Greetings,

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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Contact:

Standing Rock Cultural Arts

300 N. Water St., Suite H.

Kent, OH 44240

Phone: 330-673-4970

http://www.standingrock.net

info@standingrock.net

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WHO: Standing Rock Cultural Arts presents

WHAT:  Listen, Listen, One Day You Will Know

- Book Launch and Landscape Paintings

- Oils and Pastels

- Music Perfomance by Joe Culley and Pooja Kulkarni

WHERE: SRCA Gallery.300 N. Water St., Suite H., Kent, OH

WHEN: Opening Reception on Saturday, August 24.  7pm-9pm

-Art, Music, Food, and Beverages!

-Free and Open To The Public (Donations Accepted)

CONTACT: 330-673-4970

GALLERY HOURS : Wednesday-Saturday, noon-5pm

-or by appointment at 330-673-4970.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Listen, Listen, One Day You Will Know

    I was inspired to write a children's book as a thank you and a homage to my many gurus who have inspired me in the past and the new ones yet to be had.  After studying with one of the world's greatest Tabla masters, Ustad Zakir Hussain, I came up with the idea for this book.  I spend most of my time teaching visual art to K-4^th and 9^thgrade students.  I decided the genre would be a children's book.Keeping in mind that this book is not just for kids, but for all ages, much akin to one of my literary heroes, Peter Sis.  I highly recommend reading Sis's book, “Tibet Through The Red Box” if you haven't already.

    “Listen, Listen,One Day You Will Know” was consciously created in a multi-dimensional format: containing onomatopoetic words, cultural anecdotes, musical techniques and processes; spiritual and philosophical concepts, visual illustrations and patterns, all wrapped up in a coloring book.  My objective was to make the book highly interactive on many levels.  The book contains hidden messages through many delightful ink drawings.  It's a coming of age story of a young boy from India who plays tabla in search of deeper meaning and sound.

ABOUT THE PAINTINGS:

Oils and Pastels

    During the past several years, I gone through a psychologically rough time due to the dissolution of my marriage and the death of my father.  I decided to vigorously turn my attention to painting landscapes as a means of healing my inner psychic wounds.   Through many years in counseling, journaling, and meditation, I discovered a means of inner healing by having imagined conversations with lost loved ones through my primary creative language of drawing and painting.  This may seem to be a one-sided conversation, but we, who have lost parents and teachers, know that their voice lingers past the grave. My parents had particularly strong opinions pertaining to aesthetics,art history, philosophy, etc, etc...so at times, while I'm painting,I have to play loud music to drown out their voices.  I chose landscape painting because of my deep connection to nature, which was strongly cultivated at an early age by taking long and memorable walk sin the woods and hollows of Virginia Kendall Park with Dad.  

    Because of those wonderful walks with Dad, I have repeatedly returned to the woods throughout my life during times of sadness, joy, gratitude, and wonderment.  Nature has taught me that all human puzzles about life are answered, if nature is witnessed fully, by experiencing it firsthand and being surrounded by it!   Questions about birth, death, inter-connectedness, cooperation, healing of wounds, money, sex, ego,rage, war, peace, and love....are revealed and answered within the landscape we dwell, and traverse upon and then, eventually, return.

The paintings are experiences I personally had from areas in N.E. Ohio, Sedona, Arizona, Garden of Gods in Colorado, and Mesa, Arizona.  The titles of the paintings were made during or after the work's completion, never prior.  This is due, in part, by the inner epiphanies the art work brought forth within me during the process of creating and completion of the piece.  

    My process begins with a delightful discovery, either by car or a walk, seeing something that raises my pulse and my inner voice, usually shouting, “I want to touch that!”  Then, I either sketch, paint,or take a dozen or so pictures with my cell phone or laptop, then begin to paint using oil paint, or draw using soft pastel.  My objective is to work on the piece until I get the same emotional or spiritual state that I had while witnessing the scene in person.  I never try to copy the photo exactly.  If I do, it usually turns out to be garbage.  Besides, the photo has already been done.  The photo is to facilitate the process of graphic foundational support for the aesthetic, creative process to take place.  This is much like tempo,time, meter, or scale being set for musicians.

    The greatest joy I get is not so much the work's completion, but the time spent solving the aesthetic problems I set up or fall into.  The biggest kick I have while painting a place I've witnessed is to be able to imaginatively, in a physical way, touch aspects of life that cannot be touched.  I simply call this process making love.  I think and feel the importance of nature to me, and all of us, is in a line written by Henry David Thoreau in his book, “An American Landscape”:

  “It is vain to dream of wildness distant from ourselves.  There us nonesuch.  It is the bog of our brain and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

R. Joseph Culley

I was brought up in a home of visual artists and poets.  My parents, Bob and Betty Culley,were college professors and professional artists.  Grandma, on my mother's side, Gladys Schmitt, was a writer of adult historical fiction, children's books, and sonnets.  Gladys also developed one of the first creative writing programs in the country at Carnegie Tech,now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  I say this as a context of the forces that have shaped my artistic life.  Avery blessed one.  Currently, I have been focusing my creative efforts upon a percussion of India called tabla, performing fusion and Hindustani Classical music, landscape painting, teaching children visual art, and writing.  Now 60 years old, retirement for me is around the corner, and I plan to devote the rest of my life to being the best Dad I can for my “kiddos,”  Maya, Aliyah, and Liam, as well as painting, writing, and performing music,

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Standing Rock Cultural Arts is a non profit, 501(c)(3) charitable organization.  We invite and welcome sponsors to help cover expenses for our art and educational activities.   Donations are tax deductible.

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