Some cool Under images:

Auroville: Under Construction




Image by premasagar

Auroville is an experimental city, under development in south India. It is intended to be a model township - an international and universal place for personal, spiritual growth and social advancement.

Auroville exists for nothing less than to hasten the evolution of the human species - to develop the mind from its animal instincts to sublime intuition, and to manifest the inspiration of the Divine in the material world.

Origins
The idea for the town was inspired by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo - an Indian philosopher, freedom fighter and futurist who lived from 1872 to 1950. His greatest disciple, a Frenchwoman known simply as 'The Mother', came to India to be by his side and to realise his ideas. She proposed the creation of Auroville, which was finally founded in 1968. Representatives came from all over India and the world, bringing with them a handful of soil from their native lands, to be mixed in an urn at the centre of the city.

The current population is currently around 1800 'Aurovilians'. The aim is to have a thriving city of 50,000. The largest country represented so far is India, followed by French and German citizens.

The Matrimandir Temple
The building in the photograph is the Matrimandir - the 'Temple of the Mother'. Here, 'Mother' refers to the supreme Creative Force, the energy that binds Consciousness into the myriad forms of the universe. (Compare with goddess Durga from Hindu mythology).

The Matrimandir is to be a place of concentration, for finding the source of one's consciousness in the stillness of meditation. The red brick 'lotus petals' each contain a room for meditation. Inside the golden dome is the 'Inner Chamber' - a large, white, circular hall containing a huge glass crystal - the largest in the world - which focusses a beam of white light into the centre of the building.

The gold discs are actually made of gold -- gold leaf, sandwiched in between two layers of glass and tiled like a mosaic around huge discs. This sphere of gold, around a place of great concentration upon human consciousness, is intended to have an electromagnetic influence on the state of consciousness for the rest of the planet...

In the following photographs, I use quotes from Sri Aurobindo and The Mother to illustrate the vision for Auroville.
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External Links:
• Auroville website
• Wikipedia: Sri Aurobindo
• Wikipedia: The Mother
• Wikipedia: Auroville

Auroville, south India
• Auroville: In Quotes set

Mixed Media Painting (Detail) by Choichun Leung / Dumbo Arts Center: Art Under the Bridge Festival 2009 / 20090926.10D.54929.P1.L1 / SML




Image by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML

SML Pro Blog: Choichun Leung / 13th Annual DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival NYC 2009: Part 10 of 10 / Art + Artists

Choichun Leung
2008
Part of the SCRIPTO series
www.choichun.com/scripto.html

See also Choichun Leung talks about her mixed media paintings (Flickr 720p HD video).

Choichun Leung left Wales when she was seventeen to pursue a degree in metal-smithing at Loughborough college of Art and Design in the UK, afterwhich she studied Buddhist iconography in both Beijing and the Yangkung caves in China's Shanxi province. In 1988 she moved to London where she studied under the Ray Man Chinese Orchestra as a percussionist and a student of the Gu-qin - a traditional Chinese bass zither. Leung worked in Hong Kong as a background artist for animation film before returning to London in 1992 where she received a grant and Gold Award from the Prince of Wales' Youth Business Trust for the most innovative new business of the year: a line of symbolic art products using the traditional technique of Chinese paper cutting.

With music and the arts always hand in hand, Leung came to New York in 1994 where she began painting seriously, worked as an assistant to artist Peter Max, and studied music composition. From that point forward, Choichun's artwork has been inextricably entwined with her interest in music and have continued to influence each other.

As the single mother of a young daughter, Choichun moved to Germany in 2002 to write music, perform and collaborate on an audio/visual project based in Koln. Upon the invitation of a gallery in 2006 she returned to New York. Most recently Choichun has been featured in two solo exhibitions at JLA Baxter House in Manhattan and will take part in a group showing in Hamburg in November 2008. Choichun currently lives in Brooklyn, NYC .

Artist Statement Our lives are as long as we remember. Our memories are imbedded in us like DNA. But what of lives that through trauma or age have lost memory? What of the interplay of conscious thought and the sub-conscious? Which one really drives the show? My paintings are like rorschach tests in reverse, a psychological diary of that moment in time, an investigation of the relationship between past and present, reality and illusion and in effect a blue print to the past self. Through the symbolisms revealed, and the stories or objects we project into the abstract, we expose another layer of ourselves and in turn provide clues to what may not be fully aware. My paintings are simple traces of that activity, void of any meaning, but imbedded with the years of experience that shapes us, yet also holds us hostage.

Choichun never paints from sketches but instead allows the process and medium dictate. Each application is an expressive gesture evoking the emotion and inner psychology of that moment, a conflicted excavation of what may be hidden or imagined. The script like lines emerge as a non-cognitive language or what she has come to identify as 'glyphs' - a pictographic personal alphabet; where 'glyphs' document the days, weeks and months spent on a piece. The one actual reference that Choichun can identify in her work after the fact springs from her background in music and her fascination with its chaotic notes and interpretive patterns. These can be seen in the work's fine, rhythmic and frenetic lines as well as in the heavier, poured-on, black & white 'mono-glyphs' which overtake the paintings like visual representations of a sound. Choichun paints on both wood panels and canvas, using liquid acrylic, aerosol, oil bars and thread . With sticks, brushes, trowels and vessels: applying the paint and then scratching through the layers to reveal what is underneath, scripting with ‘glyphs’ throughout, painting over, sanding down and repeating this process until an image is revealed or another is hidden.

www.choichun.com


13th annual D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival® (Sept 25 to Sept 27, 2009)
www.dumboartfestival.org/press_release.html

The three-day multi-site neighborhood-wide event is a one-of-a-kind art happening: where serendipity meets the haphazard and where the unpredictable, spontaneous and downright weird thrive. The now teenage D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival® presents touchable, accessible, and interactive art, on a scale that makes it the nation's largest urban forum for experimental art.

Art Under the Bridge is an opportunity for young artists to use any medium imaginable to create temporary projects on-the-spot everywhere and anywhere, completely transforming the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, New York, into a vibrant platform for self-expression. In addition to the 80+ projects throughout the historical post-industrial waterfront span, visitors can tour local artists' studios or check out the indoor video_dumbo, a non-stop program of cutting-edge video art from New York City and around the world.

The Dumbo Arts Center (DAC) has been the exclusive producer of the D.U.M.B.O Art Under the Bridge Festival® since 1997. DAC is a big impact, small non-profit, that in addition to its year-round gallery exhibitions, is committed to preserving Dumbo as a site in New York City where emerging visual artists can experiment in the public domain, while having unprecedented freedom and access to normally off-limit locations.

www.dumboartscenter.org
www.dumboartfestival.org
www.video_dumbo.org


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+ SML Fine Art (Flickr Group)
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+ SML Flickr Sets: Art
+ SML Flickr Sets: Dumbo Arts Center: Art Under the Bridge Festival 2009
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+ SML Pro Blog: Art

Under Construction - Church In The Park 2007 - MainArt UPDATE




Image by ChrisMoncusPhoto.com

UPDATE TO THE PREVIOUS VERSION
at flickr.com/photos/chrismoncus/1362035111/

The main series art for our next series (though it's only one week) called "Under Construction".

The message will communicate God's continued effort in our lives to have us "conformed to the likeness of his Son" (Romans 8:29).

I'd love some feedback before it goes to print. Whatcha think?