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Cynthia has performed her original songs since the mid-1970’s in various venues from coffeehouses to concert halls, environmental festivals to multiracial celebrations. She sings for compassion, community, and connection, the sacredness of our earth, kindness to each other, the recognition of women's voices. She is joined by longtime singing friends and fellow musicians. This spring, with help from family and friends, she created the CD Feel This Love, which is being distributed free as part of the Ken Crossen Music Project (crossen@mindspring.com). During art/spirit/art,  Cynthia performs Thursday, Sept. 19, 11:30 AM-1:30 PM as part of  the “Thursdays on the Terrace" series.  Click here for a printable flyer about her "Thursdays on the Terrace" performance.  Selections from her Feel This Love may be heard when visiting “art/spirit/art.” <Click here to listen to a selection!> Email Cynthia at crossen@mindspring.com for more information about her upcoming projects.

MAIA DEREWICZ  will open the September 19th “Thursdays on the Terrace" program with her original songs. Maia draws her inspiration from her various travels around the world and the Baha'i Faith, a world religion based on the premise of the oneness of humanity. She is also inspired by the power of faith, the search for truth and her belief in divine guidance to foster spiritual growth. She feels blessed to have the gift of music, which she considers to be the ladder to the soul.

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Ken Crossen is interested in art as a way to nourish the spirit of community.  He studied photography with Harold “Doc” Edgerton, the inventor of strobe photography, and with Minor White.  His photographic areas of interest include portraits, close-up images of the natural world, pictures of India, and nudes in nature. The musicians he met at the Haw River Festival inspired his digital recording project, which publishes the voices of many  local singers and songwriters. He has done CD cover photographs, art, and package design for local musicians. Ken works almost exclusively in digital format. He has written articles about digital imaging editing techniques for Internet sites such as www.PhotoSig.com. He and his son Jesse developed dPhoto, a software program for editing digital photographs. For more information, please see www.trydphoto.com

“One of the most telling differences between what is manufactured by intelligence— steel, concrete, plastic, and so on— and what is manufactured by spirit—wood, fire, feathers, and so on — is that the products of spirit are continuously, seamlessly, alive with detail. Zooming in on the products of intelligence, we quickly reach a scale where variation is either regular or non-existent, and this scale of visual boredom continues deep into the microscopic.   How can I watch a butterfly take flight from a flower, without wondering, How can this be possible? Or watch hawks play over the trees during mating season, without thinking, Surely this must be the original dream of flying?” – Ken Crossen

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LINDA RUTH DICKINSON  Because Linda Ruth Dickinson believes that work can make spiritual beliefs manifest, her work focuses on the expression of those possibilities, connecting the viewer to that which may sometimes be beyond or outside usual experience or ordinary existence.  Dickinson has been an Artist Member of Artspace in Raleigh for ten years.  Recent shows include those sponsored by Artspace in Raleigh, North Park College in Chicago, Illinois, Meredith College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Springfield Art Museum, in Springfield, Missouri, the Graham Center Museum in Wheaton, Illinois, the Bade Museum in Berkley, California, the Knoxville Museum of Art in Knoxville, Tennessee, the David Adler Cultural Center in Libertyville, Illinois, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.   Dickinson’s work was the subject of Chicago’s Sacred Treasures, a 1996 PBS documentary on sacred art.  Dickinson’s paintings can be seen in numerous private and public collections throughout the United States.  She has been the recipient of several regional and national wards, including a 1998 Sotheby’s Award for Outstanding Work.

“My consideration of the various forms of the Sacred continues as I search for the expression of "the Invisible” in a synthesis of Eastern and Western thought.  Born and raised in the East to Western parents, the traditions and values of both hemispheres inform me.  Just recently, after fifteen years, I’ve felt that the aesthetic pursuit and struggle is a futile endeavor since beauty cannot be willed but must be granted.  Many of my paintings display a desire to visualize horizonscapes of reductive expanse.  Flung wide strokes are held subtly within an ovoid or circular framework.  Value, hue and structure remain important formal components but the overriding concern is the search for the expression of a vision reminiscent of familiar terrestrial perspective , and yet evocative of the inner eye. The work refers to that unseen world of other principles and existences. My work acknowledges greater mysteries and wonders to be experienced, and suggests an inner tranquility that observes and embraces the declaration and dialogue between Heaven and Earth.” --Linda Ruth Dickinson  

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Inspired by the physical and cultural landscapes of Nepal and the United States, Jyoti Duwadi, a multimedia artist, expresses the spirit of nature and the dynamic energies of life through abstract forms and colors. Among many solo and group shows, Duwadi’s recent exhibitions include installations at the Siddhartha Art Gallery in Kathmandu, Nepal; the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California; Joshua Tree National Park; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary; the Laband Art Gallery in Los Angeles, California, the Queens Museum of Art, New York, New York; the California State University Art Gallery in San Bernadino, California, and the Los Angeles Fringe Festival in Pomona, California. His work has been reviewed in The News and Observer, The Los Angeles Times, Art and Design, The Kathmandu Post, Kantipur, among other journals. For more information, please see: www.akash-himal.com

“My work expresses the dynamic energy that personifies life. The imagery reflects the spirituality of nature articulated in abstract forms and symbols. Art means innovatively experimenting in all media guided by the principles embedded in the ancient Rig Veda text: “Seeing the bliss-form through Yoga.” For me “yoga” is the ritual of working in the studio, a sacred space, and creativity is the meditative process that enables me to attain a sense of harmony —the bliss-form.”  
– Jyoti Duwadi  

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CARMEN ELLIOTT Widely recognized in North Carolina for her work in clay and as a performance artist, Carmen Elliott has exhibited in shows sponsored by the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Durham Arts Council, the Caldwell Arts Council, the Fayetteville Museum of Art, the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, the Durham Arts Guild, the Chapel Hill Public Arts Commission, the Raleigh Fine Arts Society, the Cary Fine Arts League, the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art, as well as in galleries in Raleigh, Smithfield, Carrboro, Fearrington Village, Chapel Hill, and Durham. She has performed at the Spoleto Festival, in Charleston, South Carolina, Artsplosure in Raleigh, and Centerfest in Durham.

“Art is the skin of the sacred. To make art, one travels as deeply as possible into one’ s inner ‘room’ and brings back what one finds for others to see. What one finds could be awe, grief, laughter, rage, wildness, terror, quirkiness, beauty, loneliness, mystery, tenderness, fragility—all things sacred to the Beloved. In this process of creating, of adding skin to the sacred, I hope that my work may foster a kind of renewal between maker, viewer, and the thing created.” – Carmen Elliot  

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I am comfortable in the ritual of making. . .
conversations in fabric.

--Marguerite Gignoux

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Kimowan McLain comes from the Cold Lake First Nations reservation in Alberta, Canada.  His formal education has taken him from the University of Alberta, to the University of New Mexico and the University of North Carolina.  He also won a fellowship to the Yale Summer Program.  Other major awards include two from the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, a minority post-doctoral fellowship from UNC and a graduate fellowship from UNM.  McLain currently teaches in the Art Department at UNC-Chapel Hill.  He continues to produce artwork and often shows in Canada and the United States.

“As a Native American artist, I tend to shy away from the word "spirituality.”  Mass media representations tend to portray the Indian as spiritual or mythical, close to nature—the flip side being cultured civilization. Within my community, spiritual life is heavily laden with social protocol.   As someone from the Indian community and a trained "Western artist,” I often juggle conflicting roles between the individual creator and the community agent of material production.  Religion is yet another issue. Here, I tend to see Western religion as a political institution where power between the West and my community is a site for political dispute.  New Ageism hovers at the perimeter of this conflict.   Indian religion is about the soul, but it is also a powerful political tool to assert identity and preserve culture. Historically, major Western religions sought to replace that identity through forced assimilation. New Ageism usurps a surface identity of the other without context or depth. If one gained deep access to Indian religion they would see that spirituality isn’t only about personal enlightenment, but also cultural power and persistence.” – Kimowan McLain  

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Michele Richards Natale earned a 1983 BFA with Honors in Painting from UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was a recipient of the Kachergis Sharpe Award and studied with noted painter and critic Peter Plagens. Her work was chosen for the 1984 North Carolina Artists Exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art.  In 1990, she received a City of Raleigh Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant.  Exhibiting actively in the Triangle since 1980, she is currently represented by N.C. Crafts Gallery in Carrboro, Gallery C in Raleigh, Bradiggins in Hillsborough, and Green Hill Center in Greensboro. Her experience includes curating two shows for the Chapel Hill Arts Commission, as well as “The Absent Body, The Ties that Bind” for Duke University Museum of Art.  In addition, Natale has written art reviews for publications including The Independent (1986–7), The Arts Journal, ArtVu, The Chapel Hill News (1995–7), Juxtapoz, and Spectator (1997–2000).

“An abstracted female form has been the primary leitmotif of my work for over twenty years. Originally, I wanted to use the most minimal means possible to suggest the form, so that I could then concentrate on the conceptual aspects of my work.  This armless form inevitably suggested Paleolithic goddesses, and was depicted in my work as being bound, as if healing under bandaging, or radiating rays outward, a kind of shorthand Virgin of Guadalupe. When I became interested in Eastern religion and meditation, I found the term “yantra,” which reflects the contemplative quality of the images I like to work with.   From repetition and variation, the forms accrue energy, movement and power.  My most recent work lets ragged edges of clay shadow the figures like auras, leaves fingerprints visible.  Raku, the firing technique, puts my figures in direct contact with open flame, leaving unique, non-reproducible effects of iridescence, metallic lusters, and charring. With Raku, we can never know what will be pulled rom the fire.  Pieces are burned and flashed, saved, or risked and lost.  Our spirits are called to such fires of the soul.  Brought through, we are illumined, become deeper beings, are made infinitely more precious.” – Michele Richards Natale

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PEGGY PAYNE   Payne is a novelist, as well as a freelance journalist and travel writer, whose work has taken her to more than 25 countries.  Her new novel, Sister India, is a New York Times Notable Book, and the story of an American woman who has run away to try to start life over in a Hindu holy city on the banks of the Ganges. Payne spent a winter in the city of Varanasi, on an Indo-American Fellowship, doing research for this book.  She has been the recipient of an National Endowment for the Humantities grant to study fiction at Berkeley, and a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship for fiction. She is also author of the novel Revelation, and co-author, with Allan Luks of The Healing Power of Doing Good.  Her articles, reviews, or essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, Travel+Leisure, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and many others. Her public speaking has taken her to locations from Banaras Hindu University  to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. Click here to view and print information on her reading and  signing of  Sister India during art/spirit/art.  For more information on Payne's work, visit www.peggypayne.com 

“Spirituality is the acknowledgement of that which is with us and within us that is not purely physical.  I am formed by growing up in a Methodist church; and also by what I have learned from faiths including Hinduism and Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, and African religions. Almost all of my fiction is an attempt to try out answers to the questions:  what is God? What is mystical experience? How can I get it? What are the Mysteries? How do the physical and the spiritual connect? What happens after death? How can I become immortal? How do I get outside of myself? How do I get the ultimate goodie? Anything that increases my trust in myself helps me do my best work.  I use lots of rituals and practices.  I see consecration as the choosing of something to remind me both of God, my own purposes, and all the resources of the universe.  In the Hindu holy city where my novel Sister India is set, there are many thousands of small shrines in public, not counting those inside people’s home.  Everywhere there are reminders; there the Ganges itself, flowing past all day and night, is a reminder.  I never intended to write fiction that explores religions.  I simply noticed that this is what I have so far done.  I believe in God and I believe that there is substantial truth in all religions; the view depends on the location of the viewer’s seat on the bus.  My faith is an adventure, it sustains me, and it’s best not to ask me to lead the prayer.”       – Peggy Payne  

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Mike Roig is a sculptor who uses iron and steel to bring spirit to life.  His sculptures have been award-winners in shows sponsored by Sculpture on the Green in Chapel Hill, Art in the Gardens in Pinehurst, Sculpture in the Garden at the North Carolina Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill, Sculpture Celebration in Lenoir, the Public Gallery of Carrboro, and the Durham County Arts Council. Feature articles covering Roig’s installations have appeared in The Chapel Hill Herald, The Durham Herald-Sun, the Raleigh News and Observer, The Pittsboro Herald, and The Chapel Hill News. The first artist to be commissioned by the Town of Chapel Hill’s new “Percent for Art” program, Roig’s piece will be a firehouse project commemorating the work of firemen. Other well-known commissioned pieces include public sculpture on Weaver Street in Carrboro, North Carolina, at the Chapel Hill Zen group, at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro, and on the lawn at Weaver Street Market in Carrboro.  Roig’s work has appeared in shows sponsored by the Fine Arts League of Cary, North Carolina, the Caldwell Arts Council, Duke University Museum of Art, Artsplosure in Raleigh, the Chatham County Arts Council, and the Orange County Arts Council.

"To be an artist — to face the constant effort of inventing, to take the commonplace and make something extraordinary, to experience the adventure of honing skills in how to fashion things by my hand, to accept the ongoing challenge of thinking deeply about what I am doing, to examine the world around me and really learn how to ‘see,’ to explore my own nature deeply and then find a way to connect what I find with the greater world — this keeps me grounded in the awareness that I am in the midst of something not to be taken for granted. That to me is the essence of spiritual practice.” – Mike Roig  

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“treasures deep  
within our lives
the gifts we see
looking in our eyes
the things we keep
hidden in plain sight
what can’t be measured or understood

the light that lifts us
in each moment we listen  
the life that pours into us
in each breath we breathe in
the song that sings us 
in every sigh
every time we take the time
to be. . .

but the evidence is all around us
if we but open our eyes to see
the paper trail of our frail history
the sun on the water,  
the wind in the trees —
how firm a foundation
the endless mystery”

– Mark Smith

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