Majio

First There is a Mountain

2021

Majio has training in the United State, several years in Europe with a Master’s degree from the Buddhist University of Naropa in Creation Spirituality. Her most influential training however was in Japan over a twelve year period. Her initial trip to Japan was to study Buddhist Art, but it quickly narrowed to the traditional arts of Zen and masters if that orientation in other cultural arts. It was not so much what was learned in a papermaking village, kimono dyeing studio or the making, filling and firing woodburning kilns but how to learn or, better said, how to practice. There are many words in Japanese for practice, the one here is the polishing of being. In painting, Majio has always flowed back and forth between figurative and abstract expression. The aesthetics and Cultural Arts--- like calligraphy and tea ceremony---- garnered during her apprenticeships in Japan, along with Zen practices and concepts weave many textures into her work. Majio’s pieces are created with the overarching concept that art is not a polarity between object and subject but rather, complementary, where each part works to define each other. Working from a collaborative process-with materials, with subject and with times, Majio releases herself as sole agent, even when hers are the only hands that touch the piece. This carries out to the viewer, opening a sense of participation, evoking involvement and discussion. Inviting a realization of recognizing and choosing to acknowledge a reality beyond what we have inherited provides a platform for evoking possibilities, innate joy and new vision.