Bodhisattva 1: Turn On — Deadhead, Dancing

I am obsessed with creating art out of dead flowers. This image is a composite of one original image, stripped and reconstructed in layers. It also includes photographs of dead flowers that I had taken over the years.

The central face in the picture appeared to me in what I can only describe as art-induced trance: it appeared in the corner of a larger picture I was working on for my BODHISATTVA series. It looked strangely familiar, and I started working on elaborating on it and layering around it.

The title is an homage to the dead flowers, as well as to generations of psychonauts and seekers who might have referred to themselves as deadheads – in deference to the transformative influence of the Grateful Dead.

It is also the first of the trilogy and refers to the very first of Timothy Leary’s three stages towards enlightenment – TURN ON.

“Like every great religion, we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present —turn on, tune in, drop out.”
– Timothy Leary, 1967 (transcript, documentary SUMMER OF LOVE, PBS and WGBH, 2007)

“Turn on’ meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one [but not the only] way to accomplish this end.”
— Timothy Leary, FLASHBACKS (1983)