors of perception open and we are flooded with information from many realms of consciousness. Rather than relate my work to the unconscious or dream world, like the surrealists, my work points to realms of the divine imagination visited in the mystical experience, often leading to a sense of the infinite. There is a cosmos of equally vast scale within our minds as without, a revelation confirmed by thousands of years of mystic reporting that the kingdom of heaven is within. So, rather than point to the unconscious, which is the happy land of the surrealists, I’m more interested in the expansive, unitive and transcendental aspects of our identity. Planetary, galactic or cosmic consciousness are expanded states of identity that can be very healing. This expanded awareness can take us beyond suffering and contracted ego. The mission of sacred art has always been to suggest the existence of a realm beyond the physical, a place of higher peace and love.
WE: Would you be willing to share your thoughts on the upcoming election?
AG: The 2000 elections were rigged. Bush is a criminal, part of a corporate cabal that was responsible for 9/11 and took over America in an illegally controlled election. It has lead to no end of trouble for America,. The Bush Cheney crime syndicate has justified with lies the invasion of Iraq, and should be criminally investigated by the World Court at The Hague, their assets seized. Halliburton, Blackwater, all of these criminal organizations should be put on trial for mass murder.
Even with the hardcore cynicism of the last eight years, I think it’s important to vote for the choice that is best for the world and the environment. There’s a ground swell of hope behind Obama because he appears to be such an inspiring leader. The country has been living in such despair. Obama may restore integrity to the office and to America’s image throughout the world. He’s a world citizen who can think on his feet, and his presidency is an historic possibility and a hope for America. I would love to see the country unite behind this extraordinary man.
WE: We here at Wide Eyed hope everyone gets out there and votes for change, it would be great to see Obama win by a landslide.
AG: Absolutely. Thank you for being a free press, an inalienable right that has suffered in the last eight years.
WE: Is there anything we didn’t cover that you would like to cover?
AG: We invite you to visit the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors while we’re still in New York City. Please come this fall and see this beautiful installation before we move to our new location 65 miles upstate. It has always been our intention to build sacred architecture. We found a beautiful site, about 40 acres near the Hudson River, easily accessible by train and car. Art and spirit retreats will be held there. One of the existing structures will temporarily house the permanent collection while we raising money to build a temple of art. All that are inspired are welcome to participate. The Chapel can be a legacy that we leave to the future, an enduring sanctuary of creative spirit representing our highest possibilities.
