Scaling the fence

I have been working on a mix media drawing of a fence, inspired by a dream collected this summer though  Dream Harvester.  This is a work in progress, and I am working out the details for a physical fence structure as a reinvented dream catcher.

Wishing all of you deep dreams.

Fence

Above is another set of drawings inspired from a dream collected at Dream Harvester during Artbeat.

Dream of Man with Top Hat

The drawing above is inspired by one of the dreams I received during Artbeat for Dream Harvester.

Break Hold

A Recent dream:

An old friend from high school (whom I randomly met on the street) offered to give me a ride to the airport.  I think I had alternative means of getting to the airport, but I opted to go with the friend.  I had many hours until I had to be there. Of course, with all that time at hand, it had to be squandered.  It felt inevitable.  In the end, I had forgotten my medications and I had to be driven back home, and around the city, until I finally made it to the airport.  I was going to fly to Israel to see family, and visit the gravesite of my recently passed grandmother.  

I remember feeling bad, that my friend drove me all around the city. The past couple days, during my waking hours I started thinking about my behavior in this recent dream.  Do I expect people to serve me?  I felt that there was something in the behavior of this dream that felt so wrong.  It seemed so strange, yet predictable of my behavior, to wait, to need to extend the favor? I wonder what this ties to?  What was I resisting to let go of?  

Back to waking life, I am going to Israel this year.  It is hard to imagine what it will be like to visit my grandmother in a place of empty bodies.  She was terrified of gravesites.  I have actually already gone there two years ago when my grandfather, her husband, passed away.  He is burred in a plot right behind her. 

Last fall/ winter I painted a large canvas, 60w" by 74h" called "Song of Songs."  I painted it for her.  I started it before she became very ill.  When I was thinking about the images for this painting, I knew it had to have a ram with female figure holding a cell phone.  I was also certain that it had to have some text from the love poem to G-d, Shir v Shirim (song of songs).  I only found out later that it is common in Sephardic tradition to sing this poem at a widow's funeral.  

Sometimes intuition about those we love speaks so loudly, even when oceans cause physical separation. 

Omg I had a dream about you!

About a month ago, a dear friend of mine sent me an email    . . . “omg I had a dream about you! I didn't want to tell you this dream, it wasn't very pleasant, but since you're into dreams these days, I thought I should share it with you. My husband did tell me that dreams usually say more about the person dreaming then about the characters in the dream.”  This is a reference to Carl Jung’s theory on dreams.

We met a week later to discuss the dream. 

“So I and some other people were at a high school parking lot, and someone told me you were in     trouble, and trapped in a car. We found you in parked car in the high school parking lot.  When we opened the door, you were completely frozen and even your nose fell off. It is usually the first to go when one is frozen to death. We were all shaking and crying.  It was horrible.”

It seemed to me, in this dream, that I represented the importance of social status, seeing that I was found dead in a high school parking lot. High school can represent acceptance by our peers. I know my friend had a big event coming up that week, and I’m sure the excitement and fear of the event was tied to this dream. But on the other side, I hoped the dream was not foretelling a bad omen for her or me. 


Maybe there is more to this dream.  I do think it was brave of my friend to open the car door and look face to face with the noseless corpse. In the dream world, could I as a corpse have something to offer my friend?  

Here is a link to an article on leaning from our nightmares: “Don’t Fear Vulnerability” by Rodger Kamenetz.  This article in the New York Times is part of a series called “Should We Manipulate Our Dreams.”

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/7/30/should-we-manipulate-our-dreams/dreams-a-source-for-psychological-growth

"Mirror, Mirror" is my first painting exploring false doorways. Rather then making deep space that one usually sees in a mirror's reflection, I made the space contained faceless.

Dreaming of Doors

Space is important element in dreams, and for me, as a painter, I’m constantly thinking about space. In my opinion, the place in space that holds the most tension are doorways.  When we cross a doorway’s threshold, infinite possibilities are on the other side. Of course, doors, physically or metaphorically, have been part of human culture for centuries.

The ancient Egyptian temples and tombs from the third dynasty (from 2686 BC) commonly contain false doorways or “Ka Doors.”  Ka refers to an element of the soul. False doorways were thought to be entrance between the living world and the world of the spirits and deities.

"A false door is a place where you have an interaction between the living and the dead. It is really a doorway for the soul to go in and out of the afterworld," says Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo.

"The idea is that you say 'Hi' to the deceased, and the deceased [comes] up and eats and drinks and talks to you, gets your wish, and then goes back down."   Steven Stanek featured this quote in National Geographic News in February 25, 2008.

I recently received a dream about closing doors :

" I fell into a real deep sleep during which I was lucidly closing the doors in my home. I awoke from this dream when my partner got up and closed a couple of doors." 

According to Dream Moods  

To dream that you are entering through a door signifies new opportunities that are presented before you. You are entering into a new stage in your life and moving from one level of consciousness to another. In particular, a door that opens to the outside signifies your need to be more accessible to others, whereas a door that opens into the inside denotes your desire for inner exploration and self-discovery.

To see an opened door in your dream symbolizes your receptiveness and willingness to accept new ideas/concepts. In particular, to see a light behind the door suggests that you are moving toward greater enlightenment/spirituality.

To dream that the door is closed or locked signifies opportunities that are denied and not available to you or that you have missed out on. Something or someone is blocking your progress. It also symbolizes the ending of a phase or project. In particular, if you are outside the locked door, then it suggests that you have anti-social tendencies. If you are inside the locked door, then it represents harsh lessons that need to be learned. 

(http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/d2.htm)

Anyone have any door dreams to share?  Please leave a comment if you do! 

Power of Scale

A dream:

On the hunt for the perfect and absolutely tiniest card. It will be filled with a sip of water and “Bridge Over Trouble Waters” will be sung.  

Counting heads

I had an interesting dream a couple of weeks ago. Here is the narrative:

I open my refrigerator. I then struggle to open the crisper, which reveals a head of a cow, in a sauce of blood and tomatoes.  I then proceeded to take chicken skin and wrap the remaining beef chunks with chicken skin. 

According to www.dream-land.com, dead animal dreams are a sign of change in your personal situation. This is a broad interpretation, but it is inline as I just moved apartments at the time of the dream. 

The last time I saw a cow head in the refrigerator was in graduate school.  One of my colleagues was making paintings of cow heads and kept one in the communal fridge as reference material.   

It’s funny to see this connecting for me, profound experiences seem to have no boundaries in the land of dreams. 

Dream on!

Dreaming, our nightly warm-up rituals?

In Benedict Carey's article A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain, featured in the New York Times, there is discussion that dreams may be our sleeping brain's warm up in anticipation of waking.    Anyone out there practice lucid dreaming? 


 There is even mention that as fetuses, our dreaming minds, "see" before the eyes open.  The developing brain may draw on preprogramed models of space and time in preparation of life outside of the womb.   


Fascinating research on REM activity is being conducted right around the corner by Dr. J Allen Hobson at Harvard University and Dr. Llinas at MIT. 


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/health/10mind.html

Dreaming of slumber

This weekend I had a dream that I slept for 124 hours.  It was a night of deep slumber. 

I wish all of you pleasant dreams!

Dream Harvester at Artbeat!

Thank you to everyone who participated in Dream Harvester at Artbeat in Somerville.  The festival was a huge success and my box of dreams is overflowing.  Here are a couple of photos of the day.

 This young man spent over an hour on his dream drawing.

Please feel free to post a dream as a comment to this post.  The blog is setup so anyone can leave a comment or a dream and your anonymity will be maintained.

thank you and looking forward to your dreams!

~ariel

Studio Views at ArtSake

Here is the latest on new work in my studio and Dream Harvester featured in Massachusetts Cultural Council 's Blog: www.artsake.massculturalcouncil.org

http://bit.ly/oDAU78

Dream Interpretation

If any of you are looking for a useful website to help decipher your dreams, I recommend http://www.dreammoods.com
Of course, when interpreting your dreams, your perspective is always the most trustworthy.

Dream-sharing, the new American dream?

I came across an interesting dream researcher in Psychology Today.  Ryan Hurd, has a certificate in Dream Studies from John F. Kennedy University's Consciousness and Transformation Studies Program. Hurd has similar ideas to Carl Jung’s Theory on dreams and dreaming. Hurd, like Jung, believes that slumber’s narratives can unlock important elements for our waking lives.  Below Hurd cites his wish to make dreaming and dreams part of the American discourse.  Maybe all we need is a new reality show devoted to lucid dreamers. 

"My big goal is to make Western culture into a dreaming culture. The United States is anti-dreaming, because dreaming is irrational. We're fighting the Enlightenment on this issue, but dreams bring out all these ways of knowing that are just as valid" as those of which society approves. He cites a centuries-old Iroquois ritual during which tribes people acted out their unnerving dreams - even if those performances entailed breaking tribal taboos, expressing violent urges, or revealing untoward lusts. Such rites served to "air the dirty laundry in order to reduce its charge and prevent unconscious acting-out that could escalate if left unchecked," Hurd writes. "I wish dream-sharing was a mandatory start before every meeting of the United Nations, by the way. Hey, I'm a dreamer." (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stuck/200909/field-dreams)

Miranda July's Bed Dreams

New images for Dream Harvester 

The new logo for Dream Harvester!

Changing Topics

Dreams can read like hidden codes, revealing and concealing our deepest thoughts.  

Here is the recollection of recent dream from a friend: 

We are a biology class together. It was our first year of university, but it was also the present somehow. She was sitting right behind me at one of those desks with a collapsable arm. 

I had my notebook out on my desk, open to a page of notes I had taken on the textbook. The textbook was some kind of botany manual, and I had written "Herbs..... MMMMMM" really big over several lines. Some girls sitting near me noticed in and snickered at me. 

Suddenly, a principal-like lady came in, escorting my brother who was on campus to visit me.  She instructed him to sit next to me and left.

The topic of the class kept changing-- soon, we were studying mechanical engineering. I started taking notes on my calf after pushing up my jeans over my knee. My brother was bored, so he started playing with his cellphone. When the teacher noticed, she approached to scold him. I put my hand out over the phone, and informed the teacher that he was only visiting. She then left him alone, resuming her lecture. I was immersed in note-taking. 

When I next looked up, at the end of class, my brother was gone. I frantically searched for him throughout the building, which turned into several buildings. I ended up wandering the halls of an elementary school, where a buttoned-up teacher was monitoring the halls. I explained to her the situation. She asked how old my brother was. When I replied that he was 18 or 20, she laughed and said that he would be fine on his own. I got upset and tried to tell her that she just didn't understand... 

Achieving Dreams

Here is a simple but thoughtful article on achieving professional dreams.  The author, Penelope Trunk, is job advice maven for the 21st century.  Enjoy!

http://www.bnet.com/blog/penelope-trunk/how-to-get-your-dream-job-in-a-bad-market/489

Dreaming the future

Can premonitions really happen while we are dreaming?

A very dear friend of mine, Jon, said he had a dream of tornadoes the night before a massive tornado storm landed in Massachusetts.

My great aunt, Selma, had a dream the night my grandmother passes way, where she saw her sister, and her husband holding hands surrounded by family.  She woke knowing something very important had just occurred, and found out, later from a frantic phone call with my father, her dream represented the passing of her sister.

Mysteries of mind connections continue to inspire wonderment.

Moody Dreams

Everyone knows the feeling of waking up on the wrong side of the bed.  Did you know its actually a scientific state of waking right from REM sleep? On the other side, if you wake during Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep, (NREM) you will be in a good mood.

Nancy Billings posted this dream account:
"I was doing yoga in my dream last night and woke up feeling GREAT! Think i'm going to go back to sleep to do some more yoga! :-)" 

NOVA: What are Dreams?

Here is a great video on NOVA about dreams.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqQrbF2RFQc

Welcome to Dream Harvester!

You are invited to participate in an art community project, "Dream Harvester" hosted by artist Ariel Freiberg. This blog is an open forum for accounts of dreams from slumber or wished aspiration.  

"Dream Harvester" and Ariel will be live and dreaming at Somerville's art festival Artbeat, July 16th in Davis Square. For more information, please visit http://www.somervilleartscouncil.org/programs/artbeat/index.html

Once Ariel harvests the dreams of the visitors of Artbeat, she will create visual representations of the collective accounts. These works will be shared on this blog and exhibited in the Boston area (location yet to be determined). 

Art can draw on the unconscious collective ideas of our time.  Ariel would like to investigate this further, by expanding her usual private process of working in the studio by harvesting a collection of her communities’ dreams.  Through the visual translation of these accounts, she hopes to highlight the connective tissues of thought through our global village. 

The visualization of ideas is one way to make distant dreams tangible. All are welcomed to begin sharing in the "Dream Harvester."