We recently connected with Christopher Spinney and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Christopher, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
Not long after I graduated from college, I rigorously practiced Buddhism at a Rinzai Zen monastery in Japan. We spent much of our time there meditating, both sitting and otherwise. Many of the people living at the temple had been practicing with the teacher there for many years and even decades. My experiences during that time continue to exert a profound influence on my daily life and, furthermore, are foundational to understanding the story of my life on this planet. At the same time, I find it important to note that my younger brother died in a tragic accident less than a year after I had departed the temple. This turned my life upside down in ways that I found to be both deeply humbling and confusing, for much of the inner work I had done in the temple involved coming to grips with mortality–not only my own mortality but maybe more importantly the mortality of people I knew and loved. Of course losing someone close can be deeply challenging and difficult for anyone, and I didn’t feel that I was somehow exempt from that, but that experience really exposed the limits of whatever “deep wisdom” I had found during my time in the temple.
There is a parable our Zen teacher used to tell us that illustrates the importance of not getting too attached to any one event or circumstance (among other things). It goes something like there was once a man whose only horse got loose and ran away. His neighbors said that he must be devastated to have lost his horse, but he just smiled and said that it’s not merely a bad thing. A couple weeks later his horse returned, and brought with it a whole herd of wild horses, making the man instantly wealthy. The neighbors said what great fortune! But the man of course just smiled and replied that it was not just a good thing. The neighbors all thought what a strange man! Sometime after that as his son was riding one of the wild horses to tame it, the horse bucked him off and his leg was badly broken, certainly crippling him for life. This time the people said what a tragedy! The man replied that it not just a bad thing. And later that year all of the men in the village were conscripted to go fight in a brutal war, but his son was exempted on account of his crippled leg. How fortunate that the man would not lose his son! But the man of course just looked on these events with a certain detachment and equanimity. You get the idea.
I think it’s important to experience the feelings one has of being human, and to experience those as deeply as possible, but it’s also imperative that one not become too attached to any one feeling, or outcome, or thing. And for me, it’s also important to approach life with extreme humility. Time is both long as eternity and as fleeting as a flash of lightning. I once heard that Zen is like the ocean. The further you go, the deeper it gets!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I was lucky to study under some really unusual and wonderful professors at Lehigh University who opened my eyes and world in wonderful ways. One of my religion studies professors, Norman Girardot, was not only a world-renowned Taoist scholar, he was also deeply into folk art and artists. He regularly organized events at our school that I’d describe as happenings, in the 60s/Allan Kaprow sense, and he really lit a fire within me. My appreciation of the mundane as both beautifully weird and terribly profound comes directly from him. I also had the great fortune to meet some really interesting artists through him, like Howard Finster and Mr. Imagination (name?), and we once made a huge art park in a clearing on our campus. I had originally intended to study engineering, but things took a much more interesting turn for me once I started meeting teachers like Norman.
My art practice involves making work in the studio, things that can live in a home or gallery, ….”inside art” I might call it. But I also will engage in the public space too, like street art, and one of the things I like to do is wrap objects in brown paper and tie a ribbon on it, like presents. The first “present” I ever made was while I was at Lehigh. One of my friends and I wrapped a bus stop in the middle of the night–one of those open-air bus stops with walls and a roof and a bench inside. As we were putting the finishing touches on it, a campus police car polled up and asked us what we were doing. I told them something about it being an art project and we continued working on it, acting like we were supposed to be there. Luckily they drove off after asking us a few more things, but as soon as they were gone, we booked right outta there! Of course, we weren’t damaging anything but didn’t want them to come back and make us take it down prematurely. It felt like we were getting away with something for sure. Art! The cops did come back shortly after (we were hiding nearby somewhere) but they eventually just left it alone and moved along. The next day we observed it as people reacted to a giant present in the middle of all of these picturesque stone buildings. It seemed out of place and magical. Nobody knew where it had come from or why it was there, and I loved that! I still get a big kick out of wrapping things in public and injecting a bit of mystery, magic, and wonder into people’s everyday lives.
Have you ever had to pivot?
A few years ago I starting painting Daruma-sans, both on canvases and panels as well as on paper that I then pasted up outside in the public realm. In Japan, people give little Daruma-sans as gifts to family and friends around the new year, and the way it works is that you draw in an eye while you envision a goal or dream. Then Daruma-san, with his one eye, stares at you until you accomplish it or it comes to be, at which point you fill in the other eye. He supposed to be a strong symbol of perseverance and dedication, and the character originally comes from the story of Bodhidharma, who is the Zen patriarch of Japan. Bodhidharma (Daruma-san) was so intent on realizing his True Nature and experiencing a deep enlightenment that he sat intently meditating, staring at a wall for 9 years. As the story goes, he was so determined to do this that he did not get up at all (for anything!) so eventually his arms and legs rotted off, which is why the little Daruma-san dolls are essentially a torsoless head, but eventually he did apparently have some sort of deep experience. So when you see the Daruma-sans that I make with this context in mind, you will hopefully feel the intensity of a person in this state, just years deep in staring at a wall and ultra-determined to do what they’ve set out to do. I like the idea of suspending them in the activated state, where one eye is intently staring. There is something unsettling and incomplete about them, with only the one eye filled in, so I also like to counteract that energy with some balance–something to draw the viewer in more closely and not look away. I want to inspire viewers to push a little harder to become a better, fuller version of their own deepest selves and desires.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I find the process of making things with my hands to be both immediately gratifying and deeply satisfying. So that by itself is a good enough reason to be doing it, and that’s probably the most important thing about it for me at this moment. I’m not some kind of selfless saint, for sure. I do also think though that making art is something of an attempt at immortality, or at least a way to live beyond the extent of one’s mortal life, which feels like a very human urge. I do also appreciate the way I can connect with people through my art, with deep or unusual conversations and experiences that may persist into the future, long after encountering the art itself. That’s kind of magical!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gggonggg.com
- Instagram: @theresnoplacelikespin
- Other: https://www.mixcloud.com/theresnoplacelikespin/
