April 11, 2023 — We completed the TerraSante Nature Mandala Mural!
It’s Spring and we finished the TerraSante Community Nature Mandala Mural. What a journey! A dream twenty years ago to paint a huge mandala mural came true with the help of a colorful community in the Arizona desert. Art creates a sense of place. What was once a dark gray structure in a forgotten area of TerraSante Village is now an inviting space for community, creativity and connection. Residents and visitors use the trail more often now, and stop at the mural to be inspired, do yoga and other activities, hold gatherings, reflect or get energized! It is a site to behold and you can feel the vibrant energy of excitement and transformation.
One of the really cool things about a community mandala is that although each petal is painted by a different artist, when you step back and look at the whole, it is a unique expression of community.
Thanks to TerraSante Village for hosting the mural and to the 18 participants from the Sacred Earth community.
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March 25, 26 & 30 – Honoring the Sacred
This week, folks from the surrounding Sacred Earth community came out to add their energy to the mural. It’s been so much fun connecting and watching the mandala evolve. Terra Sante means “sacred earth.” We’re painting on a community water well, which sustains many people here. What a beautiful way to honor the sacred and express gratitude to Creator for the many gifts we’ve been given. Nature is our inspiration, and it’s wonderful to see the mandala filling up with her beautiful patterns.
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There is so much richness and depth to creating nature mandalas, including an exploration into sacred geometry. Nature is the best inspiration, and there are beautiful patterns to discover out there!
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March 12, 14, 19 & 21 — Painting the Mural
The first painting session was awesome! Some participants sketched their designs while others got straight to painting. The first four sessions were reserved for TerraSante Village residents. Extended community members flowed in after that. It’s been incredible witnessing the white mandala base come to life with Mother Nature’s beautiful patterns, interesting textures and vibrant colors! We hung tarps and rescheduled one day due to extreme wind and rain, but other than that, the Sonoran desert blessed us with much sun. The experience inspired some folks to pick up paints again and create. It strengthened bonds and transformed a baron area into a mecca for community gathering, connection, inspiration and fun. So good!
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March 11, 2023 — Preparing the Mandala Base
Nothing like a deadline to get things moving! With the first painting session happening tomorrow, there was a lot to accomplish. Today was about logistics, building a canopy for shade, raking the path, doing area cleanup, creating ambiance to enhance the experience and coming up with a solution to make the mandala look round on a curved, distorted surface that was causing it to look like an oval. After lots of calculations, sketches, adjustments to measurements and use of optics, I figured out how to draw the mandala so it would appear to be round from a distance. With that hurdle jumped, it was all about drawing the shapes and filling them in with white base paint. What a feat. Tomorrow, we paint!!
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March 7, 2023 — Plotting the Mandala Center on a Full Moon in the Arizona Desert
It’s a full moon in sunny Tucson, Arizona and today, I plotted the center circle, axis points and outer most ring of the TerraSante Village Community Nature Mandala Mural. Kinda cool how it resembles today’s full moon! While plotting the geometry of the mandala base, I discovered that the curvature of the water tank was making the rings look like ovals rather than circles. Bummer. Tomorrow, I will have to solve this dilemma!
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