Monks to build sand painting at Myrtle Beach art museum
Go ahead this week and sing The Chordettes’ “Mister Sandman,” the first line of which ends with “bring me a dream.”
For the second time since 2007, the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach will welcome a group of Tibetan monks to create art using a process aimed at generating energies for health, healing and peace. In “The Sacred Art of the Sand Mandala,” guests from the Drepung Gomang Monastery will build, with their own touch, one grain at a time, a Tantric Buddhist sand painting.
The public is encouraged to see the whole process unfold, from building and painting the sculpture, from the opening ceremony, 2-6:30 p.m. Monday, then 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, through a formal closing ceremony at 2 p.m. Saturday, for a ritual dispersal of the artwork, which flows out to sea.
The morsels to put this project in motion originated with Gabriella Plaza-Goldschmidt and her husband, Leonard Goldschmidt, a neuropsychologist, who live in Litchfield Beach. She said seeing a similar mandala event two years ago at a Raleigh-area art gallery gave her “spiritual enrichment.”
“It awakens your heart to a better experience in life,” she said, remembering the spur to bring such an endeavor back to Myrtle Beach.
Patricia Goodwin, the art museum’s executive director, said she welcomed the idea Plaza-Goldschmidt introduced about two months ago. Its timing for Christians’ holy week leading up to Easter was mere happenstance, but Goodwin remains awestruck by the Dalai Lama’s words that she has read: “My religion is simple. I practice kindness.”
Faiths meet in middle
Having this “Christmas gift” from “Lenny,” Plaza-Goldschmidt said of her better half for eight years, who assisted on the arrangements, “everything has fallen in place at the perfect time.”
Plaza-Goldschmidt said with her Catholic upbringing, coupled with her husband’s Jewish faith, “We met in the middle, with Buddhism,” to learn and appreciate more of that philosophy.
The roots of religions in general, she said, accent being compassionate and helpful to others, and these monks’ approach with passion and art has engrossed her and the trained architect in her mind and heart.
With four of the couple’s seven children taking art classes at the museum — from a household also including a Chinese-crested dog right at home, traveling in the family van — Plaza-Goldschmidt also values the educational component of partnering with the museum for this mandala, bearing a beauty that can blossom “in so many different ways.”
When the end of the week comes, though, the mandala’s not destroyed, Plaza-Goldschmidt said, but “unassembled.” Goodwin added that this final step in the ceremony, outside of the monk-blessed bags of sand given to all in attendance, punctuates that life and its many elements “are not permanent.” The sand art returns to a body of water, in this case, the ocean, with prayers “for health, healing and peace.”
Plaza-Goldschmidt spoke of a common denominator in this lack of permanence: learning how to create something, enjoying it and letting it go.
Gift for community
Sitting at her office desk, Goodwin flipped through a photo album full of color that another Tibetan monk group brought by building a mandala in 2007, a “keystone” for the museum’s 10th anniversary year.
Seeing the event this week as “another gift to this community,” Goodwin said museum staff and volunteers love welcoming such special guests, and their art, food and customs, for this “melting pot of culture,” and that sales from a bazaar on the museum’s tea porch will include praying beads and flags, all benefiting the monastery’s mission.
Goodwin said the monks will work flat on the floor on a 3D masterpiece, and the community can work with sand and the tools on a separate mandala, with all ages welcome to add their own color.
Anyone who is curious is encouraged to stop by this week, Goodwin said, speaking of the feeling of “walking away transported” that visitors have expressed. With hopes for success to generate such future sand-art projects, Plaza-Goldschmidt said whoever comes to watch the monks will want to see such expressions made again, “leaving you thirsty for more.”
A crew from Yoga in Common, at The Market Common in Myrtle Beach, will provide meals for the monks and play host to meditation workshops, 3-4:30 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, at which everyone’s welcome to join, with donations going to the monastery.
“Yoga in Common is honored to be invited to be a part of this national event,” said Linda Phillips, owner. “The idea of learning about other cultures and traditions is exciting for us. We are also very glad to be a part of anything that is working toward a healing aspect in the world.”
Mandalas, and the whole basis by which the monks orchestrate their lives, especially through their heartfelt means of artistic expression, move Phillips with meaning.
“We have artists who paint mandalas,” she said, “and our customers buy them to hang in their homes. We are excited to see one built with one tiny grain of sand at a time. We are also excited to learn more about the meaning of mandalas and their use in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. It is a very, very old art form, for sure.”
Phillips also sees multiple gifts for museum patrons to take home after seeing any or all parts of the mandala event.
“We hope to experience the peace, love and healing energy that the monks will be bringing to this event and to the meditation gatherings,” she said. “How lucky are we to have Myrtle Beach on their tour path.”
This story was originally published March 28, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Monks to build sand painting at Myrtle Beach art museum."