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One day, we’re all going to die. But, according to local geo-dreamscape artist Gemma Bayly, this prognosis isn’t so grim. In her enlightening exhibition, You Are Going to Die and That is OK, Bayly skillfully explicates the notion that death doesn’t exist. “It’s a condition of the space-time continuum and a symptom of our attachment to the physical,” she says.
The artist’s trademark symmetrical ink-on-cotton mandalas, which can take up to three weeks to complete and are strangely reminiscent of those Spirograph drawings you toiled over in grade school, come with a crazy secret: They’re hand-drawn without rulers. The artist, a certified Usui Reiki practitioner, douses individual pieces in her healing energy, which makes them “conduits of cosmic energy,” according to Bayly, who never signs the front of these pieces. Alongside her mandalas, Bayly will reveal her oil paintings for the first time. And, tonight only, she’ll be doing a collaborative art piece with viewers that she’ll publicly burn upon completion. “In the destruction,” explains Bayly, “will be the recognition that no fire can ever burn the essence that is you.”
You Are Going to Die opens tonight with a 6 p.m. reception at Black Book Gallery, 555 Santa Fe Drive, and runs through February. Visit theblackbookgallery.com for more information.
Mondays-Saturdays. Starts: Feb. 15. Continues through March 1, 2014
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