Busy Buddha
Mixed media on colored recycled paper
16.5” x 11.75”
2020

While the central Buddha maintains calm in her core posture, her arms and hands are active: from yielding sword and shield to holding a drone, an iPhone, a scissors, and a butterfly. The little characters rowing away (at bottom center as if being excreted) refer to artist David Zinn’s wizardry with wallcracks and sidewalks. Elements of nature flow through as does the airborne Corona Virus (droplets included). The Buddha feels like a “they” —it sources from my looking at photos books of Buddhist sculpture from ancient to contemporary. It also emanates from my own practice of trying to find stillness and equilibrium in a world so out of balance and in a time of such distress and disorientation. So this Buddha embodies “being” and “doing” as we must learn how to live both sorrow and joy in our body and in the body of the world!