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A sculpture is in its nature a solidified, rigid expression, all the way down at the ground level of vibrational translations from Spirit into matter. Therefore, I hold sculpture also as a creative manifestation with the capacity to hold an incredibly wide polarity. I believe this is the reason why, as a non-differentiated society, we were warned not to worship the sculpture of the golden calf. I am working to find the essence of the steps in our growing process, stripping down all that does not pertain or is not "universally true" and therefore my sculptures hold a very clear vibrational relevance. From this perspective, my work holds a bigger space not by pushing into the unknown future, but by perceiving the boundaries of one's own personal evolvement, thus contributing to the evolvement of the whole. Maybe I am sacrificing depth for span, although it never feels like that looking from the inside out! It is my own immediate experience of transformation, the sincere inquiry and the overwhelming feeling of love towards the new structure, that is at the foundation of my sculptural work. I find my creative potency in this search for the essence of such a transformative moment. It is rich to capture the basic energetic expression of an emerging quality—and of course at the bottom of my work is the depth of the internal underworld I discover in therapy and practice. Sculptures can be grounding and a real anchor for the integration of an emerging resolve. It is a communication that is tactile, a basic structural orientation in the service of each individual's own practice in his/ her evolutionary growth and integration. It is my intent to sculpt these stations of Beauty and Love along the horizon of greater and deeper connection and to provide a little stability wherever we are on this path within Kosmic creativity.
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Maya Hill | Sculpting Consciousness
Maya Hill is the first sculptor featured in our ongoing monthly installments of the Integral Life Art Galleries. Her work, as three dimensional, offers novel challenges to integral art criticism and theory: as sculpture is a distinctive art medium, not reducible to painting, and as such requires a different array of conceptual lens to help us discern the distinctively integral qualities of the artworks themselves. As a way into this topic, let us compare two of Maya's works on exhibit with one by the great twentieth century European sculpture Jean Arp. Both Maya and Arp work in marble, creating flowing organic forms, biomorphic and abstract shapes that have varying degrees of figurative reference. In Arp's Aquatic, there are distinctive Gestalts when seen from different angles, each view replete with sliding figurative associations: from a breast with nipple, to a reclining nude, to an aquatic animal in the abstract, to the flow of water itself. This is a fine example of modernist sculpture, its suggestive content inspired by Surrealistic notions of the unconscious and the latency of imagery. What matters in our context is the deep sculptural form of Arp's masterwork. For sculpture—to forward one brief heuristic definition—is that art medium which reveals the forces that shape three dimensional form in space, as these forces are expressed in that same sculpted form. In the Arp there is a sense of an inner vitality, life-forces differentiating the various aspects, each part "budding" into its own relative autonomy. Turning to Hill's Breaking Through and Healing, the sculpted form likewise reveals inner forces that mold that same form's coming into being and flow; but unlike with the Arp there is also a moment of folding back into or towards the felt inner womb of vital forces, engendering a dynamic integrative wholeness that surpasses in complexity the good organic form of the Arp. Whereas the Arp's deep sculpture structure is proper to a green cognitive-perceptual wave of semi-autonomous aspects, that of the Hill works is proper to an integral wave that adds an intensified moment of dynamic integrative wholeness. Love, one of the sculptress's most recent artworks, was created with integral theory explicitly in mind: an exploration of the four quadrants, the radiant AQAL matrix as a sacred mystery of kosmic interconnection. Hill has written of her process in creating this piece, which you can find below. The art of Maya Hill shows us that integral waves of art making have come to find expression in that most opaque and often neglected of contemporary media – figurative sculpture. Michael Schwartz Reflections on my personal process while sculpting “LOVE”
The sculpting with the wax was slow and I experienced pleasure in creating this acknowledgement and order. I liked bringing a big airy realm of existence down into manageable territory. All of a sudden I realized that upholding existence high up had been quite exhausting. The downward movement into specific placement did not feel like bringing the holy down into the profane, but rather the collapse of the division. The greek God Atlas, carrying the celestial spheres on his shoulders came to my mind. I experienced a letting go of my positioning at the center by accepting my placement within a web of different realms and domains, already there holding, with or without me. At this point I was bridging the stages over the gaps connecting the quadrants. It was only now that I realized the cross in the sculpture. For several days I was greatly conflicted. My respect, love and sense of being coherent with the four quadrants was out of balance with the hierarchy the symbol of the cross demanded. To create physical form of a perception I slow down enormously. In order to find the essence of the form, I am undergoing a process to eliminate unnecessary things that may adhere to it. Externally those might be my ideas of how something should look, internally it pertains to my beliefs, past experiences, feelings etc. The four quadrants and the cross are not free-forms grown out of my own compost. With these powerful symbols I had to strip down my own system to arrive as close as possible to the essence of their meaning. My personal beliefs, interpretations, emotions and defenses had to undergo a screening process to meet these forms with integrity. In order to hold my position in the narcissistic center I am bound to relativism. My free-floating all permissive possibilities of relativism needed the anchor in the narcissistic center. I could physically feel how the loosened qualities of my “center” where starring at the cross. Slowly over several days of sculpting, bridging and mending my heart was humbled enough to recognize together with relief and sense of belonging, the hierarchy of the cross. By the time I sculpted the outer rings of my sculpture the polarity had shifted. My system had realigned into personal coherency and acceptance of Universal Truth. After all, there seems to be not much of a choice about what the name of the sculpture should be! Note: As a token of love and appreciation, this beautiful sculpture was gifted to Ken Wilber by Maya Hill and the 2011/2012 Integral Spiritual Experience attendees. Maya Hill |
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It took some time to recognize myself in the four quadrants. As I better understood these four dimensions of being and could locate identities and my behaviors along the evolutionary lines, something inside of me relaxed. The specific placement of each aspect of self inside one of the quadrants along one of the evolutionary stages felt as a huge relief to me. My being felt recognized and at home in this context, I also consciously saw how each placement was just a temporary location in an ever evolving creative process of growth. 