Walking with nothing

Dear Artists & Friends,

Hello on this pre-winter morning. I am reaching out with news. I’ve been accepted to a 5-day STREET RETREAT with ZEN PEACEMAKERS (https://zenpeacemakers.org/street-retreats/). Three times a year, a group of 15 individuals goes out to bear witness to the conditions of the homeless through the Breadloaf Mountain Zen Center. This winter's retreat is in San Francisco. I cannot say what the experience will be, but I know it will challenge me.

After raising $500 and assembling a mala, I will join a sanga of 15 individuals and bear witness to the homeless situation by living on the streets and begging for money. We will have no cell phones, no tents and no money, no resources other than our true nature. We will experience homelessness first hand, begging for money, finding places to get food, shelter, bathrooms, etc. By bearing witness to homelessness in this way, we start to directly see our impulses, assumptions, prejudices, and boundaries. Practicing with Not-Knowing and Bearing Witness we experience our interconnection, recognize our common humanness, and realize our responsibilities.

We begin our practice before our retreat by assembling a mala, beads strung and worn like a necklace. I have chosen plum seeds and pink carnations. Each bead represents one person. The entire mala represents my community. I will wear my mala on the retreat and plant it afterwards. Donations in any amount may be directed to Breadloaf Mountain Zen Center (BMZC) or given to me (info below). Money collected through this begging practice goes to the social service agencies and public non-profit organizations that will support me on the streets and support the social action projects at Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Center.

Last year, I sat 60 meditations and you helped me raise $1,200 for the homeless in Brattleboro, VT. In 2010, I lived for 3 months in a homeless camp in Seattle to bring awareness to the conditions of the homeless in the Pacific Northwest. I am no stranger to sleeping outside or navigating city streets. This practice goes further. This is not a conceptual work, but a physical meditation. It requires me to be in community and fully present for 5 days. I invite you to sit meditations with me on 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 December.

THANK YOU for supporting me. May you be engaged in your work, happy in your choices & reading something riveting.
I kiss you,

Mimi
............................................................................................

DONATE-->

Online at Zen Peacemakers https://zenpeacemakers.org/

Earmark your donation “Mimi Allin, SF Street Retreat”

or Paypal Amy K Allin: mimiallin@gmail.com
or send a check to: Mimi Allin, 420 30th Ave E, Seattle, WA 98112

ZEN PEACEMAKERS INFO-->

Founded in 1994 by Bernie Glassman. On Bernie’s 55th birthday, he led the 1st street retreat in Washington DC, contemplating the question of what to do to serve those rejected by society, those in poverty & those with AIDS.  Upon returning to Brooklyn, he discussed his vision of a container for people wanting to do spiritually-based social engagement with his wife, Sensei Sandra Jishu Holmes. They developed Zen Peacemakers, a Zen order with a strong social action component that would bear witness on the streets, at sites of atrocity & meet the troubles of the world. Here are the street retreat archives: https://zenpeacemakers.org/zpi_media_library/. 

“When we go to bear witness to life on the streets, we’re offering ourselves. Not blankets, not food, not clothes, just ourselves.” – Bernie Glassman (Founder, Zen Street Retreats)

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Studies in OCCU(PY)(PATION)

STUDIES IN OCCU(PY)(PATION)
Saturday 17 December 2011 (8am-8pm)
Westlake Park, City Hall & Seattle Central Community College
SEATTLE

CALL FOR ARTISTS
Artists experimenting in movement, performance, process, dance, text, sound, voice, music, visual and other media wanted for Studies in Occu(py)(pation), a full-day, outdoor, live art event, 8AM–8PM, on Saturday 17 December at (1) West Lake Park, (2) City Hall and (3) Seattle Central Community College (Seattle, WA). Select a 15-minute, 30-minute, 1-hour or 2-hour time slot. Engage in a stationary or moving study anywhere in one of the three locations. All genres considered. No plug-ins available. Self-supporting, low-tech only. Situated in an open urban area. Standing audience unlikely. Studies overlap and continue for the length of the event. This is a free and independent event generated by working artists in Seattle.

APPLY
Send an informal e-mail to mimiallin@gmail.com with your: (1) name, (2) contact info (3) work history (brief) / link to your website, (4) one sentence expressing your medium and idea for the study, (5) desired study location and (6) desired study time and length. There is no formal deadline, but to receive proper attention and be placed on the schedule, before 10 December is best.

STUDIES IN EVERYTHING
Studies in Occu(py)(pation) is 5th in a quarterly series called STUDIES IN EVERYTHING, preceded by Studies in White (January 2010), Studies in Monk, Mompou and Melancholy (April 2010), Studies in Forgiveness (July 2010) and Studies in Memory (November 2010). The goal of STUDIES IN EVERYTHING is to form a temporary community and to have that community study, in a collectively and public way, a topic, mood, color, place or idea. Studies aren’t about finished, choreographed work, they are about the artist’s process. We do not spend a great deal of time preparing for or reporting on studies, but spend time partaking in studies and thus evolve as artists. 10-40 artists participate in each study. For examples of past studies and to see images and videos, visit our FB group page STUDIES IN EVERYTHING.

INFO FOR ARTISTS
Artists are encouraged to visit the site before their study to consider weather and other conditions that may affect their work (noise levels, crowd flow, lighting, pedestrian pathways, bottlenecks, nearby bathrooms, warm dry places to retreat to, parking situation and bus routes). This is a rain or shine event. Performances will be photo and video-documented.

WHY A STUDY?
Studies free us. Unlike their finished and focused counterparts (rehearsals, choreographed pieces and performances), studies show us the artist in the process of discovering. We believe this work helps situate the artist in the community and manifests a real artist-to-world connection. We hope to encourage artists everywhere to envision and set into place parameters for studies and to spend time exploring the world publicly.

WHY OCCUPY?
This study comes in response to the international political event—Occupy Wall Street. Artists may find it helpful to attend the Occupation, if they haven't already, to help clarify and/or broaden their ideas and approaches. It is not, however, necessary to respond in a political way or to offer a politics-focused study. Studies may be as personal, as quiet or as pedestrian as you wish. Artists are encouraged to take their study in the direction of their choosing, as far or as near the current political situation as they wish.

oc·cu·py verb \ˈä-kyə-ˌpī\
1: to engage the attention or energies of
2a : to take up (a place or extent in space)
2b : to take or fill (an extent in time)
3a : to take or hold possession or control of
3b : to fill or perform the functions of (an office or position)
4: to reside in as an owner or tenant

oc·cu·pa·tion noun \ˌä-kyə-ˈpā-shən\
a : an activity in which one engages
b : the principal business of one's life : vocation

LINKS
Occupy Seattle
West Lake Park Seattle

PEG &FRANK @ Gallery 110

Saturday 8 October at 5PM
Featured ArtsCrush Event
Gallery 110 (TK Building)
Seattle, WA

PEG &FRANK is an elastic collective born in 2011 from the imaginations A K Mimi Allin & Vanessa DeWolf. PEG &FRANK bring visual art, writing poetry, performance art and critical viewing together to manifest a new field of work that lives between the art object and the viewer. We plan events for galleries and artists that facilitate a closer viewing of art, using a process that requires an intensive amount of time in the gallery. Those experiences are then shared with the artists and their audiences at public and private events.

For the exhibit of manipulated photographs by artists Ray Schutte and Jan Cook (Gallery 110), Peg &Frank spent 20 hours with the works of art, including an overnight. We navigated our responsive structure and edited and culled our materials to what was viewed in the gallery on on Saturday night. It was a thrill and an honor to have shared that process with poets Stephen Roxborough & Lyn Coffin and with fellow art maven Mylinda Sneed and cellist Natalie Hall.


To bring PEG &FRANK into your art space, contact: mimiallin@gmail.com.

THE LAMPLIGHTER

Public Art Project
October 2011
Seattle, WA

Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) is a novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry about a little boy who lives on an asteroid with one rose and three volcanoes that come up to his knees, one of which is extinct. When The Little Prince decides he is unhappy, he sets off to learn about life and visits seven nearby planets, the last of which is Earth. On his travels, he meets The Lamplighter, a man under orders to extinguish his lamp at daybreak and light it at dusk. The Lamplighter explains how his task, once useful, has become absurd over time as his planet began spinning more and more quickly. Since a new day occurs every minute now, the lamplighter is so busy he hasn't a moment to sleep. Is not The Lamplighter a metaphor for our own condition? We are all so busy doing things we think are of consequence that we miss the smaller, simpler things that make up the truly significant stuff (seeing the stars, sharing a sunrise, listening to a friend, dancing, putting my hands in the earth, talking to the elephants). The Little Prince is a fable about how money, ego and power close our hearts and turn into dimwitted adults.

PERFORMANCE
Performance artist A K Mimi Allin rolls through the Seattle night with a 10' rolling lantern and spinning, papier-mâché planetoid (conceived of and constructed by inventor/designer Clinton Lee Bliss), illuminating and extinguishing her lamp once per minute. When you see her wink of “good night” and blink of “good morning," think to the things of consequence in your life, then come and commemorate someone who believed in you when you a child by painting a golden star on her lamppost. By mid-October, the entire lantern be covered with golden stars and made bright by the light of our belief in one another, and at last the lamplighter will be able to put down her work and take a much needed rest.

SCHEDULE OF APPEARANCES

• Wallingford Artwalk - 5 October
• Pioneer SquareArtwalk - 6 October
• Fremont Artwalk - 7 October
• Capital Hill Artwalk - 11 October
• West Seattle Artwalk - 13 October
• Greenwood-Phinney Artwalk -14 October

The Lamplighter will light & extinguished her lamp 1,440 times over the next 2 weeks and then install it at the Phinney Center Gallery in Greenwood.

THANK YOU
This project received a CityArtist grant from the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Thank you for that!! Cosmic thanks go out to inventor/designer Clinton Lee Bliss for his work on my whimsical lantern. Thanks also go out to the talented & beautiful Mylinda Sneed & her brilliant son Beckett Arnold for their support. Thanks indeed to The Fremont Arts Council for use of The Powerhouse & to Christopher Peragine for his time & expressive drawings. Thanks unending to all those who support & enjoy public art throughout the universe.

Forgiveness on Aurora

STUDIES IN FORGIVENESS | Aurora Avenue
3 July 2010
A full-day, 4-mile, free art event

MAP
EVENT PROGRAM
Two other significant arts events happening in Fremont this Saturday are Shakespeare on the Troll and Red, White and Dead.

STUDIES IN EVERYTHING
Partial funding for Studies in Everything comes from 4Culture. Studies in Everything is a quarterly, performance undertaking that mobilizes artists into temporary communities for the purpose of studying, in loose, but collective and public ways, a topic, mood, color, place or idea. A study is nothing like a rehearsal or performance. Studies favor the personal movement of the artist over that of the audience. Studies offer a chance for inquiry, a time for collecting experiences, gathering information and creating possibilities. Our studies happen in the public arena so the community can see them, ask questions, offer feedback and give support. Situating artists on the street level allows us to manifest a real artist-to-world connection that, in turn, encourages us to value our artists. Approximately 10-20 artists (experimental artists, performers, musicians, visual artists, dancers, printmakers…) participate in each daylong study. Events range from 5-12 hours with individual studies from 15 minutes to 3 hours. Studies in Everything was founded by A K Mimi Allin. Studies in Forgiveness is the 3rd of 4 events in 2010. Studies in Memory will take place at Juanita Bay Park in Kirkland on Saturday 23 October. Studies plans to continue this important work long into the future. We hope to encounter your artist along the way. For images, videos and information on upcoming events, see our Facebook Group or check The Poetess at Green Lake.

2nd Annual POETRY POLAR BEAR PLUNGE

Poetry Polar Bear Club
Noon, Saturday 12 December 2009
Green Lake Bath House Theatre | Seattle

Jump into the lake with a poem & a bikini. Don’t worry, your POETRY will PROTECT you. Yet again, the poets show Seattle how to be one. This is year #2. Last year we made headline news & had a ton of fun. See pix from last year.

So.... join us this year?

CALLING ALL ARTISTS, poets, Alaska-natives and crazies. Looking for 50 hardy individuals to jump into Green Lake this December. It’s simple. Write a poem, put it on a bikini, put your bikini on & come to Green Lake at NOON on Saturday 12 December. We’ll be working up our courage behind the Bath House. Then, at 12:30pm, we’ll drop our fuzzy layers, line up on the water’s edge, read our poems to the massed and staring crowds and plunge on in! This is a quick event. If you’re late, you’ll miss it. Plan to be parked and ready to go at noon. Questions? Contact Mimi mimiallin@gmail.com / 617.460.6110.

Not willing to freeze your pants off? This is still a spectacle worth attending. Come enjoy the poetry, sip some cocoa, have a laugh. The POETRY POLAR BEAR swim is the same day as the Pathway of Lights. Go Green Lake!

ARTISTS
Willing to take a DIP in Green Lake? SHOW UP behind the Bath House at Green Lake, at NOON on Saturday 12 December, in a bathing suit (preferably a bikini, but the rules are lax), with a POEM written somewhere on your suit or body (doesn’t have to be one you wrote, but we’d like it if it were & if it related to the event).

DONATE A POLAR POEM
Don’t want to swim, but want to contribute a poem? That’s cool. Post your poem on a picket & bring it to the lake or e-mail it to mimiallin@gmail.com. See you on 12 December!

WARM A POET FOR THE HOLIDAYS
We need HELPERS on the sidelines to bear witness, hold towels & eyeglasses, hand out coca & take pictures. To lend support, simply arrive at noon and say, “I’m a helper,” or call Mimi at (617) 460.6110.

“Putting the O back in poetry”