Process

Video

Abhaya Mudra Lila of the Wat Pho Buddha

2012
Assemblage with high voltage electric spark and radio control
29 x 11 x 5 inches
Electric sparks jump rhythmically between the hands of the figures when the pieces are activated manually or with remote control.

Collection of The Art Museum of Southeast Texas

In 2011 and 12 was in Bangkok on a three-month trip to Southeast Asia and India, heading to the Wat Pho temple on a bus where I meet a Buddhist monk who gave me his Japa Mala necklace. I can’t resist wearing it as I enter the wat. The famous 160 foot reclining Buddha lies in its own building, but there are hundreds about; some like the two in these pieces, which I purchased in the gift shop. The sales girl, prompted by the site of my necklace, asked if I would like to meet the master of the wat. We were immediately off to find the old fellow in his dorm. I was given more gifts and, along with my bronze Buddha, a blessing with water. These consecrated Thai Buddhas (and their Indian playmates) all gesture the Abhaya Mudra hand sign signaling fearlessness. It’s said that the Buddha made the sign at the moment of enlightenment, later employing it to halt a charging elephant. Incidentally, after continuing on to India and into the Prieyar Tiger Preserve with a friend, we, along with our guide, are chased Jurassic Park-style by wild elephants and have to run for our lives. Terrifying…none of us knew the handy mudra and we were stalked into the night. Observations in and about these temples, jungles and cities fueled some of my greatest soul adjusting moments. Myriad deities, followers and seculars play a vast, multi-cultural game…My Buddhas engage with Hindu gods Lakshmi and Ganesh in this ‘Lila’, the game the universe plays with itself by emerging as sentient beings, later returning again to singularity. The Latin plates translate as, “ WE COME FROM THE SOURCE” and  “WE RETURN TO THE SOURCE.” Note: the small figurines are boiling out of (or into) vents in the iron plates. The surreal absurdity and yet undeniable palpability of such philosophy, as well as the synchronicities and unrealities of my Asian odyssey formed the basis for these phantomic iron theaters. It is fitting that at the publishing of this thirty-year survey; with this latest work, I have come full circle. My first assemblage, Of Misconception (The Chiquita Kahoona) employed a miniature metal angel to produce sparks—a far cry thematically from the Eastern deities sparking away in this one. My convictions have undergone a substantial metamorphosis since then, when a separate divinity existed beside me. My 1986 description for the piece read: “Chiquita Kahoona, the great banana God…The intellect of humanity. The Freudian type attitude is such in this day and age that we begin to believe all our actions and reactions are ruled merely by our passions. There are those who have and will fail to recognize a Greater Kahoona.” Ironic how that makes sense in so different a way for me now.