Arts and Consciousness Series

The Lucid Art Foundation hosts an online program including webinars and lectures to explore the connection between Arts and Consciousness. To be notified about the series and all our programs, please please join our mailing list here. The first term was September 2021- June 2022. The second term was September - November 2022.The lectures are presented by art historians, curators, and artists/educators. The webinars are designed to provide participants an in-depth group experience. Please note: all lectures and webinars are recorded, and the Zoom recording link will be sent to all registrants regardless of attendance. Also, all meetings are Pacific Time Zone (Los Angeles).

For any assistance, please email Nancy Lund: education@lucidart.org

Our Series will return. To be notified about the series and all our programs, please please join our mailing list here.

Fall 2021 Lectures

Bogzaran will explore the concept of Lucid Art and its historical development that is rooted in the research of art, science, and consciousness. The definition of Lucid Art connects deeply with the spirit of nature, exploration of the mind, and expression through the arts. Bogzaran will discuss stages of consciousness within dreaming, moving from symbolic narrative to abstraction, and the movement of art from surrealism to the emergence of Lucid Art. She will speak about the essential role of artists as agents of change in the current global atmosphere.

Fariba Bogzaran, PhD, is an artist/scientist who coined the term Lucid Art after her research on lucid dreams, arts, and consciousness. With the surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford, she envisioned the Lucid Art Foundation where she is the founding director. She is a practicing artist and her 30-year retrospective exhibition Lucidity was held at the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco (2013). She founded and directed the first graduate-level dream studies certificate program at JFK University in Berkeley, California, where she taught for the Consciousness Studies and Arts and Consciousness Departments for two decades. Among her many publications are two coauthored books: Extraordinary Dreams (2002) and Integral Dreaming (2012), both published by State University of New York Press. She was the editor of the award-winning book Gordon Onslow Ford: A Man On a Green Island (2019).

This lecture is an examination of how arts and consciousness are intertwined throughout culture and history—paleolithic, shamanic, linguistic, and mathematical sources. Grady will discuss “visual archetypes” as the foundation of sacred art throughout human history. The evolution of sacred space and image and their connections to various spiritual traditions throughout the world will be explored as well as the implications of sacred traditions in the contemporary art world—installation, environmental art, social practice, and relational aesthetics.

Mike Grady, MFA, is a painter, writer, and educator. He was the chair of the Department of Arts and Consciousness at JFK University, in California, and a former Vice President of the San Francisco Art Institute. Grady is currently a professor of studio art at Appalachian State University, North Carolina, and is an advisory professor in the International MFA program at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. He developed the MFA program at JFK University (1996) with an extensive curriculum addressing Arts and Consciousness. Grady has taught art at the college level for over 40 years and has a special interest in Asian art, philosophy, and spirituality.

The Evolution of Imagery is a three-part lecture series that takes an overview of the processes of image-making in general and painting and drawing in particular, with reference to processes of Printmaking, Photography, and Film and expanded fields of sculpture and installation.  

The series will explore the evolution of pictorialism within the context of understanding the evolution of images in relationship to ancient shelters and the foundational significance of architecture as a major contributing factor in the development and notion of imagery from symbol, icon, mimesis, and pictorial construction towards the possibilities of abstraction. In this lecture series, Morgan will share his ongoing research on this topic.

Jeremy Morgan, MFA, has been facilitating artist’s seminars for the Lucid Art Foundation for over ten years. He was a professor of painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and taught at the Arts and Consciousness Department at JFK University in Berkeley, California. He is a Visiting Professor and PhD supervisor at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Art-University at Shanghai, as part of the international PhD program, as well as a Visiting Professor at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Morgan is a painter and has exhibited his work internationally.

Fall 2021 Webinar

Mind-Matter-Process: Drawing and Painting
with Jeremy Morgan (see photo and bio above)
Saturdays: October 23, November 20, and December 11

A master in method, materials, and critique, Morgan will give feedback on each participant’s artwork. The aim of these webinars is to expand artists’ understanding and relationship to their artwork by exploring the nonrepresentational aspects of the inner worlds as well as encouraging dialogue about Arts and Consciousness. The webinars will include sessions that focus on material/technical issues and processes as a corollary to the technical aspects as they relate to concepts and intentions. The webinar’s aim is to specifically engage in an exploration of visual creativity as a fusion of thinking and making, and to offer insight to individual and collective interests. Each participant will engage in a one-on-one consultation with Morgan to review the artist’s work within the webinar format. Artists will be selected for each session to present their work and Morgan will provide nonjudgmental support and feedback.

Winter 2022 Lectures

This lecture will explore the work of contemporary women artists, such as Shirazeh Houshiary, Alma Thomas, and Ruth Asawa, from a variety of traditions whose work explores Arts and Consciousness. Using the repetition of an individual mark, these artists construct an architecture of transformation. In their artworks, activities, and roles, they emerge as contemporary urban shamans. This talk will investigate the process, conditions, and traditions from which these artists draw inspiration and explore how they create opportunities for viewers’ transformation of consciousness.

Jennie Braman, MFA, is an artist and educator. She is a graduate of both JFK University’s MFA in Arts and Consciousness and Dream Studies program, and received her BA in Art History, with a concentration in Women’s Studies, from Williams College. As full time faculty in Studio Art and Art History at Berkeley City College, in Berkeley, California, she has brought key tenets of art and the creative conscious to public education for over a decade.

Remedios Varo (1908-1963) and Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) became surrealists through their male partners--Benjamin Péret and Max Ernst, respectively. After meeting briefly in Paris, they reconnected as exiles in Mexico City in the early 1940s. Separated from their surrealist male counterparts, they developed a personal style, a very close friendship, and an artistic collaboration based on their common interest in a variety of esoteric teachings and practices, such as magic, alchemy, tarot, astrology, cabala, and the development of consciousness. This talk will explore their creative dialogue.

Tere Arcq, MA, is an art historian and independent curator living in Mexico City. She has worked as chief curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City (2003–2006), where she cocurated The Art of Mark Rothko: Collection from The National Gallery of Art exhibition. Additionally at the Museo, she organized Remedios Varo: Five Keys (2008) and edited the accompanying book Five Keys to the Secret Lives of Remedios Varo and Alice Rahon: A Surrealist in Mexico. She was cocurator of Surreal Friends: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna (Norwich, England, 2010); In Wonderland: The Adventures of Women Surrealists in Mexico (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2012); and Leonora Carrington: Magical Tales, a retrospective exhibition (Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico, 2018). She has been Professor of Art History at Centro de Cultura Casa Lamm and has given lectures on Mexican modern art, European avant-garde, and women surrealists in Mexico, the US, Europe, and Asia. Her current projects include: Surrealists Encounters: A Dialogue between the Boijmans collection and Surrealism in Mexico at Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, June 2022; Leonora Carrington (retrospective), ARKEN Museum, Copenhagen, September 2022, that travels to Mapfre Foundation, Madrid, February 2023; and a Remedios Varo exhibition, Chicago Art Institute, cocurated with Caitlin Haskell, Summer 2023. 

Guanxi: The Art of Relationality and Spiritual Connection 
with Mike Grady (see photo and bio above)
March 26

This lecture will examine the changes in our notion of spirituality and ultimate meaning in the new millennium. Spirituality itself has evolved into something we could not have foreseen in the late modern era – fifty years ago. The new spirituality reflected by the art of the 21st century is no longer focused on a dualistic “I-Thou” relationship with the Divine, but instead is based upon the internet age of mass interconnection and relationality. It is spirituality in the era of “radical relativism.” The Chinese word “guanxi'“- literally “relationship” – seems to perfectly describe the new emphasis on global interconnection as the new spirituality reflected in art and media. We will examine how the age of relativism – the Anthropocene – has affected our basic assumptions about spiritual experience through art in a variety of genres and media. Considering the “non-dual,” the “trans-rational,” and “relational art,” as new paradigms for artistic expression and self-affirmation will be core to our discussion.

Winter 2021 Webinar

Mind-Matter-Process: Drawing and Painting
with Jeremy Morgan
Saturdays: January 22, February 19, March 5, and March 19
See description under Fall 2021 Webinar

Spring 2022 Lectures

Historically, all cultures have expressed themselves through some form of painting, sculpture, and performance. These practices have been used to illuminate their political, religious, and folk beliefs. They built huge architectural edifices and adorned them with powerful narrative images to transmit cultural traditions and achieve states of awe among the population. In our present epoch, these practices have remained central to our need to communicate sophisticated ideas using billboards and high-tech media to transmit historical narratives and abstract ideas. In the late twentieth century, this technological and artistic process has evolved to produce a new multi-disciplinary way of impacting modern audiences. Contemporary artists have a full range of tools at their disposal to engage society with sophisticated concepts designed to influence individual desires and satisfy perceived needs.

Dewey Crumpler, MFA, is an Associate Professor of Painting at San Francisco Art Institute. His current work examines issues of globalization/cultural co-modification through the integration of digital imagery, video, and traditional painting techniques. Crumpler’s works are in the permanent collections of the California African American Museum; Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara; and Oakland Museum of California. He received the Flintridge Foundation Award and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship as well as The Fleishhacker Foundation Fellowship Eureka Award. Currently represented by Jenkins Johnsons Gallery, Collapse is Crumpler’s most recent exhibition at the Hedreen Gallery of Seattle University. He currently has a solo exhibition at the Derek Eller Gallery in New York City and a 15-year survey exhibition at the Richmond Art Center in Richmond, California.

The History of Art as a Spiritual Practice
with Mike Grady (see photo and bio above)
May 14

The connection between artistic expression and “spiritual experience” has been understood as a defining principle of art since the beginnings of humanity. Examining the mystery of dreams, healing, life, death, and visionary experience has long been a primary function of all art across time and culture. This lecture will examine the development of art as an “individual” spiritual practice, separate from traditional religious and indigenous cultural ways. We will closely examine how the role of “spirituality” has changed in the modern and post-modern eras. Special attention will be given to the educational practices associated with seeing art as a spiritual path and ways in which the emerging artist can be supported in the quest for a broader and more all-encompassing view of the world through the practice of individual expression. Examples of art from diverse cultural and historical perspectives will be offered to develop strategies for learning (and teaching) personal self-expression as a primary spiritual practice.

Fall 2022

“The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art” lecture is based on a major exhibition of the same name curated by Dawn Adès for the Vancouver Art Gallery, 2011, that included not only work in all mediums by artists associated with the surrealist movement, but also work by First Nations artists of the Northwest Coast that the surrealists treasured. The often-surprising juxtapositions underlined the surrealists’ exploratory and open approach to visual magic. The lecture will include discussion of individual pieces such as Miro’s painting Photo: this is the Colour of my Dreams and many installation shots.

Dawn Adès, MA, is a Fellow of the British Academy; a former trustee of the Tate (1995–2005) and National Gallery, London (2000–2005); Professor Emerita of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex; and Professor of the History of Art at the Royal Academy. She was made CBE in 2013 for her services to art history. Adès has curated or cocurated significant exhibitions over the past forty years, including Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (Hayward Gallery, 1978), Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820–1980 (South Bank Centre, London, 1989), Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930–1945 (Hayward Gallery, 1995), the centenary retrospective of Salvador Dalí at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice (2004), The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2011), Dali/Duchamp (Royal Academy, 2017), and was Associate Curator for Manifesta 9 (2012). She has published widely on photomontage, Dada, surrealism, women artists, Mexican muralists, and modernist photography. A collection of her important essays, Writings on Art and Anti-Art, was published in 2015.

In 2003, Celia Rabinovitch published the pioneering book Surrealism and the Sacred: Power, Eros and the Occult in Modern Art. This lecture focuses on themes from this book. She will also discuss her current research on “Understanding the Surrealist Imagination” and her recent book Duchamp's Pipe - A Chess Romance: Marcel Duchamp & George Koltanowski (2020).

Celia Rabinovitch, PhD, is an artist, writer, and professor. She received her PhD from McGill in religions and art history and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin. She is a former Professor and Director of the School of Art, University of Manitoba, Canada. She has taught at the University of Colorado, California College of the Arts, and San Francisco Art Institute and has directed programs in fine arts at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books Surrealism and the Sacred: Power, Eros and the Occult in Modern Art (2003) and Duchamp’s Pipe: A Chess Romance (2020) connect art, biography, poetry, and spiritual experience. She has exhibited her paintings in Canada, the United States, and Europe and has been artist in residence at Syracuse University and the University of Victoria (Centre for Studies in Religion and Society).

The Keys to the Secret World of Remedios Varo
with Tere Arcq (see photo and bio above)
November 12

The Five Keys to the Secret World of Remedios Varo, a book that became an exhibition with the same title, explores the profound meaning behind Remedios Varo’s mysterious paintings. Conceived and edited by Tere Arcq in collaboration with international scholars, Fariba Bogzaran among them, the book explores Varo’s pictorial world through five major themes or “keys”: the mystical, the surrealist, sacred geometry and architecture, the influence of her readings, and the interpretation of her own dreams. This lecture will discuss the genesis of the project, the collaboration with the Lucid Art Foundation, in particular the Gordon Onslow Ford archives, as well as the book’s contribution towards the recognition of this artist.

Individual Sessions for Painters  
with Jeremy Morgan (see photo and bio above)
September-December

A master in method, materials, and critique, Morgan will provide nonjudgmental support and feedback on the individual’s paintings in these one-on-one sessions. The aim of these sessions is to expand painters’ understanding and relationship to their artwork by exploring the nonrepresentational aspects of the inner worlds as well as encouraging dialogue about Arts and Consciousness. They are designed for artists who are interested in receiving individualized feedback, consultation, and critique. Each session is one hour (you can purchase up to 4 sessions/hours), held either on Zoom or at the artist’s studio (only if it is located in Marin County, East Bay, or San Francisco). This is not a group webinar.