Curitorial Statement

Invocation - Linda Johns
Sculpture in Stone and Whalebone, Wood and Clay

May the Light Grow...
May our inner light grow...
May our kindness grow...
May the suffering of all beings be eased...
May our failures as well as our successes benefit all beings...
May our mindfullness grow...
May Peace grow...

In today’s world it may appear that the sacred is hard to find. But truly this is not so. It is only thinly veiled from our sight. As a modern North American society, the problem is that we have largely lost the capacity to recognize the sacred. As most major spiritual teachings proclaim, the sacred is all around us! We are bathed in the sacred …. it is our natural world and our natural state of being.
We need to re-acquaint ourselves with the numinous, that which is deeply spiritual in our lives. It is a personal dimension of meaning that helps make us more fully human and connects us to the whole mystery of being. Hard to do on our own, yet ultimately we are the only ones who can do it. Genuine mentors or guides are rare, but often needed. An individual who takes the time and possesses the skills to penetrate beyond the surface of things and offers their findings up to the greater whole is a true elder in this world. Through her writing, painting and sculpture, Johns fulfills that role for us, with vision, compassion and perseverance, taking the spiritual journey inward and translating what she learns and discovers into creative form. The creative impulse is one of the most profound energies with which we make sense of our inner self and our outer world. It allows us to express that for which we have no words, revealing what our heart knows to be sacred and true.
In this context, it is no coincidence that Johns’ primary medium for sculpture is whalebone. There are few other materials in which the primordial spirit is more strongly infused. The grand, complex cetacean that is the whale has inhabited the earth for millions of years longer than our own species. As mammals we are closely linked on the evolutionary scale, but where our ancestors chose land to inhabit, the whales chose water and our paths have rarely crossed except in the deep, dark waters of our psyche and unconscious self.

Once again, it is no coincidence that whales seemingly call us to them. On some nonverbal level we are drawn to whales like brothers to sisters. We have an affinity that can only be described as a shared kinship. Intuitively, we sense whales have something to tell, a secret knowledge that is as huge as their physicality. Despite our often savage treatment of these beings, they continually reach out to our inner souls. We hear their unearthly, repetitious calls with a haunting clarity that evokes an even stronger longing for connection and communication. The low, bass tremor of their singing reverberates and echoes through our bodies and minds but we don’t know how to respond.
The eminent psychologist Carl Jung would describe the powerful pull of the whale as an energetic archetypal force coming from the sea, the sovereign symbol of the unconscious. The whale as a figure of deep wisdom and embodiment, surfaces to breathe, bringing the hot, creative breath of the psyche into the hard, cold reality of the rational mind. A giant form at home in a formless realm, the whale as psychological friend encourages us humans to more fully inhabit our own form, and thus take our proper place on and of the earth.
Even though we may have no knowledge of archetypes at work in our lives, these symbols are deeply ingrained in our psyche, formed out of the collective shared experiences of all of those who have come before us, our ancestors. For the most part we are oblivious to their influences, but with a growing awareness and conscious understanding of these forces, our lives can take on new meaning and vigor. Carl Jung believed that “only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul”.

This body of work by Linda Johns speaks with a fluid, symbolic language that the artist has been hearing, speaking and interpreting, for well over thirty years, refining it into a singular, visual vocabulary that is recognizably hers, yet communicating on a universal level at the same time. Committed early on to a deep listening to the rhythms and energies of the natural world, Johns has moved into more and more subtle realms of awareness and stillness in order to be more present in the dialogue.
This kind of universal language is at the very core of all art making. Like music, it transcends social, political, economic and temporal boundaries. It is a direct communication with the inner fabric of one’s being. What sort of creature has a tail and body of a fish, but a head and wings of a bird? Johns would want us to believe that it is you and me at our fullest human potential, swimming in a strange sea, quite capable of sustaining ourselves, but sensing and yearning for something more. If we follow those inclinations, we will develop the wings that allow us to fly to our next level of awareness. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” (Lao Tzu) Introduced to a state of courageous grace by the artist, we are given the opportunity to change and see with a whole new set of eyes.
Joseph Campbell, the world-renowned educator and scholar of world mythology calls artist makers the “magical helpers”. “Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives.” This kind of journey making is not easy, nor is it generally understood by the material based culture in which we find ourselves. But Campbell reassures us help will emerge on the path once we engage, and in forms adapted to our needs and sensibilities.
“ We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” (Joseph Campbell)
Linda Johns’ call to us is to awaken from an often insular, benumbed life and appreciate the beauty and integration that surrounds us everywhere in nature, to cherish and protect it. “Being with all the world” is to be active in our own role within creation, learning to care more carefully, to see more clearly, to listen more closely, to use our minds and hearts to open to everything more fully. In our contemporary society, with its endless demands for our attention, constant busyness, material aggrandizement, is it any wonder we have lost our way? Perhaps we have never been on the right path.
Chief Seattle, the great Suqwamish elder, in 1866 after his people had already suffered more than a century of European invasion, cut to the source of our current dilemma “Earth does not belong to us; we belong to earth. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” These prophetic words, over 150 years old, understood that our culture is operating on a false premise - one that is not sustainable. How do we reclaim the lost unrealized centre of our being?
In making the rounds of this exhibit we walk a labyrinth. All paths are meditations that lead us to a sacred centre. The great reverence and respect with which Linda Johns beholds the natural world is evident in the smallest carved detail in clay to the largest natural mass of bone. Her titles are the signposts along the path: Nurturer, Celebration, The Eternal Spirit, Seeking, Plunging and Rising, Sacred Voyage, Eternal Crossing, Altar, The Guide, Sacred Trust, Conquering Fear, Surfacing, Heart of the Forest, Protected at the Core, Under Gaia’s Wing. These are the invisible connective threads that extend everywhere, manifesting Linda Johns’ innermost sense of the sacred over and over again.

The well-known naturalist and writer, Henry David Thoreau, wrote “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” This is one of the primary threads binding Linda Johns to her path. Carved into a 16’ wooden beam overlooking her living room are the words of the Buddha: “With our thoughts we make the world”. This is the power of an invocation - words that evoke our highest aspirations and invoke great mystery. INVOCATION, the exhibit, is a world prayer. It expresses our need to push away differences, dissolve boundaries, and embrace growth and unity in this wondrous and fragile creation.
While there are many dark and destructive forces at work in the world, there is also a new dawning and illumination spreading out through our conscious world as never before. With increased communications and transfer of information, our knowledge of distant places and situations has grown exponentially. Our compassion is also stirred and engaged on a planetary scale, by the knowing. This level of connection as a new and growing force in the world is substantial and holds the potential for great power. This rise of spirit is the evolution of consciousness at work. The French philosopher, mystic, priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin described it as the “noosphere”, the rising entity of consciousness as human beings grow in ever increasing numbers and organizational complexity. It emerges from the interaction of human thought and minds. Teilhard asserted that “We are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience, but a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”
Linda Johns’ art evokes this evolution using universal symbols and metaphors, synthesizing the highest desire, aspiration and spiritual call of the very soul of Gaia, our pearl of a planet woven into Indra’s mystical net of cosmic interdependency. Linda Johns’ creative contemplations and our subsequent realizations through these works in stone, bone and clay are the “INVOCATION” stirred somewhere deep, deep within our beings.