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John Simpson 89 had
been building Kathmandu in his head for years. Ever since 1994, when the
young painter first read The 100,000 Songs of Milarepa during his
early Buddhist inquiries, hed been envisioning the vibrant forms
and colors of Tibetan temples, mandalas, deities, and shrines.
At the time, Simpsons
main focus outside his own studio was building exhibition settings at
the Springfield Museums. In 1997, he added to that management of the Hampden
Gallery in the Southwest Residential Area on campus. In 1996, he began
work on three elaborate rooms, each enshrining a life-size
Tibetan deity rendered in wood, wire mesh, and claycrete,
a glue-and-paper compound.
Four years later, this work
has appeared not only on campus and in Springfield, but on the National
Mall in Washington. Its brought Simpson contact with mandala-making
monks and the friendship of one of Tibets most revered artists.
Its even brought a near view of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
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IN SPRINGFIELD: Kathmandus centerpiece
at the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum. (Courtesy John Simpson) |
The early work on Kathmandu
was undertaken with the help of UMass grad student Tom Matsuda 99G
and Tenzin Rigdhen, a young Tibetan painter living in Northampton.
It was supported by the Fine Arts Center, of which Hampden Gallery is
a part. But the driving force was Simpsons skills and interests.
Since 1991 hes been creating sets a cowboy
camp, a trolley barn, a medieval castle for exhibitions at Springfields
George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum. Going to work there soon after
graduating from UMass, hed developed a close relationship with
the museums conservator, the late Emil Schnorr, whose books exposed
him to the intricacies of Japanese and Tibetan esoteric mandalas. He was
hooked, says Simpson: They were so clear, so colorful, so imaginary
and visionary that I was pulled right in.
At UMass, using the Hampden
crafts room as workspace, Simpson and his growing crew of students and
local artists worked first on the Green Tara shrine. A female deity and
distinctly beautiful despite her greenish hue, Tara is the goddess of
jealousy turned to altruistic wisdom. They turned next to the Black Mahakala,
a portly, six-armed god of anger with bugged-out eyes and a ferocious
entourage of skulls and skins.
Work was still proceeding
on the Tara shrine when Simpsons Springfield Museums colleagues,
including his wife, director of museum education Kay Simpson 99G,
invited him to install Kathmandu as part of Art From the
Roof of the World. In this series of exhibitions scheduled to open
at the G.W.V. Smith Art Museum in February 2000, the temple rooms would
join artwork from the personal collection of the Dalai Lama and from the
Drepung Loseling Monastery in Atlanta, plus a sand mandala to be created
on-site by Drepung monks. As he had for previous projects in Springfield,
Simpson enlisted the aid of David Browns carpentry class at Putnam
Vocational High School. Using Simpsons drawings to craft columns
and pedestals, prayer wheels and mandalas, became an interdisciplinary
study in construction and culture for those students.
As the UMass crew began work
on a 10-foot-high statue of the Buddha greatest and most powerful
of Tibetan religious figures Simpson received a visit from Kelsang
Lodoe Oshoe of India, one of the Dalai Lamas personal painters.
Oshoe was teaching at the Namgyal Monastery in upstate New York, and had
heard from an acquaintance of Simpsons ambitious undertaking.
After seeing the Black Mahakala
room, Oshoe told Simpson, its walls came alive in his dreams, its skeletons
and skins swirling in his mind. He returned day after day eventually
moving to the Valley for a year to work on the Buddha and serve as teacher
and spiritual guide to the projects volunteer crew at UMass. During
that time he stayed with the Simpsons in their Holyoke home.
Simpson is still amazed by
this good karma. Hed been urged in the past to seek out Oshoe, he
says. Acquaintances at the Tibet House in New York City had told him,
Youve got to meet Kelsang Lodoe in India, youve got
to go there and study with him. Then the guy suddenly walks in here
out of the blue!
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ON THE WASHINGTON MALL: John Simpson, center, Kelsang
Lodoe Oshoe, and Kendra Denny with the Buddha shrine and prayer wheel.
(Ben Barnhart photo) |
More good karma was
in store. While Kathmandu was on display in Springfield, Simpson
heard that a Buddha shrine was needed for Tibetan Culture:
Beyond the Land of Snows, an exhibition scheduled to open on the
National Mall in Washington in June 2000 as part of the annual Smithsonian
Institution folklife festival. Also needed was a Tibetan gate to
serve as an entryway to the festival. When Simpson offered the shrine,
he was asked build the gate as well. Now, just a few months before the
festival, he and Oshoe reorganized the work crew, called the Putnam School
for more help, and began construction on the 18-foot-high wooden gate.
Kendra Denny 01, one
of the original crew who built Kathmandu at UMass, was also part
of the team that traveled to Washington for two weeks to install and maintain
the shrine on the Mall. She says it was a never-ending process. The crew
usually arrived early in the morning, worked until the festival opened,
then took part in the days activities or just rested. It
was hard work but I dont think any of us felt too stressed out,
at least in a bad way, she says now.
Simpson agrees that the workload
was heavy, but also that it was offset by an atmosphere of cultural and
religious energy. He remembers resting under a shade tree, tired and sore
from weeks of sawing and gluing, hammering and painting, and drifting
off to sleep to the sound of a nun singing Om mani padme
hum, the mantra of the bodhisattva of compassion.
During the festival, Simpsons
Buddha served as a backdrop for monastic teachings, and its shrine housed
a beautiful copper prayer wheel brought from India. Over 1.5 million people
passed under the festival gate, including the Dalai Lama himself. Simpson
had an opportunity to meet His Holiness but, nervous, stood back to take
photographs instead.
Though Kathmandu has
now been dismantled, parts of the installation live on across the country.
The Buddha has been enshrined at a retreat in Pennsylvania. The Green
Tara is at a meditation center in Northampton. The festival gate, purchased
from the Smithsonian by a California businessman, will be permanently
installed in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
And the project goes on. Kendra
Denny plans stay in the valley after completing her degree this spring
to work with Simpson and Oshoe on the next temple, which will celebrate
the Buddha-like religious figure Padma Sambhava.
We really want
to continue, says Simpson. Kathmandu wasnt done
for the sake of getting an audience and then saying There it is,
now its over. I see a desperate need to save a culture
and Ill continue to work for that for the rest of my life.
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