rendering visions
on shaker gift drawings, mystery, & inspiration as gift
First things:
Next week, I'm teaching a workshop at London Writers' Salon on organizing and prioritizing ideas and writing projects. It's free for members, but tickets are open to the public. I'd love to see you there.
A few years ago, I bought a painting while visiting Hancock Shaker Village, a museum and former Shaker commune in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Drinking motel coffee from a paper cup, I wandered a fair of folk art, quilts, and Shaker crafts. It was a Sunday morning, and I was struck into stillness when I saw the painting.
The image was this: Against a background of trees and a pair of symmetrical flowering plants was the head of a cat with a bird in its teeth. I spent all morning thinking about the cat's green eyes and the bird's resignation. Before I left, I returned to the stall and bought it for $35, the first painting I ever purchased. I wondered why the image moved me the way it had, and the answer, I think, is that I was ready for anything strange and wonderful.
The night before, I'd watched friends get married in the woods. My hair down in a cobalt blue silk dress, we celebrated at a farmhouse made famous by a 1975 visit from Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, and Joan Baez. The woods were thick and green, chilly in late September, but there was warm cider and soft light, bonfires, and wide tables covered in fruit and bread. There was a wildflower labyrinth and a sprawling apple tree. And there was the bride in cream cashmere standing in the gloaming. The whole experience made me feel open to beauty and mystery.
On the same trip to Massachusetts, I came across Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings And Gift Songs, a book accompanying a 2001 exhibition at The Drawing Center in New York City. The artwork in the book was produced by the Shakers in the mid-nineteenth century, a period referred to as The Era of Spirit Manifestations.
Like the cat with the bird in its jaws, the images in the book mesmerized me, geometric patterns at once simple and enigmatic. I felt a pulsing sensation looking at them. I still do. After spending time with them, the world seems more mystifying, more vibrant.
The images produced by the Shakers are varied. Some depict celestial gardens and lush trees. Some include text: "Eternal Brightness" and "The Voice Rolling." There are patterns and prayers and cryptic motifs. Iconography rendered in pencil and watercolors includes flowering hearts, candles, trumpets and moons, hands reaching out of darkness. A crown of bright glory, a cup of holy water.
But the Shakers didn't refer to these images as drawings or art. They were called spirit messages, sacred rolls, or notices. They were called presents. Heart-shaped cut-outs with messages for friends were gifted as tokens of support and affection.
Children so naturally make art as gifts. My daughter regularly cuts out and paints pieces of printer paper, then presses them into my hands. It's a love-heart. For you. I want to write in this way—fervently and as offering.
I am lucky to have people I love, people I want to make things for. I have a friend who is so receptive of my excitement that I type their name at the top blank Word documents when I write. Every chapter becomes a raucous letter to them, and it is as if I can feel them beside me saying, Tell me everything—a gift. The writing becomes expansive, enlivened, bigger than me.
In the Shakers' Era of Spirit Manifestations, the completed drawings were not the only presents. The inspiration itself was a gift, too. Shakers called "instruments" received images, messages, and songs in dreams—gifts from the spirit world, artists acting as conduits for revelatory notices.
There's a story Elizabeth Gilbert shares in Big Magic about an idea she once had for a novel, and how the idea went off in search of another author when she failed to write the book. Gilbert also tells the story of Ruth Stone, who had to run like hell to capture poems as she felt inspiration coming for her.
I read once that Mary Oliver hid pencils in trees in the woods where she walked so she could catch ideas as they arrived. I've been thinking about the openness it takes to recognize inspiration, the care it takes to wrangle ideas, keep them, and usher them into being. It's a tender state to live in—one of awareness and sensitivity, allowing possibilities to reveal themselves.
The gift drawings remind me also of the Shakers’ reverence for community. These private revelations were not hoarded. They were created then shared as gifts, an integral part of communal existence. Revisiting Heavenly Visions and the gift drawings this week, I remembered the creativity generosity that I want to take into this new season. More mystery, more making, more sharing.
Anything I have loved has sprung from a place of mystery. If I can stay present with what I don't know, it gathers and intensifies, like a secret I'm slowly being let in on. I needed this reminder: That if I'm engaged with life—and art—in the way I want to be, the gifts become more clear and the mystery deepens.
This is so moving and inspiring. I love the idea of creation as an offering or a gift. Thank you for sharing!
This is so wonderful Lindsey! The art is so powerful in its mystery and joy of creation