The Centripetal Art of Junko Chodos, Matrix of Spiritual Growth

of our marriage. It is a complicated, tangled personality type which relishes conflict and contradiction, whose notion of spiritual striving is restless and anguished4. It is very different from the “eastern” personality type, which strives towards peace and quiet. The eastern seeker strives for escape from the circle of karma, and imagines Nirvana as a still lotus pond. For the western seeker, “heaven” is a place full of life, a heavenly court, with angels playing background music, where one can hold conversation with God and with all the souls that have ever lived; a place from which the activities of this world can be monitored and even perhaps influenced. For Junko, as for me, the spiritual quest has an inherently tumultuous quality, and if it reaches a resolution it is a resolution through climax - like sexual activity, or like the climax of a piece of music or of a work of art. It will never be a resolution through increasing quietude. So my remark had failed to acknowledge this most important shared aspect of our personalities - and in that way, it was an involuntary betrayal. This fundamentally western characteristic of Junko’s personality had revealed itself when she painted the Esoteric Buddhism works, and after our conversation it manifested itself again in the form of her series of works titled Concerning Art and Religion, created in 2004 and 2005. In those nine works Junko articulated fundamental ideas which are implicit in all her works: “In the beginning is the image” [frontispiece]—which means that image precedes even narrative and myth; that the artists who painted the cave drawings at Lascaux are Junko’s ancestors because the encounter with the image precedes and is more important than the adoption of any dogma. “Why do angels and demons both fly in the sky?” and “Why do you love chaos and destruction so much?”—those works advert to the destructive aspects of monotheism, which has shown itself throughout history to foster a kind of hostility and rigidity leading often to destructiveness. Creating those works, partially in response to my remarks, prepared Junko for the FATHOM series two years later, a series which begins, again, with “The Sorcerer Entering His Forest”—another appearance of the Bird but this time as a sorcerer in almost human form. p. 292 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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