MYSTERIUM GEORGICUS

The Inter-Dimensional Plow
Multistage installation hosted at the Center for Georgical Jubilism, Virginia, USA The concept is rooted in the notion of Regenerative Agriculture within the Judaic tradition
Paint-on-Glass Animation | Stained Glass Windows | Soil Carved-Wood Sculpture with Front & Back Animation Projection Oil on Canvas Paintings | Graphite & Ink on Paper | Sound

  • Georgical Jubilism

    The principles of Georgical Jubilism and regenerative agriculture celebrate the process of finding new life within tired existing condition.

  • Georgics

    The word "georgic" derives from the same origin as other geo-prefixed words – georgaphy, geology, etc. – as well as the word "agriculture": the Greek root words γῆ (yeor, earth) and γεωργός (yeorgos, earth-work / farming). The Georgics of Virgil — a four-volume Latin poem published in the first years of the reign of Augustus Caesar (~29 B.C.E.) – is a curious and delightful combination of genres, tied into one composition. From practical to moral and mythological, perhaps most often it is a sustained physical and metaphysical evocation of various natural systems and beings as they relate to the human body and soul through cultivation and husbandry.

  • Jubilism

    The word jubilism has a dual root: from the Latin term jubilo (as in jubilate deo), meaning joy/rejoice; and from the Hebrew yovel (יובל), whose meaning is more elusive and multiplicious.  Yovel refers perhaps principally to the horn of the male ram, which is carved into a sound-making instrument (such as a shofar). It is also related to the roots for “produce/crop” (yevul, יבול) and “bring along/carry/flow” (hovil, הוביל), and it becomes metonymically linked to the fiftieth year of the land cycle in Israel (yovel, jubilee), marked by the blowing of this very horn, which is considered to be the culmination of seven “weeks” of seven years, each of which is punctuated by a sabbatical (שמיטה) shmitah year.

  • Shmitah Year

    In a Shmitah year (שמיטה, from l’hashmit, to release/relinquish), all land is left fallow, all debts are released, all commerce in food is ceased, and all perennial growths on private farms are available to be harvested equally for personal use by all citizens of the nation.  This radical periodical relinquishment and reorientation is meant to reflect the seven days of the week, and the seven days of Creation—and therefore the divine plan for right relation to this world. 

  • jubilee Year

    The yovel (יובל) (jubilee) year is the completion of the shmita system, bringing a second continuous year of relinquishment (after the 49th year), and an added dimension of 1) release of all human bondage, and 2) return to ancestral terrains.  The idea is a powerfully redemptive, even messianic one, especially when it is translated into the context of perennial / regenerative agriculture, which indeed does give rise to different forms of social/economic relation, which could perhaps some day withstand such a periodical release. 

  • yovel Year

    The “accident” of the Latin infusion of joy into the word is a felicitous one, since working in the light of this huge (but also hugely distant) aspirational frame is more healthy and productive (and convincing as a model) when married to an awareness of joyful and thankful return.
"Yovel Year" oil on canvas

  • regenerative agriculture

    In our precarious moment, on the brink of ecological disaster, and on the edges of powerful landscape corruption, the call to re-connect to our most powerful roots in spirit and creation could not be more clear. The medicine we need, and could potentially provide, is not only what can be concocted and

  • Regenerative Agriculture

    prescribed from barks and roots but what could become corresponding vessels in higher symbolic domains. This fellowship is an invitation to enter this arena, through the unique combination of forces available to us. Just as plants endeavor to work with the modes of being and pathways of translation

  • Regenerative Agriculture

    present in the ecological sevivah (surroundings) to arrive at strategies for dissemination, so too the history of art and science and cultivation of land and soul stand ready to be adapted and re-deployed, to enwrap redemptive seeds for our economy of attention, and for the economy of spirit at its root. — Jorian Polis Schutz
“For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest.”
Leviticus 25 : 3-5
Torah
Whenever unity and harmony on Earth is shattered, humanity no longer enjoys the balance, peace, and tranquility that previousely and briefly enveloped the world. Shmitah (Hebrew: שמיטה, literally "release"), is the sabbatical year observed every seventh year under the Mosaic law as a “sabbath” during which the land is allowed to rest. The laws of shmitah were intended in part to restore the lost equilibrium. As
we refocus our relationship with WHAT IS, we also revisit our relationship with the earth. We take a break from working the land and focus on caring for the land. We become keenly aware that the earth is not ours to use and abuse; rather it is a creation, an organism, that we are to steward. By letting the land rest, we honor its livelihood and express our gratitude for all that it provides. By the end of the shmitah year, we can potentially restore the harmonious relationship that existed at the beginning of time, and that is destined to be reinstated.

without beginning or end

Paint on Glass Animation Center Piece, 4.5 minute loop

Prayer

Carved Wood Sculpture with front & back projected animation

  • Gallery

  • Gallery

  • Gallery

  • Gallery

  • Gallery

  • Gallery

  • Gallery

  • Gallery

  • Gallery

  • Plow Sketchbook

  • Plow Sketchbook

  • Plow Sketchbook

  • Plow Sketchbook

  • Plow Sketchbook

  • Plow Sketchbook

  • Plow Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

  • שמיטה (Shmitah) Sketchbook

יובל (yovel) windows

12 Stained-Glass Windows

Thumbnail sketches for the yovel windows
Infinite diversity of patterns, Every conceivable structure, radiation, pattern and design, flora and fauna. Space bestows from Morals and Ethics of all cultures. All discoveries that Humans will ever make, first must exist in the fullness of space.
space – absolute nutrition
all existing things go in and out of space. No superior or inferior. It goes on.
Focus of the third eye WHAT ONE DREAMs will become real and substantial. Imagination and actualization are the same state of mind.
(fragment) Focus of the third eye

  • Behind the Scenes

    You just had to wake up in the morning. As if it was all happening by itself, one after another all these pieces came to us.

  • Behind the Scenes

    You can't tell how to do it because it is all hands in the mud.

  • Behind The Scenes

    In my heart I feel a fundamental purpose of art is to transcend culture and class and politics

  • Behind The Scenes

    True, printed books take up space, but so do children and Prague and the Sistine Chapel. Gold leaf process by Masha.

  • Behind The Scenes

    Oil on canvas, night plowing around the village. The frame carved by a Farfields Farm handyman out of a downed tree.

  • Behind The Scenes

    We are all connected as the matter between us is a living space filled with emanations we share.

  • Behind The Scenes

    It was a pure joy to make one after another, these 12 windows that shine.

  • Behind The Scenes

    Under-paint layers of tonal balance

  • Behind The Scenes

    California-to-Virginia shipping preparations. After installing the show and upon return to Los Angeles we may never see any of these again, but we are happy that they are there.

  • Behind The Scenes

    Linked with Heaven and Earth, Space and Time

Seven Practical Steps to Capture the Spirit of Shmita

  • Give yourself a break. Take some time off to rest and re-evaluate your life.
  • Donate time to acts of kindness.
  • Give generously. The Shmitah year for giving more than other years. As you give, give with faith.
  • Study. Set aside a time every week to study kindness and meditate on light
  • Connect with your higher self.
  • Explore the creation that surrounds you. In the Shmitah year we honor nature. By spending time outdoors we cultivate our gratitude for the land and connect with universal law.
  • Be a good steward. Be aware of the effects of waste and pollution and do your part to keep our given world healthy and clean.

To visit

Gallery open by appointment only
For more information contact gallery@farfieldsfarm.com Center for Georgical Jubilism 40 Farfields LaneAfton, VA 22920

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