Lucid vision of the world, inner, and outer, and beyond concept of either. Glowing.
Bio Tantra feels herself as being a large floating endless being. As far as her artistic accomplishments go, she will narrow down her focus and curl up the list of her showings and publications, and look through them like a telescope. What does she see?
Through the telescope, she sees San Francisco, which has become her home, and scratched off behind that layer, she sees Canada, and scratched off behind that layer, she sees more places of dwelling. Behind that is scratched off her birth, and through that opening she sees a giant space which makes her smile.
She sees the curved lines on the list, recording, for example something like "I am the Art Director of the multimedia magazine, Mad Hatters Review. I have art websites that have won major awards, such as the BTDesign monthly award, out of Italy, and Mosaicglobe's Award for www.lucidvision.mosaicglobe.com. I was a juror on the BTDesign site for both photography and paintings, which has been lovely. My art was honored in the Salon Mondail, in Luxembourg. My art showed often in London at fine galleries. At the same time, I like junkyard sculptures that are fun to play with with music and tall bike jousting and dwarfs.
I am featured often in magazines, sometimes for both my fiction and my art in the same issue. I like to combine genres, and do so with music and writing, both fiction and non fiction. Some of my art takes the form of recycled sculptures with photography. I also make movies from my art, which are projected at events. My life is a type of genre bending, as I have often worn costumes, both in surreal movies, such as those directed by Paul Wilm, and outside of the dream, as well. I am a model, and my image appears in my own art, as well as in others'. Conceptual play is a favored art form, and I thank you for joining me in it now."
As Tantra unrolls the list of publications, her eye is caught by part of it that has worn off. There is a sentence, something about being the World Class Photographer for the Times Journal of Photograpy, out of India. And then, next to that sentence, there is a large rubbing off of the paper. It reminds her of fish scales being rubbed off. It is as if she can see through it to a kind of golden vastness, another world the largest part of our selves inhabit together. It floats by, and looking into it, she feels drawn to fly, to lift off, but she wants to keep looking at the list of who she pretends she is. She is a huge spirit, but no, she shakes her head. She throws off some vertigo, and looks again, more closely, with a magnifying glass, as she rolls the paper out flat. The paper is hand made, crackling apart a little as she straightens it out.
Then, next to that is something about her having an ongoing solo show in Spain for the last several years that travels from exciting venue to venue, with openings with music and speakers. The show is called "Reality Burn!" She has torched the edges of the giclees, and the edges of the frames as well. That part of the paper with the list is made on seems to have a black hole in it next to that, as well. She stares at it. Ah, it is the magnifying glass. It has caught it on fire!
Artist Statement by Tantra Bensko
Winding, and unwinding we go, through our selves, going one way we are ourselves, the other way, what are we? The art of ourselves? images, dreams, stories, fantasies, memories? Can we rub against our art selves as we wind around, like serpents, and let some of the pigment brush off on us? And look, where the pigment rubbed off, the skin becomes transparent, and we see through it, to another world. Much more vast. And it's looking at you.
I have been featured artist in numerous magazines, on many covers, been interviewed often, and shown my art throughout the world. I am also a writer, interviewed and featured as well in magazines. I write fiction, poetry, and non fiction.
My fiction calls for a new genre I call "Lucid Fiction." Now that more are starting to realize how much people have been manipulated all along, very cleverly, there should be a type of writing that admits that reality instead of changing it into the genre of Sci Fi. It is time to stop pretending things are happening, and just let them occur in the background, at least, as the context our characters live in. But once we admit the amount of control and planning and outside influences there are in our lives, out loud, well, we need to do our best to move past that if we can beyond the whole grasp of this matrix whenever it is our time. We are so much larger.
