Learning the Language of Nature

Published first in C Magazine Within Fall 2019/ Winter 2020 edition

My creative work is deeply influenced by nature, the earth elements and the non-human world that we live in and are surrounded by. I express myself through different materials, mediums and elements. I create primarily in sculpture and photography, while weaving in elements of site specific installations, performances and rituals in which nature becomes a collaborative partner and a co-creative force.

I was born and raised in a small town in Germany were I studied carpentry and became a furniture designer and sculptor. I was blessed to be born into a family lineage of skilled craftsman and apprenticed with accomplished master craftsman and artists of European descent. As a founding member of a theater group I learned to love theater as a way of expressing ideas. The unique experience of being involved in rehearsals, performances and the process of creating original plays as a collective gave me an appreciation for the power of performance to shape conscious community.

In my late 20’s, I moved to Los Angeles to explore my passion for acting, theater and film. I first became involved as a student and later as a teacher, co-founding a school for film-actors and artists. The creative and collaborative medium of performance art helped me tremendously to develop as an artist; to connect to my emotions and my inherent need to express myself from a place of vulnerability.  

After spending many years predominantly in the city, in what I call the “urban jungle” I felt called to reconnect to nature. I moved to Northern California to access areas of wilderness. Much of my co-creative process with the natural world emerged in this time.  In the natural world, I find deep inspiration; a spaciousness that allows my creativity to flow. The mountains, the trees, the meadows, the sky connect me to my German roots and give me a sense of belonging to this earth. These elements show up as the guides and key players in my creative journey, offering unlimited resources with which to express my artistic vision. Nature becomes my canvas and studio.  

Looking back on that chapter of my life, I realize I was led to the natural world to find ways to express myself from a deeper place; that my role as an artist was inside of me, and my path was to create and to collaborate with the natural world and elements.

 In 2010, I started to spent much of my time being alone in nature. I learned to listen and recognize its voice. The creeks and streams speak to me. The birds, the trees, the stones. I deepened my relationship to these primal signs and voices, walking the land, collecting materials and ideas for my work. These extended excursions were a form of vision-quest where I became one with the natural world and received its wisdom. I now express that earth wisdom through my art and in my life.

Making art has always been part of my life - but somehow this felt different. During my times in nature I discovered a deeper connection on an embodied level to who I am as a human, a man, and an artist. This was the authentic source of inspiration that I had been seeking. It was as if I had to learn or remember ‘the language of nature’ to deepen my creative and spiritual path.

The vibrancy and aliveness I feel in nature allowed for insights to arise with ease. From this I access my creative practice by working with the found materials or the photographic images I have taken. Found materials, dead or partially decayed trees call out to me as if they want to be worked on and brought back to life as sculptures and objects that carry the sacred vibration of nature. I work with these tree spirits to help the soul of the trees and their messages to emerge.

The field of connectedness with nature keeps opening up. My artistic process is a form of  meditation with the intention of aligning the viewer with the non-human and spiritual world.

As the public encounters my work, they experience these transmissions. My work with trees is about freeing their blessings, their encoded healing power. It is through this reciprocal process that I was able to reconnect to what is sacred, alive and wholesome within myself. I create my art work, I transmit the sacredness of the land and all of creation, not only in a conceptual way, but as an actual embodied and felt experience. 

In 2015, I lost my art studio, tools and all my belongings in a massive wildfire. I also lost much of the nature and trees that surrounded the area where I lived and worked. It was an event that changed my life completely. At first it seemed impossible to ever be creative again, not knowing how to start over or where to begin. I had so much grief in my heart for the loss and destruction of so many trees, my dear friends and creative partners. 

Step by step I worked through the trauma of the fire. Healing, which seemed not to be possible at first, started to happen. I owe much of this to the strength of the community of artists that came together to grieve and work collectively through the trauma. I rediscovered once again the strength, resilience and beauty of nature, even in the hell realm of so much death and destruction.

Working creatively within the loss, the ashes and the destruction became a pathway to renewed life. I felt an urgent call to change the way we relate to nature. Feeling my own suffering, I began to see the suffering we inflict upon our entire planet and our population. It became clear to me that I must direct my work toward creating awareness. 

Where my earlier found sculptures were made to transmit the healing power of the trees, my next body of work focuses on how to restore, protect and honor nature. The intention with recent works like ‘Resurrection’ is to convey the truth about the ruthless destruction and plunder of resources. The wildfire showed me the wounds that we humans have inflicted on nature. This was a wakeup call in my life and a choice-point: Do I give up or dedicate myself even more fully to a renewed alliance with nature?

What made it possible for me to work through this catastrophe was once again my artistic practice, nature and the strength of working together as a community of like-minded artists, healers and activists. What I gained was understanding the creative principle of destruction and rebirth – from which an even stronger bond and love for the sacredness and mystery expressed so beautifully in nature, emerged.

A teaching keeps emerging from this, a way of being in relationship with nature that has respect for the sacredness of creation at its core. Once nature is experienced on this level it will translate into respect for all life as sacred. Respect and care for nature and life is what we as humans, and especially men, must cultivate and practice again. 

Joseph Beuys, the visionary German Artist, called this process a ‘social sculpture’ to describe and embody his understanding of art’s potential to transform society (* “The central idea of a social sculptor is an artist who creates structures in society using language, thoughts, actions, and objects”). He was right. We are all artists after all. And with that comes a responsibility to express our agency to choose and to work together on the larger artwork, (“das Gesamtkunstwerk”), which is our life, our communities and the world we live in. 

Today I am grateful for the experience of loss, grief and catastrophe on the level that I experienced it. I gained deep insight into the natural world and into our inherent oneness with nature - within and without. We are not separate. We are not above nature. When the masculine and feminine forces are in balance, working together and supportive of each other, not as competitors or opponents, but as partners and friends, we once again become co-creators in this ever new dance of creation.