RavenCircle Creations

Art for openning doorways of perception

RAVENCIRCLE  CREATIONS

 Donald J Voss Jr

Toltec Artist

Welcome to my artistic pages.   This area is being dedicated to the art itself.  Hope everyone enjoys the work. 

I enjoy painting the most.  My favorite medium is ink on paper, though I have great connection to acrylics.  The very act of creating a mark on paper has always excited me.  From that, I grew to love paper making... and then print making.  Copper etching printed intaglio style (print the groove) are a feature of my work's expression.  Then along the road came book creation.  The act of creating images in a group, series and sequencing ideas electrified my imagination.  From there is was a small leap into "book arts".  I have grown to enjoy that form the most because I can mix and match all aspect of ink, writing, image, message and meaning, especially symbolic meanings wrapped up in story. 

Below is a great video introduction of my work.  The video was developed by my wife who designs websites.   

CREATION - an artist's statement

Any act of creation begins with an act of destruction.  To modify the world, to beautify, we must risk to destroy it.  As we take responsibility for these acts, we come to know the effects of our creations on creation.  We are free to move in any direction we choose as long as we take responsibility for the world we change.  To balance this with this beauty the necessities of the earth, our mother, some acts must be abandoned and others discovered to walk in a better way on her and with each other.  This is the beauty way, a walk in creative partnership with life.  Thus the artist journies within as they journey without.  We become the art of inner and outer vision through our acts of creation.  Art is the courage to share this journey with others, to let the work tell the story and to be open

BOOKS

The archology of knowledge...

Books are a record of an event, a story of a time, an understanding of knowledge, a passing down, and to each other the thoughts and ideas that are in the mind of the creator.  Books record, but more than that, books change the fundamental structure of awareness by their being read and viewed.  They can sit for many years, like Nag Hammadi, lost to generations until discovered again.  They are at all times, a crack into the awareness of a living world, a view into the times which they were made or a look into the depths of the universal experience of being.  Books are sacred objects, reveared for their ability to translate us out of one state and into another.  Books are structures of paper, paint, thread and more which can be carried from one place to another.  Books are art off-the-wall, held in the hand, savored in the heart/mind within the intimacy of the viewer.  Books are doorways of perceptions, windows to worlds we never knew possible. 

Crafting a book is working in series and sequence with bits of knowledge and experience, a map, a movement of awareness as it unfolds in time.  The books I love most are about mapping awareness.  The map may be just that, a journey into territory never before seen.  It may be a chart, a graph of knowledge, like mandalas.  The book may be a story of ceremony or a holy object of awareness.  These arcane items are often difficult to read.  I enjoy sharing the experience of being in and with a book.  The story is written in the perception of the mind of the viewer.  Yes, there is a story for me, but what interests me more is illuminating a story that I never thought possible with the elements of the stories unfolding in the hands of the viewer.  The characters, writing, colors, symbols and structure are a hint as to what the meaning is.  But it is not fixed, it is fluid.  Fixed stories bore me.  Rather, ever-unfolding stories that can be read a million times in a thousand ways always engaged me.  This energy keeps me putting pen and brush to paper, sewing bindings, gluing boards and placing these relics of our times out there in the world.

My wife and I live a life of wonderous beauty in Northern Colorado.  We are gathering people of like mind and creation together to share in the sacred pathway we call humans being.  Please feel free to check out our other connections on the websites below.  And thank you for taking the time to share in the mystery we know as undefinable beauty and wonder.  Feel free to contact me at djvoss@lpbroadband.com at any time.  Conversations about awareness and art are always invited.

 Also see www.ravencircle.com and www.ravencircle.org