International Humanities Center Adopts Beauty of Water

The International Humanities Center (IHCenter) based in Malibu, California and with projects all over the world, has adopted Beauty of Water into its fiscal sponsorship program! This gives Beauty of Water nonprofit public charity status. Beauty of Water is now exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and supporters from the USA can make tax-deductible donations. This is an important step forward for Beauty of Water. We are celebrating!

Other projects under the IHCenter's umbrella include Courage to Resist, No More Victims, The Afghan Women's Mission, and The California Cars Initiative.

Back in the Bay; India in November

I returned last week to my home of the past ten years, the San Francisco Bay Area, via train, which was wonderful, visiting amazing urban farmer - food activist friends in Oregon along the way. I'm now living in a captain's house on a (former) Naval base in Alameda, with beloved friends and Beauty of Water supporters. The Governor was holding a press conference where my ferry to the city launched this morning, which made life feel like a movie. Last weekend in Fairfax was as dreamy as ever, and Beauty of Water will be benefiting by connections with dear friend and colleague Carmen Mauk of Burners Without Borders with whom I had the pleasure of lunching today.

I will be heading back to Kerala, India in November, by way of England, in time for Beauty of Water artist Santhan Velayudhan's solo show in Kochi, followed by a group show in Trivandrum. We'll be collaborating on Beauty of Water for many months to come.

Conversation with Martina Florians

I met an artist from The Netherlands, Martina Florians, while in Weimar, Germany. She and others were preparing an exhibit called Le Souvenir, at ACC Galerie. Her piece, The Changing Smells, struck me as wonderfully creative, and the more I absorbed what she was doing, the more brilliant I percieved it to be. Martina's gorgeous website features this and other of her works, well worth a visit.

I brought a souvenir home from that piece, a jar containing a salty powder that held the scent of a previous participant in Martina's experiential exhibit, someone I had not met. I told Martina I'd let her know how it went at US Customs. This email conversation ensued, which touches first on her art piece, and moves to a discussion of Beauty of Water. I thank Martina for agreeing to allow me to post this minimally edited writing.

Report and Photos from Weimar Summer Courses

I am back from a SUPERB visit to Germany and the Weimar Summer Courses. These 45 slides show course activities, my instructors and the leader of the program, Burkhardt Kolbmüller, scenes from in and around Weimar, such as Goethe's town and garden houses, Schiller Strasse; a 1923 home and buildings from the Bauhaus in Weimar, an original Rodin sculpture (shown here) that lives in the lobby of the current Bauhaus University, the reconstructed office of Walter Gropius, and his studio, from which you can see the Buchenwald Memorial bell tower in the distance; some of the Bauhaus in nearby Dessau, such as master houses where Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky lived; a lovely dormatory structure where I stayed during the course, an admittedly unimaginative depiction of my visit to the famous art festival, documenta 12, and more.

I thank friends Steven Dahlberg, Isabella Pitisci, Sebastian Schröder-Esch, Burkhardt and others for providing many of these photos.

I have also posted 15 photos I took at the Buchenwald Memorial just outside of Weimar. This concentration camp was the largest in the German Reich by the end of World War II, imprisoning more than 250,000 people over eight years, 55,000 of whom died there.

As for the course itself, I could write for days about what I learned and experienced. Let me distill just one essential discovery for now. In time, more sharing will surely seep into this blog.

Over the course of these weeks in Weimar, I learned that Beauty of Water has a home, a cannon, significant precedent, and previously unknown mentors. The actual teachings offered through our stellar instructors, Hildegard Kurt and Shelley Sacks, were not, for the most part, new concepts to me, although they were fascinating and freshly framed. What kept me giddy with excitement was the fact that a well defined context exists, within which Beauty of Water fits effortlessly. It is as though Beauty of Water were part of a great jigsaw puzzle, and other pieces of the puzzle were unearthed before my eyes.

From Bauhaus to Social Sculpture - Workshop in Germany

I am delighted to share that I received a full scholarship for a workshop that is supported by the European Union, called From Bauhaus to Social Sculpture. The Shaping of a Humane Society as an Aesthetic Challenge taking place in Weimar, Germany from August 11-25. The instructors are Dr. Hildegard Kurt of und.Institut and Shelly Sacks of the Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University. This course is utterly on topic for Beauty of Water. Many thanks to those who have helped make it possible for me to attend. Happy August, all!