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Vision Cafe
The Magic of LindleyLopez Circus
by Elyssa Paige
A hushed murmur of anticipation spreads across the dimly lit room. The children in the audience giggle excitedly as they await the curtain’s opening.
Finally, in a flurry of colors, Columbina enters the stage clad in a fluorescent tutu, mismatched tights, and a swirling hat. Dangling a glittery parasol above her head, she announces that it’s circus time!
Sit back and experience a whirlwind of circus arts: body balancing and contortion, juggling, aerials, clowning, unicycles, stilts, comedy, and magic.
LindleyLopez Circus is a family-run operation that began three years ago in San Diego, CA. Columbina, known offstage as Cheryl Lindley, started the circus with her husband, Rogelio Lopez, so that they could work together as a family more often.
”Our love of circus grew out of the combination of artistic beauty and tremendous physical skill,” explains Lindley, an international circus artist on the scene since the 1980s. “This is how we can work together as a family and community.”
Performing at a variety of events including art and street fairs, night clubs, and fundraisers, the circus has recently been collaborating with Tragic Tantrum Cabaret, a local original band with a dark sound that tantalizes your ears while acrobatic performers capture your eyes, balancing upside down contortions to the rhythm of the music.
The extraordinary skill of the acrobatic performers leads many to wonder how they learned to bend and twist their bodies with such grace and strength. The answer is that some of the performers are students of the Sophia Isadora Academy of Circus Arts.
Lindley, president of the academy, explains that it “is a family-run school that was founded four years ago with world class instructors, including Pietro and Joyce Canestrelli, a seven-generation circus family, Otgo Waller, Mongolian contortionist who performed with Cirque du Soleil, and Brandy Wirtz, recipient of an LA Music Lifetime Achievement Award for her aerial acts on tour with Motley Crue.”
When asked what makes her smile every day as the founder of this project, Lindley responded, “As a producer, leaving audiences with a sense of wonder and whimsy; as an entertainer, making others laugh; and as a teacher, watching students achieve artistic and physical abilities that they once believed impossible.”
Lindley extends an invitation for all to experience the magic: “Come on by the school and we can share our love of circus with you!”
The Sophia Isadora Academy of Circus Arts is located at 4241 Park Blvd in San Diego, CA. The LindleyLopez Circus will be performing at Light Up the Holiday with Hope, a fundraiser for children with cancer at Little Italy Spaghetteria, November 14 at 7:00 p.m., and at First Night Escondido at the California Center for the Arts, December 31. For more information, visit sdcircus.com.
Enlightened Dogs from Nepal
by Michelle Page
When you hear the term “Nepali Art,” signboards are pro-bably the last thing you think of. My mission is to change that.
Signboard art in Nepal is fast disappearing. The artists are endangered, losing their livelihoods as their traditional trade is being replaced by computer-generated signage.
My fair trade art project is to promote this charming folk art from Nepal by making it available to the world via “Beware of Dog” signs. America’s love for their pets appears to be the perfect way to introduce the world to Nepali signboard art. And, of course, the wording soon morphed from “Beware” to “Zen Dog,” “Enlightened Dog,” and “Happy Dog.” American Dogs = Nepali Jobs!
It all started a couple of years ago, when I noticed that the lovely and quirky “Be Aware of the Dog” signs that I had photographed over the years in Nepal were being replaced by generic boring stenciled signs. That was the last straw!
Consequently, Danger Dogs from Nepal – Folk Art from the Himalayas was started in 2007. The art is synthetic enamel on metal, about a square foot in size. Each commissioned piece consists of a choice of three portraits of a pet by three different artists. That way, one is sure to please, three artists get work, and the extras are sold in museums as folk art. I don’t accept money until after the customer chooses a portrait. No bad karma here!
Finding the artists is the fun part. I look at existing signboards on the street and at the signatures of the particularly fine ones. Often I take a chance as I walk down the streets (I average 10 miles a day in Kathmandu pollution). I see the word kala (art) in Nepali script, stop and order a couple. These guys don’t have a lot of back stock sitting around so that I can judge their work from what’s in their shops. I’m often pleasantly surprised. And what’s on their walls in the shops often has no relation to what I’ll get.
Some artists are entrepreneurs, while others are idealists or romantics. They can be pragmatic, irresponsible, old, young, shy, or bold—but all males. Certainly there are female fine art painters in Nepal, but not female signboard artists. The signboard business often is handed from father to son or nephew. One never knows who will be painting the sign; it could depend on who needs work that week.
Their styles run the gamut from ultra-naïve to impressionist, from realist to cartoon-like. When they ask if they should paint a full dog or a close up, or about background color, I tell them that it’s their decision. Oddly enough, even with three studios in different towns, some dogs get the same background color by all three artists. It is always interesting to see all three versions of the same dog side by side.
The artwork keeps getting better and better. The artists try to outdo themselves and really appreciate the money that is coming in, as I pay tourist retail—much more than anyone else pays for their work. I do not haggle. I’ve now worked with over 55 artists from all over Nepal and have commissioned over 1,250 signboards to date, bringing an appreciable extra income to these artists.
I’ve recently lost several artists to Saudi Arabia and South Korea, where they take a three-year contract and remit the money to their families. The first six months of their salaries is directly payable to the Manpower agencies that get them the contracts. Nepalese are close to their families and being away from their children and wives is an extreme hardship. However, this remittance money is 17 percent of Nepal’s Gross National Product and is often the only way to ensure a good education for their children.
Someone once asked the best way to order a Danger Dog. My response was to go to Nepal, walk down the street, find a signboard shop, give them your pet’s picture, pay a third to a half advance (trust me on that—otherwise it’s party time; they are artists after all), and go trekking, ride an elephant, or do a yoga retreat. When you return a week or two later, enjoy your very own Danger Dog.
This would work in any country. There are artists everywhere; go to their studios and galleries and buy their art directly. We need to support them. I like folk art, but buy and promote what you like. Recently Mat Gleason wrote in his Coagula Newsletter that we should all tithe 10 percent of our income to buy art. From his lips…
The dogs range from mixed breeds to Catahoula Leopard Dogs, from Great Danes to Chihuahuas. There are little dogs with bared teeth and big old smiling lugs. The Nepali artists cannot believe the diversity of these dogs. One once asked, “How many types of dogs are there?” And I’ve noticed some picture books of dogs cropping up in some studios. When asked to paint a cat, they ask: “Why ‘beware of cat?’ Cats are good.”
Danger Dogs have exhibited in Kathmandu and across California. They are currently at the Craft and Folk Art Museum shop across from Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and at the Santa Monica Museum of Art shop at Bergamot Station. Portions of proceeds are donated to both art-related and animal rescue organizations.
Microfinance through art patronage has become my slogan with the idea of giving a seed instead of a carrot. Not a charity, Nepal Dogs’ mission is to make signboard art live on through the digital age and to give it the respect it deserves through fair trade practices that help Nepali artists to be happy, healthy and thriving.
To see more Danger Dogs from Nepal, please go to NepalDog.com or to learn about Nepali culture and signboard art from a unique perspective, follow Michelle Page’s photo essays at NepalDog.typepad.com.
The Art of Enlightenment
by Master Chrism
All cultures on Earth know it by many different names.
It is Greater Kan and Li for the ancient Chinese and Tumo for the Tibetans. The shamans of the Amazon basin know it as Red Serpent Energy, while the Mayans refer to it as Quetzalcoatl. In the ancient Hebrew tradition, it is Shekinah and for the Greeks, it is Hieron Osteon. It is Fanaa in Sufism and the Holy Ghost of mystical Christianity. And the ancient Sanskriti adepts called it the Kundalini.
The Kundalini is in everyone. It is an untapped resource of love and divinity within us all that is waiting to be awakened and experienced. We have only to learn and apply this tremendous force within us to bring about a change in the minds, spirits, and bodies of all who will learn its secrets. Never has the time been so crucial to explore and initiate a change of this magnitude.
Kundalini is a very powerful and transforming energy located at the base of the spine within the last three vertebrae of the tailbone extending to the perineum and farther to the feet.
You can find cultural expressions of the Kundalini in the arts across the globe. The ancient Egyptians expressed it through the Ankh and attributed to it the very life force of the divine. They also expressed its presence with the sacred serpent as a representation of the human spinal chord without the column encasing it—the serpent standing on its tail. Thus we have the artistic representation of it as Uraeus, the serpent that comes out of the forehead of the pharaohs in the Egyptian symbol. The Mayans called this Quetzalcoatl the Feathered Serpent, as it would cause the spirit to take flight.
Kundalini is also indicated in the modern day Caduceus of the western medical tradition that doctors wear to represent healing. This symbol is from the ancient Greek culture. Often it is depicted as a short herald’s staff entwined by two serpents in the form of a double helix that is surmounted by wings. This staff was also borne by Iris, the messenger of Hera. It was also called the wand of Hermes when he replaced Iris in later Greek myths.
Hinduism is also seen expressing the Kundalini as the serpent coming from the awakened “crown” of the individual.
These artistic symbols are all related to the awakened Kundalini. Art and its expressions of devotion for the divine are many as the ancient cultures, and indeed our modern culture, strive to demonstrate our eternal love and devotion to once again join with the inner divine.
Master Chrism is a teacher of the process for the awakening of the Kundalini. A native of Northern California, he has been “divine realized” with awakened Kundalini for over 20 years. Experience a Kundalini Awakening lecture December 2 and seminars December 5 and 6 at 11674 Gateway Blvd, Suites C and D in West Los Angeles, CA. Learn more about the Kundalini at kundaliniawakeningsystems1.com and get more event information at kundaliniawakeningseminars.com or 310.479.0430.