cosmic sensorium: about

How this started

Left home at about 8:40am on a weekday in early Fall of '06. Decided to take Lu’s camera for a walk on my way to work. Got to work at 11:30, despite it being a 15 minute walk. A bigger memory card and who knows where I would have ended up. Probably fired! Time parameters just dissolved - felt like I had spent a day that lasted a year walking in Arrigo Park, and yet I was utterly surprised to see how late it actually was upon my arrival at work. My breath was light, colors deep, bright as well, sound filtered in transparent tubing. Didn't cross my mind to call or anything. Cell phone? what's that? What's worse, it took the camera running out of batteries at some point in the afternoon to stop me from reviewing all of the pics - some of which I didn't even remember taking. After settling in the windowless off-white of my cubicle, turning on the computer, and helplessly attempting to navigate through work, I saw myself getting up, heading for the door, down the murky stairs, welcoming the sky once more and passing out a few bucks in exchange of batteries.

Had played with Lu's camera a few times before, mainly photographing my dear friend, muse, teacher, and companion Robinson the hermit (to your left), and other things around the house. Nonetheless, that walk surely flipped a switch. Felt like I started seeing the world through yet another different lens. Would go into macro setting inadvertently, and find my point of visual perception moving around as if my eyes were inside a camera that could move freely throughout the surrounding space. Being away from the camera was rather annoying, I kept seeing all the awesome pics that I just wasn't taking. Or actually, all the awesome pics that I just wasn't going to be able to share or have other people see.  So I would leave extra early and take the camera with me on my way to and from work, school, errands, etc.

This&OtherWordly Expeditions + First Shows

Started a photoblog - love goes to all friends, family and strangers for your valuable and inspiring comments. Gathered enough courage, shortly after, to put up a show at 8:18, Circus of Spirit (which doesn't go on anymore - check out one of its cousins: Give Peace a Dance). Show was messy and exciting, thanks go to Lu for help, support, patience, and push, and also for helping me carry them boxes so far up north in the cold while waiting on the Ashland Bus. Got awesome feedback and even sold a print or two - thanks to all my dear eight-eighteeners. Then made it to Pilsen Open Studios - thanks to Cesar Casas and to his friend that didn't show up at the last minute. Talking with open-studio-goers about the pics was amazing. The feedback was awesome and most did not believe that the pics to your right, and the one in the banner, came from casual walks in Urban Chicago with the aide of a plain, first generation, wonderful Nikon Coolpix 3200. Suddenly I realized there is something  for me here, I really want to explore and keep doing all this... (and by the way, 3200 stands for 3.2 megapixels).

Warps, loops and wormholes

800 clicks after that autumn day in Arrigo Park, I start discovering peculiar patterns in some of the pics I was taking. They would come in flashes (no, not using the flash on the camera, just like flashes of energy-memory-goose-bumpy-sensations). Sometimes I just got a slight impulse to tilt the camera a certain way, and there at play between sunrays and vegetation would come the most splendid hidden messages. Other times it was rather more abrupt, just found myself taking alternate routes to get to places... and finding awesome shoots along the way. Yes, buying groceries could quickly escalate to a two or three hour ordeal. Also started using my time in front of the computer rather differently: trying to figure out photoshop, learning to "bring out'" the peculiar patterns I was seeing in the pics, and then taking breaks from this in order to write papers for school or do some of my RA work.

Kept hitting up 8:18 every first Friday, was lucky to get a few shows at the  Murphy-Hill Gallery, the Ward Gallery, Big Art Show, and a few others. Murphy-Hill Gallery is actually where I met Barbara O'Connor, thanks go to her for sharing her awesome nature and scenery pics and words of wisdom and for offering to sell me her Nikon D70, along with the most splendid old school manual macro lens, at such an awesome price.

Started finding myself working through photoshop and through dawn, with strands of intuition taking me through the unknown and bridging the gaps in silence, computer language, and the figures that would pop up when closing my eyes after studying my images. The mandalas start to take shape and I start to see that the patterns are Sacred Geometry.

The Mandalas start to take shape...

So then, some of the images that end up being mandalas come visit in dreams. And some mandalas I make as if remembering a dream, yet without a pre-conceived notion of how they will end up. More recently, the mandalas are actually the way I translate and condense a wide array of not-so-ordinary experiences and alternate states of consciousness, including meditation, inner exploration, and dream work. Sometimes I start a mandala and for some reason I become aware that it's specifically for someone I know; then of course I share it and in that is sheer bliss.

So, at some point in this process and during the 8:18 days, I decided to start the Cosmic Sensorium as an anchor point for this work. Then of course I had to teach myself web design, and here I am... better connected to the flow and evermore thankful for being alive and able to share this with whoever is interested.

The About Pages

The walk in Arrigo park