20 I recently came across (browsing the web) Angela Palmer’s exhibit of tree roots at Trafalgar Square, London. The exhibit was installed on November 2009.


I recommend for my readers to read Ms Palmer’s statement to learn of the artist’s activities. Currently the show is being exhibited on the lawn of Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum in central Oxford and will be shown there until July 31, 2011.

While Angela Palmer calls her exhibit a “Ghost Tree Exhibition” and I dedicate my “Temple to Johns” to axed forests, I believe that our concerns are the same.

As irony would have it, even as I posted my two previous blogs, a small forest next to my property was torn down by the owner of the property abuts mine. I say “torn”, because modern technology can quite manage without the chain saw handled by human hands. While a saw cuts the stump, the operation actually resembles Jack the Ripper at his worst. Of course, I am speaking from the point of view of one who believes the forests to be holy places even from a quite practical point of view. Are the floods in Pakistan not the result of a lack of forests to absorb the rains?

Incidentally, I believe that Ms. Palmer’s exhibit is in its own fashion a temple. If you live in England, it might be worth visiting it and writing a letter to this blog about your impression.

The Temple of Melnays Jānis

The Temple of Black Johns


Would you not like to see a world of 1000 new temples? or would you rather see a thousand oil-smeared pelicans dying?


 At the Temple of Black Johns, we hope to see a thousand new temples, rather than the natural world dying. So, please, think of yourself as one who has been invited to build a private temple.

 

No doubt, we live in a world that is different from yesterday. Old faiths are gone and their messages go unlearnt. Nevertheless, we hold some things sacred. Is not nature a part of our sacred? Think of how you would build a temple that is both your living space and a place that not only you, but others call a Temple.

We present the Temple of Black Johns as an example of what a temple in our day may look like.

Here is our Cross”:
The Saw-(ac)cross.
It shows a saw cutting upwards a tree.
The image suggests that the sawing-upward of the tree can stop at any time we realize how cruel the act and those who do it are and stop the act.
 

Please stay in the areas where the grass has been cut. The pond is for the fish and not you to swim in.

What is beyond the lawn belongs to nature, but both the lawn and what is the owner’s ultimately belong to the Great All.

The Temple of Black Johns

The Temple of Melnays Janis


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
You are welcome to come visit us. Address is somewhere among the posts below. We would like to see a thousand temples who use the Saw-(ac)ross A Trees Heart as their logo. The pictures should tell you about the idea visually. Below is some text you may wish to read to follow our thought. Welcome to our private temle.