Reviews for Landfall Press: 25 Years of Printmaking

The average rating for Landfall Press: 25 Years of Printmaking based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-04-18 00:00:00 Carol Mikoski I was drawn to Daniel Statekov's book, "Animated Earth: A Story of Peruvian Whistles and Transformation" because of my experience with the Peruvian Whistles in 2007 while at the Cuyamungue Institute in New Mexico. I joined with a number of other whistle blowers in the Kiva at the Institute and we blew life into the clay vessels. The eerie sound with its overtones was quite trance inducing for calling the spirits. I think we used seven vessels. Daniel Statnekov's book is of a very personal journey beginning with the purchase of his first vessel at an auction in 1972. He was living a life of financial prosperity in Eastern Pennsylvania. He referred to where he lived as a little estate and he was living as a country squire. His first experience with the whistle vessel took him flying through the universe on a journey that ended in terrifying blackness, an experience that told him of the black emptiness of his life as a scheming business executive, a life of trying to impress others and making a name for himself. As a result of this transformational experience he became obsessed with the whistle vessel such that he eventually quit his job and left his marriage of affluence. He began enjoying walking in the nearby woods and fields, and breathing the colors of the flowers into his body. His research into the whistle vessel first led him to Philadelphia's Franklin Institute where the whistle was evaluated by an acoustic engineer who offered nothing noteworthy, nor did an EKG evaluation of while blowing the whistle. He wrote many letters in his search for answers and eventually received an answer from the curator of the American Museum of Natural History who he found had a collection of these whistles, some over two thousand years old and from a number of different pre-Inca Peruvian cultures including the Chimu, Chancay and Mocha. His whistle was made by the powerful Chimu people of between 1200 and 1500 AD in a territory that stretched for about 600 miles through a Peruvian river valley. When the Inca came into power the Chimu were absorbed into the Inca culture. The curator had nothing to add to Statnekov's interest in the spiritual or ritualistic use of the whistle while describing the anthropological interest in the whistles as limited to cataloguing and describing them and that the vessels were considered amusing as liquid containers. The vessels were referred to as "huaca" or spiritual objects. In Peru everything is thought of as alive. The smallest object has a soul. The llama, potatoes, rocks, and rivers all have "huacas." A person's body is "alpacamasca" literally translated as Animated Earth, the book's title. The curator told him of the creation myth of Viracocha creating heaven and earth and causing the sun and moon to rise out of Lake Titicaca. He then fashioned man out of clay and breathed life into him. This triggered the thought that the potters who made these whistles were re-enacting the creation myth, though the curator thought Statnekov's thought was highly speculative. The curator did suggest that an acoustic evaluation of a larger number of these vessels might be revealing and suggested that Statnekov have his acoustical engineer come to the museum to evaluate the other whistles. One thing noted in this evaluation was that with most musical instruments the sound is projected outward, but with these whistles the sound was directed back onto the blower. The sounds were in a very narrow range of frequencies. Nothing otherwise was noteworthy of the whistles except for one which had at least five overtones, tones that would resonate in one's head. Statnekov's questions took him beyond the protocol of anthropology as he sought to understand the spiritual dimension of these whistle vessels. His practice of its spiritual dimension is beyond the anthropologist's concrete cataloging and description of where and when such artifacts are found and made. This pursuit eventually put him at odds with a number of academics. This conflict I found especially interesting in that the anthropologist Felicitas Goodman's interest and practice in ecstatic trance must have placed her also at odds with mainstream anthropology. Her research into the induction of ecstatic or shamanic trance, her practice and valuing of this form of trance and the re-enactment of this shamanic practice did not fit with the research protocol of an anthropologist. The personal value I find in the practice of ecstatic trance as an instructor of this trance state, a topic that I have frequently written about, would also place me in the same at odds position. Statnekov's research to this point was published in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology in 1974. A professor of Andean Studies in Los Angeles found Statnekov's theory of specifically pitched whistles intriguing, which led Statnekov to Los Angeles. At this point he had bought two more whistles and when all three were played together the effect was astonishing. As he reported, it sounded like a cyclone in the room with the feeling of the sound traveling through his head, washing his mind. In Los Angeles he contacted the Director of the U.C.L.A. Museum of Cultural History and found that the director had a storeroom full of items made by the people who made the whistles including a number of whistles. When experimenting with this new find of whistles he found they had the same effect. Also available at the museum was an extensive collection of around ten thousand photographs of Moche pottery, a more recent culture from the same river valley as the Chimu. This pottery was highly decorated with painted scenes of the life of the Moche. He was given the opportunity to study these photographs and looked for scenes of how these whistle vessels were used in the culture. Many of the pottery in these pictures had been found in graves. The studying of these ten thousand pictures took Statnekov several months. Many of the scenes showed in the top-half fantastic half-animal half-human figures while the bottom half were of scenes of daily life. The top-half were suggestive of spirit journeying. But no whistle vessel was to be seen in this artwork. He was drawn to the conclusion that these spirit vessels were of such sanctity that they could not be portrayed, but he could tell no one of his speculative thinking. While at UCLA he also met a professor in acoustical physics who invited him to demonstrate these whistles to his class of graduate students. The effect of blowing into five whistles was explained as an example of an auditory beat in the brain. When the range of pitch of these whistles is narrow the overtones create a beat in the brain. One graduate student wanted to continue in this research with Statnekov. Together they found that playing a number of the whistles at the same time produced up to seven overtones of the basic frequency, overtones that integrated with each other to create the beats that enhanced the overall effect. They found that the whistles from a particular culture were very close together in frequency but different from those of other cultures. The Gallinazo, Vicus and Moche whistles fell within the 1200 to 1300 cycle range; the Chancey and Recuay in the 2000-2100 range and the Chimu and Inca in the 2600 to 2800 range. Seventy three whistles were examined in this research. This was the first real evidence these whistles were created with specific intent. Word of the results of this research spread and Statnekov was invited to demonstrate the effect of the whistles at Esalen in the Big Sur. There he learned of the teaching that air contains an esoteric substance or principle from which all vital activity of life is derived. In playing the whistles an otherworldly wail of phantom tones saturated the room. One explanation is that the brain makes a tremendous effort to locate the sound that does not have a location in space so cannot be processed in the usual way. From a group of physicists who were visiting Esalen he learned that the synchronized electrical activity between hemispheres of the brain is a "frequency following response," with the brain's electrical activity following the beta waves of 30 cycles/sec of normal brain electrical activity, the alpha waves of deep relaxation are 8 to 12 cycles/sec, or the delta waves of deep sleep are 1 to 3 cycles per second. Consciousness may not be biological but universal like is found with sub-atomic particles with no clear separation between matter and space. Mystics say all is one, that everything of the universe is interdependent and all are interconnected, "a living reality conscious of itself. Only man's mind divides the world in space and time, but all is "connected through the spirits." Concerning the relativity of time, light from the North Star takes 640 years to reach Earth, light from the sun takes eight minutes, and from the two bright stars in Orion's Belt take 1100 and 1500 years to get here. What you see is the results of different events that only appear to you as happening at the same time. Only your mind orders events into a sequence that you define as "time." The universe is an aggregate of non-simultaneous events. In the spiritual realm there is no division of time, of past, present and future. From a Tibetan Buddhist who had a bone ceremonial trumpet he learned that it was made from the thigh bone of a woman who during her lifetime was considered a person of deep and peaceful persuasion and holy. The Tibetan tradition is that after death such holiness remains in a cellular alignment within their bones. When breath is blown through the bone molecules of their holy substance are released into the air along with our breath, invoking their memory. From Statnekov's first trip to Peru, Cusco and Machu Picchu one thing noted was seven nooks in an ancient wall that he thought might have been for seven whistles. Returning to California he found a potter in Santa Monica who was willing to work with him in making replicas of the vessel whistles, a project that took him several years to perfect. Statnekov's continued research to understand the power of the Peruvian whistle took him to a gathering of the Rainbow Family near Chimayo, New Mexico where he was to demonstrate the whistles. There he observed a healing circle and learned that dis-ease is characterized as a disturbance in the body's natural rhythms like breathing and heart rate, the so called biorhythms, and that a change in a rhythm changes the whole person. Early healers discovered that sounds could bring about balance or equilibrium with these rhythms. He then moved to a place a short distance from the Cuyamungue Institute where I was first introduced to these whistles, to Chimayo where he began assembling two whistles each morning. On his second visit to Peru, this time with four others including Andrew Weil, a Dutch woman of the group explained to him the legend of the acoustical key that foretells that one day a certain sound will unlock for us an ancient door that leads to an altogether different reality, a different dimension. Special priests reputed to be scientists of sound supposedly could cut large stones along precise harmonic lines and then move the stones into position through resonating sound, thus they were able to build the great megaliths found around the world. The ancients with their exceptional power to move mountains and build the pyramids showed Statnekov another explanation of the powers of the people of the time of the whistle. Though I am an extremely long way from being able to cut stone and move boulders, with my continued practice of ecstatic trance I am discovering more and more power from these trance experiences.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-03-18 00:00:00 Jeffrey Kerata This reminded me a little of the 'Celestine prophecy', but different. I had heard about it because I am always interested in reading about how people find their way into working with clay, and Statnekov falls into the art form sideways through his new age explorations and experimentation with sound. The memoir doesn't really discuss the pottery making side of it until the last part of the book. But what it does do is give you a tiny peephole view of what life was like in the 70s around different parts of the world, and in the borders of counterculture back then. I enjoyed the story of it, but not sure what I think of it. I only wish the author had included photos of his handmade sets of whistles in the book, it would have been great to have seen them after reading about their creation.