tommartinelli

[tommartinelli]

untitled, 2016 (skeleton on palette table)

There is a wooden carved skeleton that sits on the shelf of my studio palette table. It’s a Mexican day-of-the-dead sad sack looking thing. It belonged to a friend. I came to own it after she passed away. I always notice it at her place and developed a friendly liking for it. It’s not something I associate much with her as it seems an entity independent of ownership. It reads as ‘guy’ – big feet,…

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last remains

Mom died… I got her car. I can’t sum up in brief what it was like to have my mother die or even what it was like to have this particular mother, but I can say with certainty that it was nice to have a car. It was my first car ever even though I was probably more than halfway thru my life. She was though, my only mother and last remaining parent but that is a different story. I was living at the…

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Twins

There were two of her… one “good”, one “bad”. I liked this elemental distinction. They were crystal identical and very good looking. I didn’t know the second one by name. I liked the bad one more but only when she seemed to like me back, otherwise I told myself I liked the good one more. It’s better but less compelling to like a good one. Mostly though they didn’t pay any attention to me at all……

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my art collection: Selena

I was an adjunct at Hunter College among other schools when I lived in NYC. I taught painting, drawing, watercolor with some color theory mixed in. I liked teaching beginners most of the time unless it was a class from hell which occasionally it would be. I was teaching foundation painting sometime in the late 90’s. There was a woman in my class named Selena. Selena was, to use old neighborhood…

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my art collection: Clarissa

Clarissa was a third grader somewhere in the Santa Fe public school system when she painted the artwork I came to own. I saw her painting in a benefit exhibition in the lobby of a bank. Primary colors plus black, modern and minimalist to boot … it’s classic. Clarissa’s handling of space, form and texture is firm and sensitive. And how could anyone not love 3 roundish pensive things, beautifully…

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fluorescent deities...

It wasn’t until I made a recent trip to India that I realized I preferred my deities fluorescent – not just fluorescent but monochrome fluorescent. I’ve always had a minimalist aesthetic. And the Indians, bless their hearts, seem to have a purity of perception that experiences the radiant kick-ass-ness of fluorescent color as something divine. They particularly embrace red and orange – those…

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my art collection: Agnes no.3

… this isn’t exactly “art”, maybe more in the category of relic. I’ve tagged it as “almost art.” If not in the ballpark, at least in the bleachers. Agnes did indeed, with her very own hand, paint it red. And not only did she paint it, but she signed it on the back… “MARTIN.” So maybe she took some pride in her relationship with this object and with the process of covering it with red color. It…

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my art collection: Miguel

I never met Miguel. He was married to a friend of mine named Dorothy. Miguel made a lot of drawings in prison as he was awaiting execution. He spent a number of years on death row in Texas. I don’t know much about Miguel or much detail about what actually happened. What I do know is that Miguel held up a grocery store and the robbery went bad and a person was killed. I don’t think it was ever in…

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times square heart attack

times square heart attack

I had a heart attack in Times Square. Bad place for it. Even worse, I was across the street from Port Authority, quite a slime hub at the time. It was night. I began to sweat and tremble combined with the most intense nausea. Patches of dark started to appear in my field of vision and began merging into black. I had to lay down on the hood of a car as I was barely able to stand. It was serious. I…

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today... NY NY

today… NY NY

Some things are same as they always were. I took the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square enroute to the upper West side to meet friend Elyse for lunch before going to the Frieze art fair. I’d like to immodestly add that we went as VIP’s.  On the shuttle I sat diagnol to a fellow who started yelling all kinds of stuff laced with a bunch of harsh words. Primarily out loud and not to anyone…

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breakfast with Kali

I’ve never crossed paths with a Hindu deity in any obvious way except for a dream I had a number of years ago. In the dream fierce goddess Kali appeared as a Tasmanian Devil-like tornado whirlwind à la Bugs Bunny. She decimated a used clothing store. It was an energetic crackling high voltage dream. Prominent in the aftermath was an enormous iron padlock that had been torn open. I was…

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that blur is a monkey

“Sadhu mile” became my nickname for the stretch of road between the hotel where I was staying and the Ramana Maharshi Ashram. This main road of Tiruvannamalai circumnavigates the mountain of Arunachala and is populated by a concentration of guys in orange garb known as sadhus. They are everywhere. Most live on the street on as tiny a bit of turf as a spread out towel or in the most interesting of jerry-rigged collage tents. They are holy men and wandering ascetics who spend their lives engaged in the practices of their respective spiritual paths or inclinations… meditation, contemplation, mantra repetition, self-inquiry or whatever other practice they might work with. Camped out on the hard ground, they do their practices while facing the sacred mountain of Arunachala. This main road is abundant with temples and shrines. Most are wonderfully makeshift – and truly, they are everywhere. It’s like a Santa’s village for Shaivites (translate: Shiva-ites.) I ambled down “the mile” early a.m., camera in hand and wandered into many of them.

Arunachala is one of the 5 South Indian elemental sites dedicated to the Shiva making the town of Tiruvannamalai a major location of pilgrimage for Shaivites. Here Shiva is worshipped in his elemental form of fire. Shiva is said to have manifested as a column of light and became the form of the mountain Arunachala. For some the mountain is worshiped not just as a dwelling place of Shiva but as Shiva himself.

Practitioners of Shaivism can worship Shiva in an array of forms including trees and stones and really, in everything. In the non-dual schools of Shaivism there is nothing that is not Shiva… he is all-pervasive. He can also be synonymous with “consciousness”. The beauty of this perspective is big. The holding and contemplation of this outlook can allow for the experience to actually blossom, sometimes unexpectedly or via the smallest of entry points. It is not an easy task – it is the experience sadhus spent their life cultivating and hopefully one day become steadily established in. Western science, which seems to base something of itself in the practice of doubting, makes the Shaiva perspective difficult for westerners as the experience of such a thing might not be accessible via the practice of doubt. But also true is that in this pursuit there is no one way it is all the time. So it goes.

The circumambulation of Arunachala is a ritual known as pradakshina. It’s roughly a 14 kilometer trek around the base via the main road. I didn’t do the whole circuit as it took me a couple of days to get my bearings and learn the ropes of navigating Tiruvannamalai. Had I known earlier I would have been on that one right away… next time. I did pretty quickly find the best hip cafe in town – always a coup. In addition to trekking the several miles from the hotel to the ashram via main road I did a long hike around a chunk of the base via the inner wooded path. I think the inner path might have been off limits but hey… you know how that goes. It turned night-time when friend Tracy and myself were out there hiking by the light of the iPhone. For some moments I feared being lost but she is an intrepid guide and returned us safely to local civilization.

Ramana photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Here’s the Ramana quick course > Who am I?

Tiru is also an important place for the devotees of the sage Ramana Maharshi and the Sri Ramana Ashram is located at the mountain’s foothills. Ramana’s samadhi shrine (where his body is interred) is located here as well as a meditation hall and temple where daily chants and pujas are performed. Tiru has a large population of westerners as Ramana is an honored and popular sage in the west. I was told that over the last few years the demographic density of the ashram has shifted from American to German. Based on several sightings during my brief time there I got the feeling that it’s not uncommon to see a beautiful western women in white clothing with blonde hair flowing pulling into the ashram on a motor scooter. Westerners, for better or worse, excel at importing this kind of cinematic cool.

  India is rich with characters and, as one might guess, sadhu mile is loaded with them. One particular favorite meeting was with the fellow pictured here. I liked the guy… he was friendly and open. Conspicuously a little more well groomed than the average sadhu… he had a lot of spiffy beads and seemed to have washed hair. He invited me into his tiny Shiva temple where I took some photos. He was good at striking a pose. I showed him the images on the camera screen. He approved. Then he surprised me by pulling out an old beat up cell phone and tapping on it a few times. I realized he was requesting an image upload. I’m not sure if the thing even worked. I didn’t attempt to check into his request and later wished I had… I blew it off and probably did so too quickly. More than likely it would have led to a rich and interesting exchange. At very least I might have gleaned something about the Shaivite perspective on social media. Lesson learned: never refuse a holy man tech support.

Lunch at the Sri Ramana Maharshi Ashram. Sadhus queue up with hefty lunch pails. The ashram supports the sadhus in their practice and commitment as I’m sure Ramana did when he was around.

Arunachala

Ramana

Tiruvanammalai… “sadhu mile” "Sadhu mile" became my nickname for the stretch of road between the hotel where I was staying and the…

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Behind the roadside graveyard I described in a the last post there is a clearing in the woods that hosts a second graveyard. Different in character from it’s neighbor it is populated with anonymous graves. When I crossed over into this space the busy outer road universe dropped away, like walking into a different world or stepping into some kind of silent bubble. No intervening concrete or colorful structures and nothing that tells of particular identities, only low mounds of raised earth.

Several of the mounds show a care and reverence for the remains of whoever is under there with the offerings of devotional ritual or puja such as sacred ash, red kumkum and flowers garlands. Some have a simple rock headstone with abstract markings. A few are obviously fresh and new, some old. Expectedly permeating this place is the ever-present expanse of trash, the ground plane dotted with it.

I would guess that some of these graves are those of street sadhus who have passed away. If you’re a sadhu in Tiruvannamalai it’s likely the place you’d want to be buried – at the foot of the sacred mountain that you came to spend time with – and likely to be the only place your economics might allow. I didn’t notice this at the time but based on photos it appears that the graves face Arunachala. This makes sense.

There was a young guy who was digging a grave in the shape of a neat rectangle. His red flip flops were placed on the side. Given his western trousers he was not a sadhu. He didn’t speak English so I couldn’t ask the question I wanted to ask… “who’s going in there?” I did my usual communication of pointing to my camera and asking, “OK?”… and yes, it was OK so I snapped. I don’t know if he was a hired hand or maybe preparing the space for a family member or friend.

Indians are interesting in front of a camera. I’ve noticed an absence of self-consciousness. They don’t get weird in front of the lens like I might and they make no effort to smile if they don’t want to. Eye contact can be direct and clean with what seems like little or no odd psychological baggage. Lucky them.

The images below are quite bare compared to the grave photos in the last post but maybe will be compelling in another way.

Tiruvannamalai graveyard no.2 Behind the roadside graveyard I described in a the last post there is a clearing in the woods that hosts a second graveyard.

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Tiruvannamalai graveyard no.1

In general I like graveyards. When the shuttle bus passed what I thought might be a graveyard on the main road that circles the mountain of Arunachala in Tiruvannamalai, India, I lite up. It was mentally logged as a must-do excursion. The quick drive by revealed fantastic color and wonderful eccentric structures. I wasn’t at first sure of what it was. In another country, such as my own, it might…

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just a test

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