Spirals
and Circles: The Art of Stu Jenks |
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“The Circle. The Spiral. Universal symbols from all cultures, representing everything from festive pinwheels to the internal journey of the soul. The Spiral: A movement down into despair, a motion up into joy, a sojourn inward and back out again. The Circle: A path of completion, a new beginning, a continuing sense of union. For the past number of years I have been exploring in my photography these two symbols, creating them in sand, in flame, in water, in time. Each time I learn a little more about the space I’m in, both emotionally internal to my experiences, and physically external to my environment. This series is as much about the exploration of my spiritual reality, as it is about an appreciation of form, shape, and design.” --
Stu Jenks
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The Circle as Symbol from The Power of Myth, conversations between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers Moyers: Jung, that famous psychologist, says that one of the most powerful religious symbols is the circle. He says that the circle is one of the great primordial images of mankind and that, in considering the symbol of the circle, we are analyzing the self. What do you make of that? Campbell: The whole world is a circle. All these circular images reflect the psyche, so there may be some relationship between these architectural designs and the actual structuring of our spiritual functions. When a magician wants to work magic, he puts a circle around himself, and it is within this bounded circle, this hermetically sealed-off area, that powers can be brought into play that are lost outside the circle…The circle represents totality. Everything within the circle is one thing, which is encircled, enframed. That would be the spatial aspect. But the temporal aspect of the circle is that you leave, go somewhere, and always come back. God is the alpha and the omega, the source and the end. The circle suggests immediately a completed totality, whether in time or space. Moyers: No beginning, no end. Campbell: Round and round and round . . . .
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| Circles, Spirals, and Stu by Terri Windling
Part way into this particular book (The Wood Wife), I found myself writing these words: “Time is a spiral.” They seemed important, but as I wrote them, I wasn’t sure what I meant. As a folklorist, I knew that spirals were an ancient symbol used all around the globe on tombs and shrines and artifacts, usually representing immortality, the endless spiral path from life to death and back in the form of rebirth. I had to journey farther into my story, however, to learn why the spiral would be important to it. Toward the end of the novel, an immortal Trickster figure attempts to explain to a human poet what the symbol of the spiral means to him and his fellow nature spirits: “This is our path,” he says, “the spiral path. This how the world looks to us. We have no Time, as you know Time. We only know that-which-moves. On the spiral path, the past and the future are simply two different directions. I stand in the present, at the center of the spiral, and I can walk as easily to one as to the other.” As he speaks, he stirs the air and a great spiral hovers over the desert landscape before him.
A few years later, I was walking down the hall of the warehouse building where I share a painting studio in downtown Tucson. As I passed the building’s darkroom, my eyes were caught by a photograph on the bulletin board beside the door. The image was of a large spiral of light hovering over the desert floor. It looked so much like the imagery I’d been imagining when I wrote my novel that I stood and stared at the image, dumbfounded. The photographer, another friend in the building told me, was a man named Stu Jenks. I looked up his work on the Web and decided this was an artist I needed to know! As my studio-partner, Beckie Kravetz, and I became acquainted with Stu and his extraordinary work, it soon be became clear that his art shares a spirit and sensibility with those of us (writers, artists, and performers) working in the field of Mythic Arts—not only in its compelling imagery, bringing mythic symbols into a modern yet timeless context, but also in the intuitive way he approaches the making of art. His imagery is rich in paradox, in opposites joined in relationship with each other: carefully planned light effects transformed by serendipitous moments of weather and time, natural patterns that seem crafted by an artist’s hand and manmade artifacts that seem a part of nature.
Spirals. Circles. Sacred Spaces. These are the subjects Stu explores in a range of photographs and art installations, telling stories with light and time and land instead of with words. The imagery he presents to the viewer is provocative and mysterious, offered with little in the way of explanation, with no lengthy Artist Statement attached. Instead, Stu stays silent about the “meaning” of each image, encouraging the viewers to find their own meanings in his circles and spirals and columns of light, creating a dialogue between picture and viewer, which is another kind of circle. Thus for me, Stu’s pictures speak of myths, folk tales, and the spirited soul of desert and forest—but for another viewer they might speak in a more scientific voice of light phenomena . . . and to another of magic . . . and to another of abstract design elements in careful balance . . . and so on . . . and on . . .a variety of meanings spiraling into infinity, like the shapes themselves. Art historian John Berger, in a recent essay (Steps Toward a Small Theory of the Visible) comments: “The modern illusion concerning painting (which postmodernism has done nothing to correct) is that the artist is a creator. Rather he is a receiver. What seems like creation is the act of giving form to what he has received.” He goes on to talk about the act of painting as a collaboration between the artist and “the mountain or the mouse or the child” being seen and painted. Stu’s photographs demonstrate the receptive quality that Berger celebrates, for he’s an artist who interacts with the world around him, rather than imposing his vision upon it. His night photographs of the desert, for example, are the result of many hours spent in remote areas of the mountains near Tucson, waiting patiently for time, chance, light, weather, and craft to come into alignment. The first work of art is that which he creates in solitude
In March 2002, Stu merged his two art forms (the making of “sacred spaces,” and photography) by creating The Open Circle Cairn Project at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson—a photography exhibit and installation in the museum’s basement gallery. One entered the darkened room to the sound of music (by Steve Roach and others). At the far end of the space, a large circle had been formed of hay on the gallery floor, sweet smelling and softly glowing in a circle of light. Inside the circle was a beckoning space, empty yet filled with Mystery. Outside the circle hung photographs (including some of the pictures on this page).The photographs led the viewer sun-wise, from south . . . to west . . . to north . . . to east—a journey, in mythic terms, that passes through the four sacred directions, ending at the circle’s eastern door, symbol of rebirth. The imagery in the photographs also moved in a subtle circular progression—from those in which spirals, circles, and dazzling light effects defined landscapes and buildings alike as sacred space, to those in which the subtle magic of natural light quietly performed the same function once one’s eyes had been opened to perceive it.It is Stu’s hope to take this installation and exhibit on the road to other museums and galleries, demonstrating how any space—even a dusty basement—can be turned into a place of spirit. “Sacred spaces can be anywhere you want them to be,” he says, “from the sandstone arches of Utah to your favorite greasy spoon. Sure, some places are easier to feel the light in than others, but I believe it has more to do with what you bring to the space than anything else.” |
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| Tucson Mysteries by Charles de Lint
But this March of 2002 we had the privilege of observing the Easter ceremonies in the Yaqui pueblo of Pascua in the north west section of the city, and found a different kind of magic. I don't have the space here to describe what we experienced; in fact, I recommend you see it for yourself, because you'll take away something different—what's important to you. What I do want to write about is our first arrival at the pueblo. If you're at all familiar with my writing, you'll know that one of the things that intrigues me the most is that moment in a story when a piece of the extraordinary, no matter how small, intrudes on the ordinary. So imagine my delight at discovering a mysterious, time-honoured ritual taking place in a barrio situated right in the heart of modern Tucson. We drove through the dark Good Friday streets of the city, past gas bars and conveniences stores, past closed muffler shops and retail outlets, took a turn off Grant Road, drove a couple of blocks, turned again, finally parking in an empty lot with a cluster of other vehicles. From there we walked another block or so and suddenly we were in the plaza by the open-sided Church of San Ignacio, confronted by crowds of people all watching the mysterious dancers in the plaza, listening to the simple, hypnotic rhythm of their clacking sticks as they danced, feet shuffling in the dirt and calling up small clouds of dust. In the middle of a modern city we were suddenly transported to anywhen, taking part in an experience that has remained unchanged for hundreds of years. What does this have to do with the art of Stu Jenks? Nothing and everything. For you see, the week before we came to Pascua Pueblo, we had an altogether different experience that also connected us to ancient mysteries. This time it was in the early afternoon, on a hot, baking day with the sun still high overhead. Again we stepped away from modern Tucson, but this time it was to enter an old warehouse. Half of it serves as artists' studios; the other half, where we were going, is the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson and is given over to exhibitions .
On the first floor was the sort of exhibition one often finds in a contemporary gallery: a few paintings hanging in an immense, otherwise empty space, the art appearing to have more in common with design than what I think of as traditional artistic expression. In this case, the exhibition consisted of large canvases with various, perfectly-made circles of different colours set in neat rows, filling each canvas. (A quick history of art I overheard recently: "Used to be people couldn't draw very well, then they could, and now they can't again.") But we were bound for Stu Jenks's "The Open Circle Cairn Project" in the basement, and like travelling to the pueblo, each downward step of the wooden stairs took us on a transformative journey, as though moving from one world into another. Imagine an enormous basement, completely dark except for the faint illumination cast by a circle of tiny white Christmas lights at its far end. The air is cool, almost chilly. Soft, minimalist music drifts from hidden speakers. Large wooden support beams are scattered throughout and, far down the room by the lights, ethereal photographs hang on the walls, almost invisible.
As you walk the length of the room to where the photographs are hanging, you see that the lights define a large, open-ended circle formed by a foot-wide trough cut deeply into the cement floor. Sweet-smelling hay, over which the strings of lights have been draped, marks the lip. Even being told that the trough is an optical illusion—a trick of the light—doesn't change your initial impression. The illusion feels stronger than what's actually there, creating a welcoming space that feels larger than it is and lying outside of time. Turning your attention to the photographs, you realize that this is part of Jenks's wonderful gift: the ability to create truth out of illusion. I don't need to describe the photographs—you can see many of them here in this exhibit—and they certainly hold magic, appearing as they do on your computer screen. But in that basement, in the sweet-smelling coolness, viewing each print with key chain flashlights...the photographs became windows into another world, where natural scenes of desert landscapes revealed their spiraling energies to us—not simply as static images, but with ghosts of motion. We'd gone down to the basement in a group, making small talk, smiling, even laughing a little at the dark and the strings of lights and the whole sweet "oddness" of the presentation. As the cool air touched our skins, our eyes adjusted to the dimness and the darkness gave up some of its shadows, as we stood before the photographs, playing the beam of a flashlight upon them or squinting in the half light, as we stepped into the straw circle and the outer world fell away, our voices grew hushed and we fell silent. I can't say where the others went, but I felt literally transported to some other place where I drank deeply of a peace that was at once bright and shadowed and bittersweet. Time passed at its own pace in that exhibit and we were all reluctant to leave. But eventually, we emerged back into the gallery upstairs once more, blinking in the light. I carried away with me some of that same mystery that I find in the Sonoran, that I was to find at the Yaqui ceremony later in the week, and that Stu Jenks's work always instills in me, now that I have been given the gift of experiencing it. And for that I thank him. |
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Stu’s art has been exhibited around the U.S. Click here for a full list of exhibitions and he is presently at work on a book of his photographs, titled Sacred Spaces. You can view more of his work on his Fezziwig Photography Web site and at Picassomio.com. The Open Circle Cairn Project will soon be featured on Tucson’s Museum of Contemporary Art Web site and Stu’s photographs will be exhibited in the gallery at Tohono Chul Park. |
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Stu Jenks, Biography: “Born a son of Virginia in 1954. Lived in upstate New York and North Carolina. Slept in a tree house in the summer as a kid. Graduated with a B.F.A. in Conceptual Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979. Worked as a printer, a waiter, a message therapist, a certified substance abuse counselor, and a photographer. The journey west in 1982 was facilitated by wanderlust and a ’66 Chevy II. Since then, been married, been divorced, no children but a dog or two. Cultivated a love for cats and sushi. Have a short term and sometimes stormy relationship with my 1988 Nissan Pathfinder. Love Christmas, but not Halloween so much. Like God, but rarely understand what he’s up to. Like the quiet times. Love conversations. Love the sound of the wind blowing across Coalmine Canyon Mesa. Love the light in the eyes. Tend to appreciate the Mystery.” | ||||
| Text by Stu Jenks, Terri Windling, and Charles de Lint, © 2002 All photographs are by Stu Jenks The following are the titles and copyrights for them as they appear on this page:
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