Dream 52

Drawing Untitled

Dreamer Nuala Clarke • February 1st, 2012

(No Subject)

Holding it in my outstretched arms, I put my head in it.

Sokuzan’s image appeared, cross-legged in his floating robes.

He was laughing; it made me laugh.

Then it turned to tears.

He became a hollow bronze statue that came down to fit on top of me.

I was him.

He handed me a big ball of space.

It was a blue sky with clouds on the inside…and out.

Holding it in my outstretched arms, I put my head in it.

Next, my head disappeared or became so much a part of the space as to be indistinguishable from it.

Email exchange about this dream

On Feb 2, 2012, at 12:22 AM, Nuala Clarke wrote:

Wait a second… It wasn’t a dream! It was during a visualization.

On Feb 2, 2012, at 12:30 AM, crystal gandrud wrote:

…which brings up the ever-fascinating question of what a dream is…

On February 2, 2012 12:32 AM, Nuala Clarke wrote:

I saw a documentary film last week on that very subject.

The Edge of Dreaming. A Scottish woman dreams of her horse’s death. He dies, then dreams of her death. Shamans.

(Sometime during this exchange the ipod shuffled and the phrase “For as long as space endures” from a talk given by Crystal Gandrud on something having to do with meditation pierced through a momentary crack in Björk.)

Question: Do the dead dream?

Home

Dream of the Drawing for Everything alchemies dream-like things: images and texts and films and sketches and philosophy and half-thoughts and visions and moments and fragments of all kinds. Resting and exploring here may deepen your relationship with the oneiric and, therefore, all apparent reality. Resting and exploring here may augment your psyche’s healing tendency—as Jung called it—through highlighting and delighting in humanity’s hallucinatory creations. (Without them, after all, neurologists assure us we would go starkers.) It is time there was a potentially infinite, intimate museum to what cannot be seen. Welcome to the museum.

Dream of the Drawing for Everything is some of the collaboration between artist Nuala Clarke & writer Crystal Gandrud. Our work arises out of what dances on the edges of perception and our collective attention gravitates to the dream-like nature of human experience. We have been in collaboration since 2010. Our merged practices of visual and textual art unfold on a continuum, as part of an interconnected series evolving over time. Both performed “Fair Shouldered One” (a book which is not a book) at the &Now Literary Festival in Paris, 2012 and installed “Between Spaces”, a Yeats inspired dreamscape at the Hamilton Gallery, Sligo, 2013. Most recently participated in the Find Arts Project in Castlebar, Ireland. Our public art installation of words and images printed on linen, “Woven Found”, hung on Castle Street. The project won the best commissioning practice award from Allianz Business to Arts, 2014.

Nuala Clarke

Nuala Clarke, visual artist, lives and works between Co. Mayo and New York City. Educated at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, she moved to New York City in 1993. In September 2007, she received a fellowship to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo and began returning to Ireland from NY to work every year. Clarke has been represented by Boltax Gallery, NY since 2005. Recent shows include, Amid a Space Between: Irish Artists in America at the SFMoMa Artists Gallery, San Francisco, (2012); to Tremble into Stillness, a WB Yeats related show at Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; RHA invited artist; and A drawing for Everything, Ballinglen Arts Foundation (2013). BLINK, a public art installation at the Westport Arts Festival, Co. Mayo (2014). Upcoming shows (2015): Impressions of Yeats, Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; Of this place, Sligo and Madrid.

nualaclarke@gmail.com

Crystal Gandrud

Crystal Gandrud, writer, lives in New York City and Normandy, France. She holds an MFA, Creative Writing and a BFA, Classical Theatre. Recent publications include “Yeatsian: Numberless Dreamers,” The Encyclopedia Project, 2014, “Here,” Lost Magazine, and “Idiom: Woodbird Flies Early,” The Encyclopedia Project. Her dissertation, “Murdoch: the Mandala Maker,” was presented at Kingston University’s Iris Murdoch Conference (2006), London. At the most recent Murdoch Conference, she performed a multi-media excerpt from a work-in-progress entitled “The Forgotten Man,” inspired by Murdoch’s philosophical writings. She is under contract for a memoire entitled “Astonishment: A Litany of the Uncanny.”

gandrud@actuallyorange.com

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