15

Human social harmony and synergies in all human dimensions, with commonalities as bonding element and diversity as dynamic factor.

Aesthetics as basic faculty inherent and to be discovered/developed in all humans: Critique of elitist notions on art.

Interrelation and balance of aesthetics and functionality;

Community aesthetics rooted in the rhythms and rituals of Community Life;  Critique of divisive effects of segregating aesthetics into “seven disciplines”

Critique of commercialization of art.

Critique of overspecialized artistry and star system as elitist and separative in bases and consequences

Specific Nuances of Art in mass communication.

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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Art from the Heart of All

By Marz Zafe

Co-founder, Sanib-Sining Movement for Synaesthetics

This article was carried in full by Earthlite Sparks & Reflections in its issue of xxx. Zafe is a professional painter.

THE PHRASE “Art from the Heart” emerged in my mind during the New Moon of September. I was then designing the logo for our newly-formed Sanibkulay Visual Arts Group, and I started by making doodles from the letter “S,” the first letter of our name. At that time, I had no mental picture of what that logo would turn out to be, but the freehand round movements of my pen “chanced” upon the shape of the painter’s palette. And then I sensed a different feeling. I felt energized. I felt happy that my hand was actually being guided.

I showed the “S”-palette sketch to members of the group and asked for their comments and suggestions. One suggested that I extend the upper curve of the in the letter “S” to make the figure also represent a bird, a known symbol for freedom. Another suggested that I draw the letter “S” as a paintbrush with a curving brushstroke to go with the palette. So I made new sketches putting in their suggestions.

Days later, I was staring at that evolving symbol and something else appeared before my eyes – the entire figure looked like a heart, the anatomical one! Aside from both palette and bird, it was also a heart, the universal symbol for feeling. A new flash of energy came to me, along with an insight—art works are created with the help of our eyes and hands, but most of all, they come from the heart. This is the part of art that cannot be taught. It just has to be awakened in the heart of each individual.

This made me appreciate more the these words from the Credo of the SanibKulay Visual Arts Group: “Art is the expression of the innermost human feelings and insights, the physical expression of one’s own emotional and spiritual breath, throb and pulse.”

I felt all the more that every human being has inborn aesthetic capacities, which they express in different ways, even in everyday-life forms. Like backyard gardening, cooking in the kitchen, designing in the rooms, for art also means, “doing things that have form and beauty.”

So, you are an artist because you express your feelings from the heart in a way that has form and beauty. This definition of art may be as old as the figures of animals painted and/or carved on cave walls, such as those at Lascaux, France, which date from 15,000 to 10,000 B.C. There were also carvings of gods and goddesses, fertility symbols, and other figures which, in the mind of those artists, were relevant to their lives and mass survival. There were also the masks for rituals and spirit dances, an art form that was common among important types of ancient and indigenous visual art expressions.

All of them were artists, they projected what they felt and expressed this in different forms. There were no “intellectual trimmings” in their art works. There was freedom in expressing one’s beliefs and feelings. Their concentration was on how to harmonize their lives with the streams of Mother Nature.

Then, this flowed across different periods, from the emergence of civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, through the Renaissance, up to the present-day New Age.
Art became complicated with the rapid succession of styles that have continued to interplay. Critiques, debates, increased intellectualization, monopoly by the elite, the emergence of the “art industry.” Many artists thought they could only be artists in the real sense if they obeyed the intellectuals and engaged in competition in the market being operated by businessmen reflecting and promoting the latter’s own interests.

But as our Credo says, “Intellectualization of art can never comprehend it fully,” and “to much intellectualization can only diminish free expression and exhilaration.” We of SanibKulay “would rather create and appreciate than criticize and debate.”
I feel the urge to do art and to do much of it. But as poet-actress Chin-Chin Gutierrez put it, as quoted by Sunday Inquirer Magazine, “I don’t know what art is… I just do it. When you see something more than what is on the surface, you need to express it. I don’t plan to write a poem… I just feel a sudden urge to write. It’s like being hungry and wanting to eat. So I write it, finish it, read it – and then I realize, this is what this other part of me is saying. It’s a release. It’s enjoyable. When you play the piano, you touch music, and it gives you a lot of inner joy. You feel alive inside.”

Human life is short, but art can be one aspect of every person’s immortality. Long after the artist shall have gone back to earth as ashes and dust, his or her artworks can remain alive forever in the memory, in the heart and in the spirit, of the Humankind that lives on.

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