Creation is an act of love...

Flickr - AFEF earth - no gradient fill copy, originally uploaded by Mic N.

This is our new Arts For Earth Foundation logo! As a 3-d pyramid containing the Earth, it represents nurturing and preserving our planet. This is our mission: To Encourage Sustainable Living Through use of the Visual, Performance and Literary Arts. Literally and figuratively (no pun intended, ha) read on:

Several years (10 or 12) ago I started to feel a tangible energy coming from my artwork. This was pointed out to me. I didn't discover it on my own.
At an art festival in Santa Barbara I turned around to see a fellow beaming love at me, with a grin he said quietly "holistic art", and waived his hand in front of one of my paintings. Now, this is not a "new age" story. It's simply a story of life as I've experienced it.
I never saw him again, but he made quite an impression on me. so I started to check it out with the paintings displayed. Something actually DID feel like it was physically radiating from them.
Later a young man of about 17 hurried to my booth with his buddies and angrily stood in front of "Eagles At Midnight". They had told him there was a hidden image in the night time sky where the full moon was the eye of an eagle hidden in the silver clouds surrounding it.
He didn't believe them because he didn't see the eagle at first glance. He scared me. His look was so severe, such an angry young man waiting for life to prove itself worthy of him.
Suddenly he saw the hidden image, right there clearly filling the painting. A huge eagles head with a moon for its eye.
He was blown away. Now, since he was so surprised at seeing something he was sure didn't exist how about feeling something he had never been aware of? I asked.
It was a risk to show him what the man had shown me earlier. He might laugh at me or worse yet, think I was nuts and just walk away.
He moved his hands in a circle in front of the image. Then he started to grin and laughed. But, it wasn't in ridicule. He asked "How'd you do that?" he softened, "Is there a trick?"
This is no trick. It exists within every painting, every sculpture, every sound in music, every word ever written. Each creation carries real tangible energy with it. If you are open to it, you will feel it, too. I call it Holy Spirit, some call it love energy or the power of the Universe. It's all the same to me. God is God.
As the young man walked away he shook his head saying "and to think, a white chick taught it to me..." As it turns out, his mother and grandmother were both Chumash medicine women and have tried for many years to open up their creation, their son, to the power of love, to the traditions of their people. Somehow, this artwork opened up a door for him and he was willing to walk through. Life had proved itself worthy.
Leads me to believe that native american rock paintings were a much more significant part of the hunt for mountain lion, bear or antelope than I had thought before.

You may take me literally when I talk about the "tangible" power of love in all creation. It's an amazing sensation, taken for granted as simply part of life. How much more beautiful is this life, this world of ours when we open ourselves up to it.? Check it out, don't just take my word for it. And, please write me back to describe how it feels.
love,
Chela