JAY KREIGHBAUM

Pillars and Lintels

Summary Explanation:
You start with an original landscape. Then build it out by adding it to itself. This creates something altogether new and the original gets lost in the new composition. An immediate outcome of the iteration is the discovery of amazing symmetries and a complexity and beauty not foreseen from the original landscape. Depending on the orientation you put the “build out” in, either a horizontal or vertical one, I call the result a pillar (vertical) or lintel (horizontal).

Implied Analogy and Philosophy

Of Landscapes and People and Surface Appearances; and Seeing Below the Surface Abstract: How we all as individuals appear on the surface; and how we appear below the surface and to the sides in combined multiplicities of ourselves. So the fascinating part of all this is by taking the individual landscape and combining it with itself a magical new scape is created! The process of transformation is to take the original landscape and iterate it upon itself, by mirroring it below itself and out to the sides. This generates a multiplicity of itself that creates something altogether new (from that of the original landscape).
I have been thinking about what it means for the original landscape to be transformed into a Lintel or Pillar and have abstracted this in my mind to an analogy – a philosophy of sorts. It is a kind of an exercise in compassion.

It is an analogy that says the original landscape is us (an individual) as we appear to others on the surface. We are that singular landscape, which is unique unto itself. However, what is not apparent on the surface is a much greater whole that is made up of a multiplicity of our self below and to the sides of the surface, where we are seen as multiples of our self. What I’m saying is that people are as they appear, but they are so much more than they appear if you could see them in their full multiplicity (the hidden complexities and symmetries). Every person is a rich pageant of form and color, simplicity and complexity, combining to beautiful
symmetries, a new astonishing composition of a whole self (the Pillar or lintel).

Landscape 2 with Pillar
Landscape 3 with Pillar
Landscape 5 with Pillar

So for me, it’s kind of a refreshing idea of taking something singular and combining it with itself to form something entirely new. It is like saying the original landscape is our avatar, what is seen by others and that if we could see people fully (above and below the surface – in their truth, complexity and totality) they would appear as a beautiful, majestic, and symmetrical wholes! At a minimum we would see them more compassionately in a greater whole.
This art process asks the question of seeing an individual in a new way – what would it be like to see above and below, and to the sides of the surface appearance of an individual?

To see individuals, for example, in their histories, and hopes and fears, and their highest self and aspirations….. see them in:

Their childhood wound
Their most cherished and true beliefs
Their favorite Xmas
A parade of influential friends they have had
Their lovers
Their past and present spouses
Their adventures
Their compassion
What they hold dearest in their hearts
Their original ideas
Their losses of family and friends
Their art – the gift that is unique to them
The weight that they feel is on them, regrets and sadness holding them
The molten center of their being, their source code, their given gifts and calling
Those experiences of themselves they are most proud of
Their recognition from others they hold fondest
See a Timelapse of them from infant to their passing
See them in their fondest childhood memories
Their favorite meal
Their favorite color
Their favorite book/author
The heroes they look up to

And seeing this – we would cry and laugh at the same time celebrating their journey and our shared humanity. Most of all we would truly SEE them.

So when next you look upon someone, keep in mind that there is more to them then meets the eye, oh so much more. And that seeing them beyond what is physically apparent would reveal them in a fuller, wholly new light. And my faith is we would see them in a much more symmetrical, and beautiful wholeness of spiritual essence.

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