Featured Artist
Linda E. Law

We are honored to have Linda E. Law as the featured artist in this issue of the Journal of Esoteric Psychology. Linda produces amazing images of beauty through her work with digital photography and holographic effects. We invite you to experience her online photo exhibit, find out about upcoming exhibits and workshops, and learn more about Linda in the interview transcribed below.

Upcoming Exhibits and Workshops

Linda Law's work can be seen from May 13th - June 18th in the Sam's Point Conservation Center, on the Shawangunk Mountains, New York. The opening reception is May 13th from 4-6 pm.

Linda will also be offering two workshops this season at Sam’s Point. Bring your digital cameras and take a hike with the artist on the preserve. All levels of photographic expertise are welcome–this is a workshop in seeing rather than the technicalities of digital cameras. Workshop dates are as follows:
           
Saturday, May 27, 12:00 noon - 5:00 PM:
A workshop for kids grades 5-12.
           
Saturday June 10, 12:00 noon - 5:00 PM:
A workshop for adults of all ages.

Please call Sam’s Point Preserve at 845-647-7989 to register and for directions to the preserve.

Interview

JEP:  Good afternoon Linda. Today we have the opportunity to speak with Linda Law, a digital and holographic artist. Welcome Linda.

LL:  Glad to be here.

JEP:  Would you tell us a little bit about your background? I understand that you were originally working within the field of science. How did you end up changing careers and becoming an artist?

LL:   I think, had I been given a choice when I was in school, I would have probably studied art and science but I had to make choices very early and ended up going into science and studying Biochemistry. I worked for the University of Cambridge in the Immunology Department as a research technician. At a certain point the grant that was paying me ran out and I found a job in New York, working at Stony Brook University. I was very fortunate at the age of 21 to sail to New York on the QEII. I had six years working in research in Biochemistry at Stony Brook, working on hemoglobin.

JEP:  Do you feel that your work in science has influenced your work as an artist?

LL:  In that I had the opportunity to work with a lot of technology during that time at Stony Brook. I was trained on the electron microscope which was probably the most sophisticated piece of equipment in the research facility at that time. For me that was a transition into photography. I also had an introduction to holography at that time because the scientist across the hall from me was working on x-ray crystallography and there was some correlation there. I ended up learning a little bit about what holography was at that time.

JEP:  What is holography?

LL:  A hologram is a fully three-dimensional image that is recorded using lasers and coherent light. It’s a recording of an interference  pattern of light into a photo-sensitive medium where the phase of the light is being captured. It records all of the information about the image, all of the dimensionality of it and it can capture multiple interpenetrating dimensions. It is a truly unique medium.

JEP:  Do you still work with holography?

LL:  Well, I had many years of working with holography but I stopped for some time largely because it became very difficult to work in the medium. The manufacturers of the film itself stopped producing film, and as a result it became very hard for everybody to work in it. It is a very demanding medium in terms of the technology. I had an opportunity in the mid-nineties to work with a company making computer generated holograms which  were transferred to a holographic medium through a very specific piece of equipment that was like a holographic printer. So, I just created my images on the computer and sent my data to them and they, in turn, made the hologram. But these were very small images and this was such an expensive process that it was not something that I could consider doing for myself. I was working for them commercially.

Now I am at the point where I'm thinking about working with holograms again. There is a new company in Montreal that is making very large holograms using a similar process and I’m about to start dipping my toes back in it as a creative medium again. They have reduced the prices so much that I can start to work with this medium again.

JEP:  In the literature you gave me to read it seemed as if your decision to move to upstate New York, where you presently live, had a major impact upon your spiritual life and your art. Would you tell us about the transition that occurred as a result of this move?

LL:  I had lived on Long Island for many years and had moved out of science a number of years ago. I worked as a teaching artist, I did holography, curated exhibitions of holography and I worked with my own photography as well. I went through a difficult transition period in my life, losing a number of family members as well as my marriage, and I reached the point where I knew I wanted to be upstate. I made the decision that I would be upstate by around 2002 and the circumstances did present themselves that made that possible. In the process of the dissolution of my marriage I had done a lot of work on my own emotions and had come to grips with a lot of pain in my own past, especially related to the loss of my mother when I was 13. I think that work enabled me to become a clearer channel for the work that I am doing right now.

There was always something that would stop me from fully expressing myself in my previous work. I do think that the process (the emotional clearing work, alongside my own spiritual growth and explorations) had to be done and that period was really crucial. In 2002 I was presented with an interesting opportunity, a commercial opportunity to which I gave serious thought but it would have held me on Long Island. So I made the decision to turn it down because it wouldn't further my own work. Around that same time I came across an ad for a house upstate on 80 acres of land with a stone cottage and I just jumped at it and went up there not even knowing where it was. I took it on the spot. I moved on the first day of spring in 2002, to a town called Rosendale. My next door neighbors had a farm that housed the Center for Symbolic Studies (although I didn't discover this until about a month later) and I don’t think I could have chosen a more perfect location for myself. There was also a Shambhala retreat center up the street and I found that I was actually in the middle of a community of a lot of alternative thinkers and healers.

The Center for Symbolic Studies is based on the work of Joseph Campbell, mythology and shamanism and so all around me were all the things in which I was interested. There are also a lot of herbalists in the area, which is another thing that interests me. When I walked out the front door of the cottage I was living in, I was on the mountain, an extraordinary mountain—part of the Shawangunk Mountains which were sacred land to the Lenape and which are made of quartz crystals, of quartz conglomerate.

JEP:  It is a very powerful energy there.

LL:  Most definitely.

JEP:  Do you feel that has made an impact on your work?

LL:  I had made a conscious choice, I was seeking wildness and I found that I certainly had it. Within three weeks of moving up there I had a bear outside my door. It was springtime and they were just waking up and they are scavengers. It was a young bear and he was in my garbage pail outside my window. It was extraordinary and a little bit scary too. I had deer outside my window, barred owls hooting at night and hawks overhead in the daytime.  It was wonderful.

JEP:  How did your art change as a result of being there? 

LL:  Well, I started leaving my curtains open so that in the morning I would be woken up by the light. I changed my body rhythms, I was waking up in a natural cycle. I would get up at dawn and go out on the mountain with my camera. I had my first digital camera that I had bought about six months before that. Prior to that I had been working with conventional film. The digital camera really freed me because you don’t have to pay for film and you get instant feedback, the whole process of how you shoot changes dramatically.  So I was just shooting unlimited amounts, I would shoot whatever I saw. You need to be out shooting when the light is right and so I would be out on the mountain at dawn, shooting in the first two or three hours of the morning, before and after dawn, and again at night on either side of the sunset, that’s when the light is the most beautiful. You need to be there when the weather changes and be open to the moment when a storm is coming through which creates those beautiful clouds when the sun cracks through, you need to aware of these moments. I was working out of my home so when the light changed, I’d be out there. I was out there with my dog who would hike up to the ridge with me. I would tie her up to a tree so I could take photographs and then when we came back, I'd download my images directly to my computer and begin to mirror them.

JEP:  What does it mean to “mirror” your images?

LL:  It means I copy the image in my computer and I double the size of the actual image, the window that I’m working with on the computer. Then I flip it over and match it up exactly so that they are reflecting the opposite side, like opening a book and join them together along a middle axis that is like a reflection. I had done this previously, back in the mid 1980’s when I had access to a very high end computer graphics system at New York Institute of Technology where I had been working. I had been digitizing some of my images with a video camera, it hadn’t quite gelled then and I don’t even quite know why I went back to it but I just started playing with that process, and as I did it the more I began to see all these incredible creatures in my pictures where the two edges joined. It became a conscious process, I was seeking—I would go out on the mountain and I would do a ritual and ask for connection, very specifically asking for connection to nature and more and more of these images were appearing.

JEP:  Will such images appear for anybody at any time? Or do they only appear in your photographs? Do you know the answer to that question?

LL:  Well, I think that they are there to varying degrees. I can go out there on certain days and if I am not feeling in tune with it I don’t get that much. There can be a little something there but nothing really powerful. I can go out some days and feel really connected--it's very hard to describe the feeling but it is a connected feeling.

JEP:  You know when you are going to take a good image.

LL:  I know when I am feeling connected and that is when I will get good images. 

JEP:  Do you think this process is related to a connection with the devic realm or the elemental realm? Have you tried to figure out what it is that you are tuning into?

LL:  I cannot really say what realm I am connecting with other than to say that I am connecting with other energies, with the Spirit of Nature. I have had a lot of exposure to the devic realm—I was connected to the community of Findhorn when I was living in London in the late 1970’s. I joined a group known as Magnet in London who linked to Findhorn each week in meditation. Through them I met many people who were connected with Findhorn who would visit that group when they were in London. I was introduced to the Alice Bailey work at that time and later found out about the work of Perelandra, a nature research center in Virginia that is working with those same energies and doing quite extraordinary things, working co-creatively with nature. This predated all the work I’m now doing and it was something I was very consciously aware of. Through my work I was seeking connection, consciously seeking connection. I believe that I was led to that land at that particular point in time. The 18 months that I lived in that house were an incredibly intense experience. It was a period of change and opening inside of me and it was reflected in the work. I went through a progression of cameras, software and printers as I became more and more skilled working with the process. Now I am working with a large format printer that gives me archival prints using archival inks on archival watercolor paper. 

It is a very conscious choice when I go out on the mountain I always ask for connection.

JEP:  Do you feel you are being called?

LL:  I don’t think I’d describe it as being called.  I feel I have stepped on my path and found my direction. The more that I have clearly walked on that path the more things have opened up for me and the connections have presented themselves. I should also add that it is not just a process of shooting the images. What has evolved as I have been working with them is a process. I don’t just mirror them and print them. There is a process of revealing that goes on. It may take a long time to finish an image and I have to make a choice of which ones I am going to work on. In photography we talk about burning and dodging, in conventional photography—where you reveal the detail in shadows and you add tone to highlights. Any fine art photographer is creating a fine art print through that process. With the computer and digital photography, I have infinite control and that is what is truly extraordinary about working in this way. If I overshoot myself and go too far with something I can step back and undo it, I have a history that I can jump back into. What that means is that the process is like painting with light so that what I’ve found happens for me is that it becomes like a meditation and I’m in the flow of it and the journey has been about how I step into that flow. 

I was thinking about the process when I was working with some images last night. I haven’t worked with them much during these last few weeks because I have been very actively involved with teaching. However, I’m back into my own work now as I have a show coming up and have a lot of images to work on. I just got back into the rhythm of it again last night. After you’ve been away from it you are always afraid it is going to go away. But, no it was there. It's a magical process, time is extended. I can be in front of that computer for hours and not realize it because I am just in the flow of it. There isn’t any anxiety over whether I should do this or do that. I don’t even have to think about it, it is just a flow.

JEP:  How do you respond to someone who says that the images are digitally created and not really a reflection of any spirit realm?

LL:  I would definitely say that this is not the case. I don’t put anything in the images that is not already there.

JEP:  So what we are seeing in these images, what we see in this middle section, is that not something that you created?

LL:  It is something that I reveal. That’s what I feel I am doing. You could look at the images on my screen and I could show you the evolution of the picture. My final piece could have gone through seven, eight or nine different steps, I save them. I usually work with it up until a certain point when I feel I cannot work with it anymore and I’ll save it. So I keep that one and a few days later I start afresh with a new layer, which is a copy of where I left off, and I will work that as far as I can go and then I'll put that one aside. The whole process may take eight sessions or more and each session may take several hours. Eventually I get to a point where I feel that there is nothing more that I can do. It is very hard to describe the feeling but it is a flow, it’s an inner knowing. It’s not like I sit there and say I am going to consciously do this; it just happens and I am in that flow.

JEP:  Do you feel that the spirits you have captured on film are helping in the process in any way?

LL:  I think there is a definite connection to a higher power. Definitely. I don’t have a good sense as to whether the spirits are talking to me or not. I feel that I am revealing something that has knowledge within it and that the images themselves have a power of their own. It is really fascinating to look over the shoulder of people who are looking at the images and to talk with them about what they see and to talk with kids. I work with kids in schools and I show them the images. I get such responses from them that at times it really blows my mind. 

JEP:  Do you feel that each image has a story to tell? Are these symbolic messages that are being communicated? How do you understand them?

LL:  Well, the connection with the Center for Symbolic Studies that was next door to where I was living has been very illuminating for me. Robin and Steve Larsen are experts in this field and studied with Joseph Campbell for 20 years. I have actually been photographing a lot of these images on their land and they have seen them as I they evolved. I've received  a lot of feedback from them, it has been a real education, opening up a new realm for me. They speak a lot about seeing within my images all sorts of deities and beings that they recognize. I was with Robin and Steve at a showing of a new multi-media piece on the work of Joseph Campbell, with images from India and a lot of footage from all over the world, very beautiful work. At one point they were showing some incredible carved temples in India and Robin leaned over to me and said, "That’s where I first saw your images!". She had been telling me this for some time. When I looked at these pictures of the caves and all the carvings, I could see what she meant. You can look at my photographs and you’ll see Buddha's, and you’ll see totem poles, you’ll see every faith or belief system being represented. 

We are bilateral beings, our faces are symmetrical, although they are not perfectly symmetrical. I think that there is something in the way that we perceive that has to do with things being mirrored. When you look at these images in Nature, they are fractals and as I get into higher and higher resolutions with different cameras in this work, I can go in more and more on each level. I am only able to see into the images to a certain point because I am limited by the resolution of my camera. My suspicion is that the more I go in, the more is revealed—there are beings within beings within beings. This whole process for me is about developing my ability to sense energy, the energy of a place, maybe even dark energy. There’s a place on the mountain that I’ve been to that has that dark feel about it. There are caves where you can feel the cold air when you walk in, just a different energy in that place. I’m working on some images from there right now and the beings that are coming out are very formidable looking. 

Places are quite distinct one from the other. I can record images from a waterfall with a swimming hole at the bottom and it is an incredibly energetic place, totally different and charged. I’m convinced that it is a portal, whenever I am there I am in a high energy state, a state of presence that is unique to that place. So my journeys on the mountain have been a lot about developing my own innate sensitivity to energy and it is reflected in what I capture in the images.

JEP:  It seems particularly important for you to shoot in nature.  If you were to go into a town, or into a city, do you think you would be able to achieve the same connection?

LL:  I was asked to do that, actually. A gallery owner asked me to do that. He was putting a show together about Kingston and he asked me to create some images in Kingston. I started trying to do that but it didn’t work, it definitely didn’t work. I tried to accommodate him, I wanted to be in that show, but ended up having to say no, I can’t do it. It doesn’t work that way, this isn't the way I work.

JEP:  Do you have an intention to go to another beautiful part of the planet and see what images you come up with? 

LL:  I think that is going to happen. I’ve shot in other places already and there are a few pictures that have been in my shows from other locations. There are definitely different qualities in different places. I think this year I am going to explore a little bit in Vermont, I’m going to study plant-spirit medicine with Pam Montgomery, a really extraordinary herbalist and teacher. Two weeks ago I was there and ended up driving across the mountain pass between the Green Mountains and I was really struck by how extraordinarily beautiful it is up there. 

JEP:  I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your work with children, your teaching work, and how they respond to the work that you do.

LL:  I am a teaching artist and I’ve been funded through numerous grants to work in partnership with schools on various projects. A lot of the time I am working with something called digital story telling which isn’t directly related to my work but I have done some projects with students where I have taken them out into the woods and taken them through this process. There is a special group of gifted and talented students that I work with through Ulster County BOCES and each spring I have a group of 20 fourth and fifth graders and they spend a morning with me with digital cameras out in the woods. The focus is on seeing and listening—opening their eyes and opening their ears. So, before hand we talk a lot about this process and by the time they are ready to go out into the woods they are really present with Nature. They are so tuned in and come back with extraordinary images. Then we have another day where they work with me on computers and mirror their images as I do. They pick one that they are happy with and we print it out. When this is done, each of them writes a stream-of-consciousness poem. They have been immersed in the process for two days now, they are in that flow and it is extraordinary what comes out of them. At this event there are usually four or five different groups of students, doing different projects with other artists. We all come together at the end for a "show and tell session" and my group of students put up an exhibition and read their poems.

JEP:  What is digital story telling?

LL:  Well I have been working on using digital story telling as a tool for engagement in learning. The premise is that if you give students the tools with which to express themselves, both digitally as well as with words and music, give them the technology and instruction, you will open them up to different modalities of learning. We’re targeting those kids that are considered at risk. The evidence is that it does really work, these students become interested in being at school and now they are excelling. For example, in the past they may have struggled with writing but they may be able to work with imagery and express themselves that way and that leads them back into writing as they have to write a script for their story. Whereas in the past they were skipping school, they are now in class and attend for other subjects and it has carry over. This year I have been working with applying this technique to French, Spanish, Social Studies and Art. So it is giving them a visual tool or multi-media tool to express themselves with. It opens up other doorways. 

JEP:  It sounds as if you have two full-time careers.

LL:  The journey is trying to find a balance. That is the trickiest part. 

JEP:  If people are interesting in obtaining copies of your images should they simply email you?

LL:   Yes, that’s the easiest way:  llaw@hvc.rr.com

JEP:  Well, thank you very much Linda. I love your work and I’m sure everyone else will be very excited to explore it as well. Good luck with your career.

LL:  Thank you.