This is the sheet we printed and didn’t get around to handing out…

Dreamspace Opening  13^th January 2018

A Retrospective, nostalgic, fantastically optimistic, long-overdue Opening Do

Welcome, present or future friend, to Dreamspace, an everything-I-love space for dreaming my Possible Human!

This Space only took me about forty-seven years to find. It could have been sooner, but I blew it after my first lucky exhibition in the summer of 71, in the condemned Denby Golf club building with its wavy wooden floors and a beautiful view over Whangarei. Other plans than following my bliss seemed more important… mostly trying to discover the Meaning Of Life, find True Love, and Save the World… Oh and raising four kids and trying to get rich or at least get less poor!

There really are legions of excuse devils dressed as duties lying in wait for us poor souls who venture upon the plane of human existence. One excuse in the age of Google is, hasn’t  EVERYTHING been done, already? But no, the key is to digest what you like, compost it, and grow your own tender plants in it. If you make it your own, it IS new. Retell the old tales in YOUR way, and you never know, a new generation might just be inspired to carry the torch of some Good Thing, some aspect of LOVE, BEAUTY, TRUTH, and LOVE…

Why teddy bears?

Art is about the sacred (see my www.altarsofart.com if you agree – or disagree). And one of the most sacred things is domestic bliss – home and hearth, childhood, bedtime stories… We need to get ‘back to the Days of Christopher Robin and Pooh’. Old song from the 70’s – google it😊

Likewise for old hand-tools and ‘working ornaments’ (there’s a wonderful old blacksmith’s vise from Cornwall in the workshop – a lovely old guy (even older than me) virtually gave it to me with a sturdy bench and two other vises mounted… as I like to say, I now have THREE vices! Plus coffee addiction that’s four… So, ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. Here’s to old tools, motorcycles, and old guys who give a damn (you know who you are!).

Of Wolves and the Meaning of Life

There’s an old Indian story about the Two Wolves… Well I’m not going to tell that one. I reckon there aren’t just two wolves inside us, one good and one evil. There’s a whole wolfpack of values, most of them ‘good’, fighting it out for top place. Which ones win? The ones we feed. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to shoot a few of the worst buggers! There ARE Wargs in this world, all is not sweetness and light. That makes even one little candle so wonderful. In my (unfinished) cupboard triptych The Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit, I quote Zarathustra – A ‘sacred No’, even to (some) duties, is required for the spirit to create as it should. There IS a cost, there will NEVER come a day when you wake up and say, ‘I’ve got nothing on today, no debts, no duties – I might as well start being a sublime creator’ You will have to be a devil to SOME value to be an angel to the ones you choose to dedicate most of your days and years to… You have to put food on the table, you say? Rice is cheap, fish are free for the catching. Have to pay the rent? Come on! Live in a garret, for art’s sake!

‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it now!’

‘Follow your BLISS.’ ( Dammit!!)

I am finally doing that right here. ‘Best time to plant a tree is fifty years ago. Second best time: NOW’). As Nietzsche’s Zarathustra says,

‘…of all treasure pits, one’s own is the last to be digged – the spirit of Gravity is the cause of that. Almost from the cradle we are presented with heavy words and values: this dowry calls itself ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’. For its sake we are forgiven for being alive.’

And:

…‘O afternoon of my life! What have I not given away that I might possess one thing: this living plantation of my thoughts and this dawn of my highest hope!’

A big part of my highest hope is to share the skills and wisdom I have been learning of how to locate your personal Dreamspace, explore it, dig the treasure buried there. Would you like to join me in a group which can meet here at Dreamspace say on Wednesday at 7 for coffee, tea, and communion with each other as creators, seekers after a life that is up there in the stars with the gods and goddesses, not down here where bank managers and landlords rule. ‘Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things will be thrown in’. I have found it to be true: the times I followed that higher duty, things worked out strangely well practically too (not without sacrifice but hey that’s life! See the Wolf story above).

For God’s sake, in the free world we are all gods and goddesses, having more freedoms, more powers via the free internet than kings and queens of old. What the @#%@# are we doing with this freedom? Worrying about repayments on that fizzboat? That ‘ceiled mansion’? There IS a scale of values, and how inverted most of ours are here in Godzone, and the whole Free World! So let’s begin righting things in our own worlds! Sacrifice a little. Create good art, good love, good things. ‘I love him who creates beyond himself, and thus perishes’ Die to that old boring life, live for art – that is, the Sacred, whatever that means to YOU.

The Dreamspace Club??

So, anyone want to join a club for doing just that? I know, not for everyone, lots of conceptualising, challenging, daring, meditating in blue rooms, trying some new art… But let’s!! Talk to me, or leave your email and what you’d be keen on (Dreamspace club, learning some philosophy, writing, reading, bookbinding, etching, painting, ferrocement, casting, carving etc…) in the Minute book (one of three donated to Dreamspace by our esteemed land agent Colin McNab).

Oh yes, enjoy the evening, drinks and food by our daughter Anna and her good man Marco of Endcliffe Spit fame (they’re doctors too if you need one for some reason – beware hazards in the workshops, and keep an eye on that kid! Toilet is through the back, handbasin at foot of the stairs). The paintings carvings and handcast items are mostly for sale (time to really sell stuff later – doors open from now on as often and as long as I am here… and Raewyn is studying here so will also be serving in between early childhood education assignments… There is eftpos here, I trust, and I have change for money. We take pledges, pigs, produce, old books too… If something I made (or could make for you) enchants you, could be you can get it from me for a song…

So, this space is your space too. It’s just over 100 this year (council permit application dated 1917). So, an opening and a 100^th birthday! Dreamspace was built while WWI was still raging. That’s faith…  I hope you will see it as part of the ‘eutopian’ landscape of this good city and visit often, especially when we do a show, on one of a hundred different things I’m keen to create, if I am spared! ‘Somebody, stop me!’ as the Mask said. Enjoy this evening and make it count – and every day beyond today, let’s treasure each one and get out of our own way and create something wonderful!

Peter Harris. wizardofeutopia@gmail.com. Ph 022332 6568 Website for Dreamspace: www.dreamspace.nz. My personal art blog :  www.altarsofart.com My process theory and ‘phasetimer’ clocks etc: www.4phase.org My personal blog: www.wizardofeutopia.com  The fantasy epic: apples of Aeden www.applesofaeden.wordpress.com – google for amazon smashwords etc – free volume one as ebook there. Other free or cheap ebooks by me on Amazon and Smashwords.