Memory Box: An Anthem to Time
Walter Jule. Digital print on paper. 22 x 128 in. (4 works each 21.75 x 16.5 x 1.25 in.) 2021.
A lifelong fascination with the “other” has drawn me to study world art, architecture, philosophy, and “wisdom traditions,” culminating in extensive practice of Zen Buddhism in Japan. My “so-called” identity has been shaped not so much by where I come from or where I live today, but WHEN I lived, studied, traveled, etc. The first image I saw on film was a photo of the A-bomb test in 1944. My uncle, a juggler in vaudeville introduced me to magic and “spirit communication” in 1950. My printmaking teacher introduced me to Theosophy and the “synesthesia” of V. Kandinsky in 1964 and I began teaching at the U of A in 1971 with others who had just arrived from England, Poland, Argentina and China. As all nursery rhymes begin...”Once upon a time...”. At this moment, working in my studio near Elk Island National Park in northern Alberta I complete a work called, Memory Box: An Anthem to Time. As one author put it, “If you travel to Paris, when you die that Paris dies.”
As Zen Master Ikkyu wrote:
“I didn't see one thing on my trip, but I breathed and everything I breathed was time.”