Rev. Danny Fisher

This past Thursday, I went to the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale for a presentation by Robert Spellman and Joan Anderson. Robert and Joan are both professors at my graduate alma mater Naropa University. I’d never had the pleasure of actually meeting them until their talk this week, and I found them both to be lovely folks.

Their presentation was entitled “Drawing on Chaos – Buddhism & Contemporary Art Practice,” and was sponsored by a grant from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the South Asian Studies Council, the Hixon Fund, and the Department of Religious Studies at Yale.

The gist of Robert and Joan’s presentation could be summed up by a comment at Robert’s website:

As time goes by it becomes less relevant to distinguish between the investigation of mind that occurs in meditation and the investigation of perception that occurs in painting. Both require suspending fixed notions; both hold the potential for going beyond habitual mind; both develop accuracy within one’s medium and, in a larger sense, within society.

Do take a look at Robert and Joan’s artwork (just follow the hyperlinks in the first sentence). You’ll be glad you did.

Also, don’t miss Robert’s interviews with Vince Horn over at Buddhist Geeks. (Well, don’t miss Buddhist Geeks in general. It’s good stuff.)