ART MONASTERY PROJECT
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : i**o@a**********y.o*g
Mission Statement
The Art Monastery is a residential community dedicated to cultivating personal awakening and cultural transformation through artmaking, spiritual practice, and reciprocity with the earth.
About This Cause
Who We are artists who meditate and meditators who make art. Our community lives close to the Earth in order to unlearn the oppressive systems of the overculture and cultivate a viable alternative for future generations. Our Story The Art Monastery began in 2007 in a series of historic monasteries across Italy as a secular non-profit arts organization. Ever since, we have hosted visiting artists, offered cultural events for the public, and applied the monastic principles of discipline, contemplation, and sustainability to our creative process. In 2016 we moved our operations to a seven-acre farm in Vermont. After seven years in Italy and five years in Vermont, we are now in the process of buying land. Vision We are dedicated to the liberation of all beings. Through personal awakening and cultural transformation, we seek to create a community inspired by what Trungpa Rinpoche calls Enlightened Society and what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. calls the Beloved Community. We see today’s art as the seeds of tomorrow’s culture, to build a world where art guides our species back into balanced relationship our more-than-human family, there is truly equality and justice for all beings, we rebalance masculine and feminine energies, we heal the wounds of ancestral trauma to overcome greed, aggression and confusion, and we align with the natural cycles of the Earth. Mission The Art Monastery is a residential community dedicated to cultivating personal awakening and cultural transformation through artmaking, spiritual practice, and reciprocity with the earth. The Art Monastery is a radical experiment in collaborative living inspired by monastic traditions. Through avant garde monasticism, we take up new and old ways of artmaking to create a social ecology defined by heart-centered, body-positive, justice-seeking values. In this way, we balance the art element of our mission (intuition, activism, and re-wilding) with the monastery element (structure and schedule, personal growth, and ancient traditions). We support each other in our own journeys of artmaking, spiritual practice and reciprocity with the earth. We also host artists-in-residence, retreats, gatherings and art intensives in order to share the practices and values of our social sculpture* and refresh the long term community. *Social Sculpture is the practice of life-as-art, as coined by Joseph Beuys. Elements of our social sculpture include: a community schedule, resource pooling, ceremony, group process, artshares, shared labor and ethical purchasing agreements. The Three Fields of Art Monasticism The three fields of Art Monasticism are not separate, but co-arise within a unified embodied experience. Interconnectivity As a community, we make art within the context of spiritual practice and reciprocity with the earth; we ground our spiritual practice in artmaking and reciprocity with the earth; and we honor the earth through artmaking and spiritual practice. Artmaking The Art Monastery exists to bring meaningful art into the world. Our work is for artists to more deeply connect with their creative source and for spiritual practitioners to develop their artistic voice. We do this by providing a holistic container that includes: a supportive community that values and encourages exploration of the artistic process we share common studios, performance/rehearsal spaces and housing, with opportunities for private creative space as well ethical, nutritious food prepared with love access to nature: river swimming, forest walking, sit spots amidst the trees & ferns artshares: weekly opportunities to share finished and in-process work within the Art Monastery community, to receive feedback and engage in dialogue conversations about culture shift: a supportive environment to explore how art impacts culture, and how we, as artists, can be part of changing mainstream culture publications, performances, and exhibitions: whenever possible, we support residents and visitors to share their work not just within the Art Monastery community, but in the larger community and online #ArtMonasteryArt Performances, paintings, poetry and artworks of all forms, created with the support of the Art Monastery, have appeared in major cultural institutions around the world. Check out the portfolio. [link to list of awesome artists-in-residence and long term resident artmakings around the world] Spiritual Practice Artmonk spirituality draws inspiration from a variety of Buddhist lineages and earth-based spiritual practices while respecting the wisdom teachings of all world traditions. We meet ourselves and each other through: daily practice: 30 minutes of meditation & 15 minutes of song and chanting, five days a week ceremony: every full moon, new moon, solstice, and equinox silence: part of each day, five days a week check-ins: authentic personal sharing & listening at a community meal five days a week meal blessings: gather and sing a song before a daily group meal embodiment practices: somatic meditation, movement, and singing practice periods: 1-4 weeks of silent retreat each year Artmonk vows By practicing Embodiment, may I awaken fully and be free. Cultivating our somatic field as intimacy with the living earth, welcoming the divine feminine both within and without. By practicing Authenticity, may I awaken fully and be free. Practicing skillful means to balance inner experience with outer community, honoring the sacred journey of every feeling. By practicing Forgiveness, may I awaken fully and be free. Recognizing freedom & freshness in ever-present awareness releasing tension into the Earth. dedications of merit: We close our practices by setting the intention to be of benefit to others. For example, “Whatever goodness this practice has brought, I dedicate to all beings. Whatever insight and joy I have found, I willingly share with all beings. Whatever merit my practice has generated, may it be multiplied to infinity, for the happiness and welfare of all.” —Reggie Ray, Dharma Ocean Reciprocity with the Earth We live increasingly close to the land. Inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer, we invoke the concept of reciprocity as an attempt to give back to the earth in balance with what we receive. We steadily cultivate a handmade life to honor our more-than-human family, turning away from mass production and capitalist consumerism. We dedicate effort, time, and money to supporting a whole ecosystem of thriving life. As a community, we: acknowledge the Abenaki people as the ancestral stewards of this land and seek to learn from their contemporary leadership regeneratively cultivate food and medicine plants and share the bounty buy and cook in a manner that promotes ethical food systems can, freeze, and dry foods for pantry storage in the winter months compost our food and humanure forage food, following the honorable harvest as presented by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass: ask permission don’t take the first one take less than half encourage flourishing of foraged plants express gratitude aim towards zero waste and practice ethical consumption by limiting our use of fossil fuels and plastic crafting many products with sustainable, non-toxic ingredients (for example paper, ink, candles, toothpaste, insect repellent, household cleansers) foregoing consumption of commercial and industrial goods ongoing study of what is in our waste stream boycotting Amazon and Big Box stores, buying local whenever possible engage Earth-restoration practices preserve and contribute to edge zones and diversified wildlife habitat plant trees, shrubs and native pollinators remove invasives *We acknowledge that our species has overreached and created massive, damaging imbalance and ongoing harm. We are part of the privileged, industrialized, overconsuming minority responsible for undertaking widespread, immediate, creative repair work. We vow to do all that we can to live in balance within the web of life.