The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth

During the days that I was staring at the dead flowers and working on drawing them many hours every day, death approached very close to me. A dark and dangerous time started. I heard a voice in my dream saying, “There is a dead one who pulls your hand from underground: be strong, stand up firmly.” The voice repeated this a few times, and the dark urgent feeling continued for several days and nights. But as I kept working on the drawings in my studio, it seemed that my body gradually was losing its sense of weight, and my eyes seemed to have changed their gaze: the eyes that were gazing at the dead flowers were floating up higher and were lifted into a height from which I was to able to look down at the dead flowers. The gaze of myself looking at death turned into the gaze of death looking at me. I did not have to lift my eyes up in order to look at heaven: heaven was looking down at the tiny me standing far below on the earth and I had become one with death. The broad scope of the bird’s eye view was spread out underneath me. The delightful memory of those days has revived in me again and again and comes to me still now—days in which the little figures of Buddha sprang up in my art and spilt over the edge of the paper one after another. Those Buddhas floated into my dreams, and after I awaken they are still floating in the air and they surround me. At that time I went through a dark forest where I almost lost my way. By continuing to work with the pen, stroke by stroke on my paper, I was able to walk through one of the most dangerous times in my life. — From Junko’s Notebook, 1983 p. 18 centripetal art / Matrix of Growth

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth

PREFACE

-Definition of Centripetal Art -Its Place In Art History: After the Postmodern Period -Introducing the Subject Matter: One Centripetal Artist's Journey -The Relationship With Multiculturalism -After the Death of God and of Art

FOREWORD

-How the Author's Connection With His Wife's Art Grew More Intimate Over the Years -Learning In Marriage -"Why Does God Need To Paint?" [Section One] Individual Visitants -Dead Flowers and Root -Lungs and Rib Cage

CHAPTER FOUR - A Vital Spirituality

-Why This Art Could Not Have Been Created Earlier -Echoes of the Spiritual Arts of the Early 20th Century -The Impact of the Atomic Bomb; Ecological Concerns -Markers for Spirituality -Centripetal Art Overflows the Studio: Therapy

CHAPTER SIX - A Complex Spirituality

-Spirituality of the 21st Century

AFTERWORD - THE FURNACE

-Polytheism and Monotheism in Art -Goethe’s Aphorism -Marriage and the Alchemist’s Furnace Themes In Series

PREFACE

(Page I) The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth - -Definition of Centripetal Art (Page II) The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth - -The Relationship With Multiculturalism (Page III) The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth - -After the Death of God and of Art (Page IV) The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth -

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