Exploring Art, Science & Healing as complementary lenses for Holistic Perception: Plant Based Diet, Alchemy, Fine Art Photography, 432 Hz Music, Etymology, Syncretism, C.S.F. & all other useful tools / philosophies for balancing our body's complex universal blueprint.
HOLARCHY: pronounced “whole-arc-key”
HOL (light, color, spirit) ARC (shape, form, body) CHY (sound, musical key, mind)
In Lak’ech, I am another you & from this perspective I seek to explore the relationship between spirit, mind & body by sharing: Music & Art to dance within spirit’s emotional landscape ; Etymology & Archetype to refine thought's origin ; Anatomy & Diet as medicine for exploring the body’s actions. This triune focus is a lens I’m applying in my developing book Embryonic, an exploration of how the dissonance between schooling and personal life experience forced me to question authority, ultimately answered by a syncretic decryption of symbolism hidden in plain sight. As I grasped the depths of ancient civilization’s misunderstood intellect, wisdom, and beauty, I began seeing how programmed I was to think of my culture as more advanced than all others. I grew up feeling guilty about not wanting to learn in school, yet now I feel grateful for the flood of occulted information being revealed through the internet and our innernet, fueled by wonder of our microcosmic design.
A driving goal for utilizing this platform is to hone my skills as a fine art photographer, commercial photographer, vegan chef, event organizer, writer & performer while exploring communities, organizations & businesses aligned with supporting plant based lifestyle, veganic regenerative permaculture, geomancy, and holistic / artistic happenings.
"Holarchy" originates from the Greek ὅλος, holos "whole" & can be defined as a connection between holons, where a holon is both a part and a whole. Breaking apart the phonetic sounds of Holarchy, we can see vibration expressed simultaneously as light (HOL), shape (ARC) & sound (CHY "key"). Playing with light in photography, shape in diet / yoga, and sound in music, this platform is a way to synergize these practices & get constructive feedback.
11 years ago studying Art Practice while living in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest at Stanford University, I had little to zero knowledge about nutrition or how my body worked, even though I was training up to 100 miles per week on the running team. My face & body were out of control with painful cystic acne that plagued me since the onset of adolescence:
Photography, music & road trips were regular creative outlets that evolved into an obsession for the beautiful, strange & synchronistic moments that gave meaning to enduring school's tedium. I worked in the art department's darkroom within The Sub Gallery, ever-fascinated by the magical quality of seeing silver grains revealing shapes from a void of white paper submerged in liquids, underneath the dim amber safelight, etched by burning sunlight.
35mm Color Slide Photography gradually became my favorite medium for their gem-like quality & ability to project on screens. I started performing narrated slideshows, sometimes with music & exhibited my work as much as possible. Upon graduation, I set forth to San Francisco into an art warehouse called The SUB, where I balanced a fine art & commercial photography practice centering around wedding, event & documentary photography.
For several years I chose to wear black & white dress clothing to make for smooth transitions between professional & bohemian scenes of SF's Mission District. To top myself off I wore lensless glasses as a daily reminder of seeing life the frame of the camera in mind, wanting to be a prolific artist like Picasso or Dali. Here's a friend's portrait of me at The Met Museum:
Surrealism's dreamlike quality & Cubism's multiple dimensions inspired my "REMIX" body of work where 2 or more slides could be layered within special rare glass cases called Gepe slides, which I discovered at the end of my Senior year within our art department's slide archive. This is an overhead of my light table that fits 108 slides at a time, allowing for almost endless permutations within my personal archive, followed by an early REMIX made in 2010:
The vibrant social scene within the Mission District found me photographing MC Hammer on the rooftop of Airbnb's headquarters, curating events within The SUB warehouse I was living in, & producing new slides / prints for my own exhibitions all in the same month.
Holarchy arose as a desire to honor a purpose higher than my ego's by seeing into our fractal blue print. Donating a percentage of art sales to integral causes was initially satisfying to this end, however the deeper I looked into the root causes of mental, physical & spiritual sickness, I realized that my intentions were perhaps too surface level to have any great impact. My 2012 experience was quitting alcohol, dairy, meat, refined sugars & gluten in a matter of months after a serious sickness while traveling Europe with my family. As my acne cleared up, my nerves at social events calmed down & I found my heart most interested in curating the highest quality foods I could find. High quality spring water became a must. The transition was grounded through Kundalini Yoga practice, which helped me find the flexibility I lacked during my competitive running period. This was a crucial creative period in my life that involved deep pondering on how my dress & diet shaped my attraction & taste.
In 2013 I decided to try a strictly plant based diet & found an incredible exotic infusion of fruits, spices & vegetables new to my tongue. My fascination for heirloom foods drew me closer to an alkaline palette, introducing useful spices like achiote for helping preserve sauces & seaweeds which replaced all salt. While the ones around me saw these limitations as restrictive, I have always found that the right limitation can yield the highest creative potential. Fenugreek, clove, allspice, tarragon, krishna basil, celery seed, savory & countless other species tantalized my taste buds & satisfied the need for the mineral supplements I was taking. Jackfruit, mangosteen & seeded grapes starting blowing my mind in a satiable manner more gentle than the black hole of processed sweets my body was used to. I began to laugh as everything I thought I would miss were replaced by an original, more balanced whole food. Melons & mangos became ice cream, tahini & coconut butter substituted dairy, and the right steamed vegetable or mushroom emulated a meaty texture. Then I learned the original word meat and flesh referred to fruit. Slowly I found an organic plant based replacement for every processed, animal, or synthetic product I was habituated to. Heirloom veganism revealed a deep, sensual, sincere, renewed intimate relationship with Nature.
As I learn to relax within my own skin, more masks of unconsciousness dissolve. I realized especially how my clothes closed my body tight, restricting full breath & overall constricting of full movement. Tears in my pants and shirts became common as I spontaneously indulged in yoga positions too broad for my seams. Nature was re-wilding my soul. Yet the sudden shifts created many conflicts with my existing lifestyle & ultimately forced me to live outside of a major city. Ultimately I invested in my campervan Hiace to be flexible & independent to travel California, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico & Colorado in 2017. I realized a long time dream of performing music on stage at a festival when my friends Truniversal invited me to Unify Fest in New Mexico to open for their set with my 432 Hz tank drumming. This year I realized another personal goal of leading a cooking / sourcing class in LA’s Little Ethiopia.
Some car repairs grounded me in Southern California & I was fortunate to transition to an environment where I could deepen my cooking & knowledge with others passionate about plant based lifestyle. Participating in Lakota & Apache sweat lodges showed me a new way to detox on a regular basis while learning about other perspectives on the nature of spirit. Now I’m looking to learn more about practicing veganic permaculture & creating art while traveling from California to Washington & beyond. From June until August, I plan on exploring LA, SF, Shasta, Ashland & Seattle while making photography, music & sourcing the highest quality nutrition. During Fall my eyes are set for Colorado, New Mexico & Arizona.
The last two years I have been working on completing Embryonic ↑, my first hardbound book of photography that also outlines the templates I’m using to harmonize art with science & healing. During the writing of Embryonic, so many new ideas and experiences flooded my reality. I learned that animals are used to create the gelatin within film, I started emulating my analog techniques with digital means, halted purchase of new film & started collecting more slides from thrift shops or online. Statistics on humans hosting parasites compelled me to learn how to cleanse my body & rid myself of unwanted vampires. The work of Professor Arnold Ehret outlining the mucusless diet convinced me do learn new means of making food optimally absorbable. Syncretism, the amalgamation of schools of thought, stimulated new associations between internal & external symbolism that had puzzled me for decades.
The day I started compiling this post, I made a self-portrait of my tools, art & favorite foods within the studio I’m moving out of on my birthday June 1st. My plan is to explore so-cal nature, finish a wedding mid-month & begin driving north. Balancing art, music, food, yoga, writing, permaculture, blogging & creative relationships is my intent. For more immersive permaculture practice I am considering Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Thailand, The Philippines & other locations where tropical fruits are abundant. This platform is for shedding light on transmuting ownership into stewardship, re-internalizing the symbol of money, remembering how our bodies function & learning sincerely seeded compassion. If you are interested to contribute to the Art / Science / Healing themes of this platform, or want to get in touch for questions / collaborations / prints, please reach me through my art portfolio at ember.space or find me on Facebook Special inspiration thanks to Kenny’s Kitchen
7 Goals for Holarchy:
-Connect with others via the plant based ethos as an intersectional solution for the environment, clean business, education, entertainment, sovereignty, health & ethically grounded philosophy
-Bring healing to the division of the sexes be reexamining & reclaiming sacred alchemical regenerative sexuality
-Internalize money as a symbol originating from our relationship with Nature’s electro-magnetic current
-Re-cognize physical, mental & spiritual trauma to counter degenerative / repetitive programing
-Attract reciprocation for the energy that goes into cooking, writing, art, music & sharing online
-Get feedback on the development & printing of my upcoming art codex Embryonic
-Transmute the idea of personal ownership into interpersonal stewardship