Julianne Davidow, Author: "Outer Beauty, Inner Joy: Contemplating the Soul of the Renaissance"
foreword by Thomas Moore http://www.juliannedavidow.com/
Julianne Davidow has an enduring fascination with the art and philosophy of the Italian Renaissance. Since 1990, she has spent time living in both Rome and Venice, and has worked many years as a teacher, editor, translator, freelance writer, photographer, tutor, and coach. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in Comparative Literature and Religion, and the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Education, her interests also include mythology, psychology, Eastern philosophy, and pre-20th century and historical fiction. She is a practitioner of yoga and Buddhist meditation. Her workshops focus on how we can use these wisdom teachings to find beauty in our daily lives, forge a greater connection to the world around us, and open portals to our inner source of guidance and inspiration.

Renaissance Humanism: Listening to our Callings: The Daimon and Beyond.
During the Renaissance each person was said to be born with a guiding spirit called a daimon. This spirit or angel urges us onward through thoughts, feelings, signs, and symbols. This talk will look at some of the writings on the daimon, talk about the lives of some of the great Renaissance artists and see how they followed their daimons, and then move on to some others who followed them. We will also discuss some of the threads in our own lives, and observe how synchronicities, hunches, and urges have moved us in creative ways. (Video: by Scott Olsen.)

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Gary Lee, Texas historian & scholar of Hermetic Science:

The Visconti-Sforza Tarot as a Periodic Table of Creation and a Path to the Soul's Redemption. click to listen
(Video: by Scott Olsen.)

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Steve Bass, Architect, Fellow of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, New York, NY:

"Symbolic Geometry and Architectural Forms in Ancient Egypt."
listen to Part 1

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Ebenezer Sunder Singh, Fulbright Scholar of Fine Arts, originally from Chennai, India, studio and residence in Park Slope Brooklyn, NY:

Jungian Mandalas and Indian Mandalas.
Carl Gustav Jung is a latecomer from the western hemisphere to the world of Mandalas. Mandalas are the unified whole of a ‘being’ in a diagram. Since the western science and empirical thinking evolved along side the development of human brain, the study of psychology became the yardstick to measure the mind. When Carl Jung applied the science of reading mind into the art of Mandala, he supposedly thought that he has found a way to fathom the heart of the matter, the mind. But are the Indian Mandalas and Jungian Mandalas one and the same thing? What are the commonalities and dissimilarities in the philosophical and psychological evolution of the western-mind and the Spiritual and Personal evolution of the Eastern (Indian) mind?

How the abstract and minimalist art of the western contemporary art practice reached its present position from traditional Judeo-Christian symbolic routes and practices? How Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, Donald Judd and Dan Graham are psychologically closer to the artistic self of Indian Mandala artists yet far from the ‘being’ of their art making processes? If Carl Jung came closer to the psychological self of his patient through a Mandala drawing, why psychoanalysis never fathomed eastern religious practices (leave alone tribal religious practices)?

How science is ‘being’ personified, to an Indian Mandala artist? How the art of geometry is the extension of his inner body?

What is a Temple in India? Why do the erotic sculptures of a Hindu temple outside of the Temple and the Linga inside? What is Sri Yantra? Are sex and creativity one and the same thing? Sex is an artistic release to
a western artist and to a Mandala painter, yet how do they differ in their art making processes?

One thousand questions, ….and the answer is the creative art workshop, slide lecture and video presentation by E. Singh, a multidisciplinary artist from India living and practicing his art in New York. Come and join the ‘visual art rendezvous with E. Singh’ in knowing the similarities and differences between Indian Mandalas and Jungian Mandalas.

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