Update February 22nd: Works from the series described here will be on display at 1107 Queen Street Street East, Toronto, Ontario – Ben Navaee Gallery – along with 3D works and sculptures by other artists, from February 26th until March 3rd.

You are welcome to join us for the opening reception Feb 26th at 6pm!

Riverdale Art Walk is coming up soon. Last year, at the 2014 RAW, I was inspired by some fractal tree art, which seemed to be a bit of a theme for the year. I had a flash idea a few weeks later to capture the natural fractals of tress by binding the branches in wire and burning away the wood.

I planned to do this with Toronto Winter storm deadfall. Then, serendipitously, a chokecherry tree planted during my childhood in my parent’s backyard unexpectedly died of lime poisoning. I saw the perfect opportunity to begin my project, feeling resonant approval from the Universe with this coincidence, and a desire to preserve the tree to retain the associated memories, including my Aunt’s ash-scattering and my own wedding day.

Initially I was driven by intellectual curiosity. I was fascinated with the Buddhist idea of impermanence – that everything in the Universe is merely a phenomenon wave which arises and then dissipates, and thus is thoroughly impermanent. I thrive on paradox and contrast, and love how this idea seems paradoxical to the equally true chaos theory, that any small action resonates out into the Universe and can cause profound change. Thus we are impermanent in our base nature, but the effect of our existence is permanent change.

My reaction to these philosophies contained more fear towards the Buddhist idea, and more fascination with the chaos theory. Thus I decided to explore Permanence first and not Impermanence. This in mind, I bound the trees in wire to create a “more permanent” record of the shape of the tree, while aesthetically evoking the vibrations of chaos theory through the spiralling shapes.

It entered my head during the binding process that I might create a sort of “home” for the energy of the vaporizing tree (tree spirits if you will) during the burning process. I approached the visualization and implementation of this idea rather fancifully but with an open mind, having done magick successfully many times but still somehow sceptical. I visualized, with great focus, the imprint of the tree branch sinking into the wire, and the tree remaining as a contained energy cloud rather than going up with the smoke.

A few months later I experienced an intense series of visions which led to my subsequent hospitalization for severe psychosis. My psychotic episode consisted mainly of having my entire reality broken down and reconstituted while my physical body was destroyed and regenerated through burning with radioactive metal plates. I was reduced to a single particle of immortal being wearing a “person suit”. The metaphysical and metaphorical significance of the content was lost on me at the time, but it seems clear in retrospect that what I did to the tree returned upon me. Art becomes Life and Instant Karma.

I learned a great deal about respecting the threefold law with magick; what you put out comes back to you magnified. On a less painful level, I learned deeper compassion and empathy and acceptance for my fellow beings, human and otherwise. The experience was profoundly purifying with a period of complete loss of ego, and gave me a deep appreciation both for mortality (both its necessity and the horror of the experiences), and for the ultimate immortality of energy.

I believe that, luckily or unluckily, I experienced some of the mechanisms of the afterlife while still living. I now have confirmed belief that all things constantly die to become a smaller part of something larger, or to birth many smaller things, and that this is the natural order and nothing to bemoan.

So, I am over my fear of impermanence, and may fear immortality more. To explore this new territory, I am playfully experimenting with traditionally incompatible materials (such as oil and acrylic together) to observe how emotional landscapes are created through mutual competition, predation, and forced interdependence.

I am trying to keep this series light and playful and to not set any strong magickal intentions for other beings! I have enough visions to process for the meantime.

A selection of pieces from the Explorations in Permanence tree-burning series and from the new Accepting Impermanence series are on display now at Pulp Kitchen at 717 1/2 Queen Street East.

Additional work will be on display on June 6th and 7th at the Riverdale Art Walk in Jimmie Simpson Park, near Broadview station (Booth #107) – both in Toronto. Please drop by to share your own thoughts, and to experience the artistic results of my strange labours and journey!

Click through to my main website, http://www.christineshaheen.me, for previews of main works.