Kristina Quinones in her San Francisco SOMA Studio photographed by Thomas Kuoh

I first saw Kristina’s work when I was hunting for studio space. Her work was hanging on the wall at the Alabama Street Art Explosion Studios in San Francisco. I immediately fell in love with her work, I just stared and stared and dreamed of having enough money one day to own one of those beautiful flowing fluid waves encased in luscious translucent candy like shells. The depth and layers dance off the wall in a three dimensional illusion of motion, waves of relaxation and tension, pulling at my primal subconscious and bringing out a giddy joy that few art works have done. I did ask her years ago if I could photograph her, but her immediate refusal suggested her general disinterest in ever being photographed. So when I emailed her my project idea of photographing artists in their studio, I didn’t expect much. But when she agreed, and even seemed excited, I was flattered and overjoyed.

We scheduled the shoot early on a Sunday morning, 9am. Me, a family man with a baby at home, forgot that the rest of the world spends Friday and Saturday nights partying and blowing off the weeks steam. And I would not have known had she not apologized for being hungover. And you would not know from the pictures had I not just told you. We had a great time. She was fun, and funny and incredibly photogenic and made my job super easy. Not to mention the otherworldly art that flanked her, how could I take a bad photo? My only wish was to have had more time to just sit and stare at her work some more. I feel as if I could live inside one of her pieces and be totally content.

Each of her pieces take a minimum of 2 months to make. She painstakingly pours each liquidy layer and in a battle with time and gravity, dances around the room with the wooden canvas. Once the perfect flow has been achieved, she sets the piece down on an absolutely leveled base and let’s dry for several days. The humidity and room temperature must be respected and weight heavily into her calculations of pour-ability and drying time. Controlling dust is a constant battle, even one spec of lint can ruin months of work. She will repeat this process at least 10 times for each piece to create the richly complex and unique depth. No expense is spared when it comes to the wooden canvas. Only the best wood and most experienced craftsmen can create the absolutely flat surface needed. Any irregularities in the surface will cause unwanted pooling and thin spots.

Check out her website, www.kristinaq.com, for more info on her and her work.

Working on a new piece

Getting ready to pour

Studio

Bill Samios Painter in his San Francisco Apt/Studio photographed by Thomas Kuoh

Bill Samios Closeup in his San Francisco Apt/Studio photographed by Thomas Kuoh

I first Met Bill when I assisted Brandon McGanty on a West Elm photoshoot. He assisted a stylist. I think we were chatting and I mentioned I had a studio in the Art Explosion warehouse and he too had a studio there, but in the next building. He said he painted and I think I went onto his website. But I loved his big mushrooms and fun birds and branches and beautiful nudes. He then asked me to model for him and I did. I would see him now and again, and we’d talk art and our careers as assistants. Bill’s art is evolving and it’s curious to see which direction he takes. In everything he does, there is always a background in classical figurative, but the surreal elements creep in and you begin to see into his psyche. He is more and more painting his subconscious and his life story. In person, at least from my perspective, there isn’t a flamboyant gay-ness,and in his paintings too, it’s subtle. But the tenderness in which he paints his male nudes shows his love for the beauty of men.

For more of his work, visit www.billsamios.com

Check out Jane’s portfolio and her blog for more styling inspiration.

Marco Cochrane in his Treasure Island Studio on San Francisco Bay working on his latest 50 foot tall sculpture "Truth and Beauty" Photographed by Thomas Kuoh.

It’s kind of an amazing story how I came to know Marco. In 2008, Tjarn, my close friend and the best man at my wedding was hanging out with his friend Pilar at Esalen Institute in Big Sur California. She was telling him about her ex-husband and their two kids, how they don’t talk anymore, but is an excellent father and an amazing figure sculptor and how he got himself a patron but how their relationship was strained because of the women that modeled for him. And as they began to hike along the coast they run into a man carrying an alabaster white sculpture of a woman. Pilar shouts, “That’s her, that’s the woman!” They walk up to the man and introduce themselves and found out that Marco is a good friend of his and had given him the sculpture.

Tjarn was very excited to relay this whole story to me, not only because of the weird coincidence, but also because I had just started figure sculpting. I realized that I knew of Marco thru his youtube videos and have seen his work. I called him to visit his studio and told him of the story from Big Sur. We had a great time chatting about sculpting, life of an artist, how he came to sculpting and much more.

In 2009 Marco contacted me and asked me to help with a very large Burningman project. But the timing wasn’t right, my baby girl was about to be born and my priorities have shifted. But as I watched his vision come to fruition, I knew I was witnessing an important moment in Art history. No one had ever done anything like this ever! The triangular lattice frame that allowed the gigantic sculpture to stand on one leg while the other leg and the arms stretched out into space was an engineering marval, but more miraculously, epically beautiful.

I feel honored to photograph him in his Treasure Island Studio on San Francisco bay as he works on his next master piece, Truth and Beauty. It is scheduled for completion in 2012. Follow the progress here, http://blissdance.us/

Bliss Dance is temporarily installed on Treasure Island, and if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and make a stop and be inspired. Pictures doesn’t do it justice, you must see it in person.

More on Bliss Dance…
http://blog.burningman.com/culture-art-music/bliss-dance-has-emerged/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bliss-Dance/178138685533265

Portrait of Philip Krohn in his West Oakland studio by Thomas Kuoh in July of 2011

I had the great fortune of photographing one of Oakland’s gems, the installation artist Philip Krohn, in his West Oakland Studio after a recent show. When I first saw his work I was amazed at it’s simplicity and beauty. The concept of recyclable items re-purposed as art usually brings images of amateurish grade school projects of cut up soda bottles and broken AOL CD’s glued into some bad mosaic. But Philip takes it to a whole new level. His recent show, After the Flood, takes several tons of old shreded t-shirts, used vegetable oil jugs from restaurants, refuse from construction sites and other dumpster dive finds, and selectively sorts and organizes them into deeply introspective, political and socially critical Art.

The piece I fell in love with, grandiosely titled The Oracle, is a three story tall stack of plastic cooking oil jugs back-lit to resemble a bit-mapped glacier which foretells of a future in the hands of man. The plastic made from petroleum used to carry vegetable oil derived from an industrial process shipped via diesel chugging big rigs to fast food restaurants where a nation of obesity, materialism and single-use ignorance throws them out to be picked up by a visionary who stacks them neatly into a beautiful and contemplative display of Art.

I look forward to seeing what Philip comes up with next. in the mean time, follow his work at http://www.philipkrohn.com/ and buy an EARTH sticker from http://www.earthsticker.com/. All net proceeds go towards supporting non-profit organizations listed on their site.

The Oracle by Philip Krohn

Split Rail #9/10/11, 2007, cardboard salvaged from waste, by Philip Krohn

Split Rail #12, 2007, cardboard salvaged from waste, 144 X 96 X 80, by Philip Krohn

Juggler's Thought, 2007, willow prunings, 180 X 28 X 28", by Philip Krohn

In December of 2008 I began work on the Maharajji Murti as a form of bakti yoga. The decision seemed simple, I had a skill, I loved Maharajji, and I didn’t see any sculptures of him that resembled him. I didn’t know it would be such an amazing journey, a gift that keeps on giving, and now, years later, the journey continues. I am meeting amazing people who were with Maharajji. The tears of joy and stories that pour out when people who know him see the Murti has been a great surprise to me. I am in conversation with ramdass.org to put the Murti up for sale on their website. Also I am raising money to gift a cast to Ram Dass and the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram in Taos New Mexico.

The following is a little biography of Maharajji, some technical information about the sculpture and my journey that lead me to him.

About Guru Sri Neem Karoli Baba (aka Maharaj-ji)
Maharajji[1] established at least 108 temples, fed millions of people, advised government and corporate leaders, performed what some call miracles, influenced current American and Indian society, brought grace into the lives of countless suffering people, and all the while remained out of the “public eye.”

In the late 60′s Dr. Richard Alpert, an eminent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer, later known as Baba Ram Dass authored a book, “Be Here Now” telling of the Indian Guru Neem Karoli Baba which led hundreds of Westerners, tired of American politics and new-world materialism, in search of Maharajji’s darshan[2]. Maharajji was as elusive as the stories tell, but many were allowed to be in his presence and they continue to tell stories to this day that are a wonderment of love, grace, lilas[3] and awe.

In 1961, while at Harvard, Dr Richard Alpert, in collaboration with Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Aldous Huxley, and Allen Ginsberg, pursued intensive research of human consciousness with psilocybin mushrooms, LSD-25, and other psychedelic chemicals. Because of the highly controversial nature of their research, Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary were dismissed from Harvard in 1963.

For Ram Dass psychedelic work turned out to be a catalyst for seeking spirituality. He first went to India in 1967 where, a series of seeming coincidences led him to his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Maharajji, who gave Ram Dass his name, which means “servant of God.” Everything changed then – his intense dharmic life started, and he became a pivotal influence on a culture that has reverberated with the words “Be Here Now” ever since.

Much of the yoga, meditation and Hindu spirituality movements in the west today can be directly linked to the western disciples who were taught by Maharajji. Some prominent musicians such as Jai Utal and Krishna Das spread the teaching through traditional Hindu Chants. And Baba Ram Dass, despite his paralyzing stroke, continues to spread the knowledge and practice through books, lectures and retreats.

Although Maharajji himself often forbad the discussion of, and never admitted to, the performance of any miracles, they were never the less seen and experienced by all who were around him. His devotees have authored many books, mostly telling of their personal transformations and the grace of Maharajji, but also detail the countless miracles that melted the hardest skeptical hearts into devoted servants of God.

Much like the path of Baba Ram Dass, my own psychedelic research led me on a spiritual quest. And through a series of seeming coincidences led me to his 1971 book, “Be Here Now”.  I then had the great fortune of meeting Ram Dass, hearing his lectures, sang kirtan[4] with Krishna Das, and laid hands on the actual blanket Maharajji wore. The question I then had to ask myself was, “If Jesus were alive just 30 years ago, and I meet his living disciples and heard their stories, would I believe?”

About the Murti[5]

The Sculpture took approximately one year to complete. It was originally sculpted using an oil-based clay, Chevant NSP Soft and Medium. The base was made of water-based clay. The supporting structure is a mix of Styrofoam and threaded pipe. I gathered the images from the Neem Karoli Baba website. I had nothing to base the actual size of Baba’s head, so I used the normal 9in human head scale. I digitally grided the images of Baba and used them as scale reference. I wanted to express the proper emotion and the proper texture of his face. It went through many iterations, from smiling, to more subtle, to open mouth, to closed, to having hair and a beard to having none, to being smooth back to a rough tooled look. The blanket also went through much iteration.

A friend brought the unfinished piece to a Krishna Das Kirtan, where many devotees were able to see it. It was very well received, all who have seen other Murti’s of Baba said that this was the most accurate one they’ve seen. This is where Balaram saw it and offered to share his personal collection of photos of Maharajji with me. This allowed me to have very high-resolution photos of Baba from all angles and allowed me to put in details that I could not otherwise see from low-resolution Internet images. This is also where the Murti was super charged by very same blanket Marharajji wore during the summer of 1973.

With Baba’s blessing, a devotee offered to purchase the first casting of the Murti and paid for the mould to be made. The casting is made of Hydrocal Gypsum Cement, a modern day plaster designed for sturdy castings of sculpture. They are then hand painted and waxed to have a dark bronze patina. With each subsequent cast, the mould deteriorates, and will only last approximately 30 castings.

Why Sculpt a Murti

Being in San Francisco during the first decade of the new millennium was an amazing mix of energies; the dot-com boom came and went leaving a large group of highly paid young college grads with time and disposable income. Followed by the disillusionment of 9-11, a spreading distrust of our own government. These events plus the Love-All, Ecstacy fueled dwindling Rave scene gave birth to a new idealism in the Burningman psychedelic gifting and free-art culture. It was through these conditions that I ventured away from my Christian and strict academic Chinese upbringing and into an exploration of my consciousness and an understanding of the truth behind happiness and suffering.

In my first experiences with psychedelics, I understood the healing and destructive powers it held. But even in my cautious use of the sacraments for strictly spiritual purposes, I could not have the moments of awakening without the month of depression that came afterwards. The realization that I could not hang on to the high was like suffering the loss of a loved one. It was too much to bear.

It was the summer of 2006 that I pieced together the clues that have been all around me for the previous 5 years. I worked for a photographer in 2003 that had been trying to make a documentary of Ram Dass. I did not know who he was at that time. I was also handed the square blue book with the funny drawings numerous times never realizing what it was or what it was about, only thinking that it might be fun to look at the weird illustrations while high. It was in 2004 that I met Ram Dass, the old man with long white hair in a wheel chair who spoke too slow for my ADHD mind and wondering why everyone else was hanging on his every word and staring with such deep love.  At that time, my wife, then girlfriend, had been listening to the Hanuman Chalisa, not realizing what it was, but always appreciated the peacefulness it brought. When my best friend, Ray, heard the Chalisa for the first time, he nearly jumped out of his skin, remarking that he had heard those very same words loudly and clearly in a deep meditation. He had been fruitless in trying to track down the origins of these words, that is until we played it for him in the car on our way down coastal Highway 1 to bury my cat.

It was in the midst of all of these strange coincidences that I was again handed the square blue book. I had known from watching a Ram Dass documentary, “Fierce Grace” that he was connected to Timothy Leary and his journey as a psychonaut, but had failed to understand his relationship to Maharajji. In my cover to cover reading of “Be Here Now” I finally understood how our journeys mirrored each others. I now understood that after the psychedelic phone rang and I received the message, it’s now time to hang it up. I began the practices in the back of the book, and meditated daily, calling upon the name of Ram. It was also this time that I began to look deeply into the lives surrounding this mysterious Guru Maharajji. I met more people whose lives have been touched by him, and read stories by his devotees. I started to receive his teachings little by little, and began to lead a more dharmic life. Maharajji’s influence on my life and on the lives of those around me was unmistakable. To me he is synonymous with Jesus Christ and God. If I can use my hands as devotional tools and carve an image of God, Maharajji would be the closest things.

Doubts did enter my mind before, during and after the process. I was afraid of being judged for creating an idol. And what if the idol created false hope, or misplaced devotion? What if it brought forth unnecessary dogma? What if my intentions are unpure and only wanted financial reward and ego recognition for the work done? Was I trying to win favor with the Gods? Of course, these questions themselves are traps of the ego, and  I only have faith to navigate by. I hope to share the Murti with as many people as possible. I hope it brings joy and relieve to those who need it as it had done for me.

Namaste

Bibliography

Gurubhai. “Sri Neem Karoli Baba Maharajji.” Maharajji. 11 Jan. 2011. Web. 08 July 2011. <http://maharajji.com/>.

“Albums By Neem Karoli Baba Photos – ImageEvent.” ImageEvent- Share Photos, Videos, Documents Online. Web. 08 July 2011.
<http://imageevent.com/neemkarolibabaphotos>.

“Biography.” Ram Dass Love Serve Remember. Web. 08 July 2011. <http://www.ramdass.org/biography>.

I mean to say, atheists talk about the God they don’t believe in. And I agree with them. I don’t believe in the God that is the standard definition of God.

What I think God is is the connections we have with everything. All through time and space, and perhaps beyond time and space. There exists a connection between all things. It is through this connection that we get the universe. Consciousness exists at all level and size scales. A mouse has consciousness and an elephant has consciousness, just like atoms, and what makes up atoms, and the space between them, they all have consciousness. That is, that they are aware and make decisions. The fractal concept is the closest we will get to understanding the truth about nature. God is the billions of years of evolution, God is the forming of the planet. God is our connection to all that is around us, supporting our ability to be self-aware. From our perspective, the mold on fruit is one organism, but really they are a bunch of single celled organisms, they all have their own decision making nucleus. God is the One Human Organism on the earth. We are all just varieties of mold growing on earth. Does the word “mold” generate any charged feelings? Mold is good, in fact, it’s great! it allows the birth of new life. But the compost pile has no idea what new life it will be supporting.

God has nothing to do with religion. The atheists like to talk about God but only end up talking about their distaste for religion. I too have that distaste for religion and it’s rituals. But I believe in the God atheists don’t bother talking about, because they can’t talk about it. There’s nothing to refute or debate because it’s untestable. Modern Ideas of science fails here.

God is the dissolving of our addiction and mind-slavery to symbols. When I say tree, it’s easy to think of Leaves, branches, trunk, and roots, but we think less about the soil, the water and the breathing space between the roots and the leaves. But without those things, the tree can’t exist. So what is the Tree? And who are we? We do not think about ourselves without blood but we do think of “I” without friends and family, and our material possessions.  We we cannot exist without being born and certainly not without materials, especially mother earth. So where do we start and where do we end. We use a symbol, called “me”, or “I”. But you see, it is just a definition we’ve agreed on. The reality is that there is no separation. We are all connected. It takes some practice to hold this concept in mind without getting a headache or losing patience. But as one gets used to the idea, one begins to see the connectedness in all things. Like the table I’m using. If I spend a minute being with this table I begin to see much more than a table. I see it’s usefulness and it’s connection to me, but even more so to my wife. This is her Office. Of course she is connected to me. I also see my daughter’s presence left on the table, the crayon marks and the color markers. If I don’t simplify the table down to it’s symbol, then there’s so much more there.

God is just the connection between all things. There are not really things either, if they are all connected. There is just one huge thing. Which is all things, so there is no beginning and no end to this thing, because it even contains any non-thing. And when you play the connection game enough, eventually you realize your connection to the big bang, and all future events. You realize you are timeless and space-less. And that is the realization of God. God is you and you are God. God is me and I am God. You are me, and I am you, and we are God.

God doesn’t tell anybody anything. God doesn’t know anything. God doesn’t judge anything. God doesn’t guide anything. We all make decisions. Like a tree, all the leaves grow on their own and at once. Millions of leaves all growing, millions of branches all growing. Independent of each other. The tree doesn’t make a decision. Each individual cells contain the brain needed to guide it’s functioning. But we look at a tree as the whole. We don’t see that all the branches are at war. The new bark tears up the old bark and leaves fight each other for sun.

The very question of who or what is God is a paradox. The problem is that the question is a call for definition, but the answer only comes with the dissolution of definitions. In fact no statements can be made about God at all. For example, if I say, God is everything, then the question follows, what is everything? If I say, God knows all, the the question arises, what is knowing? This is why Athiests and Religious fundamentalists have no interest in discussion this idea of God. Because nothing can be said. And when there is nothing to say what do those who like to talk do? They find something else to talk about. But what they are talking about is not the true GOD.