Creating an Art Monastery

 

Living in intentional community is not for everyone—the idea triggers an autoimmune response in some people, for whom it might signify the sacrifice of personal autonomy and individuality—but once you develop a taste for the stuff, it doesn’t fade. I unabashedly love it.

Since I began this blog-inquiry into monasticism just six months ago, dissecting Taoism, Vedanta, Eastern and Western Christianity, as well as the various vehicles of Buddhism into what I have called the elements of monasticism, community is an element I haven’t written about directly much at all. Yet it figures in my mind as an important piece of what all monasticisms are aiming at. For those individuals who dwell in abbeys, ashrams, friaries, priories, sketes, lavras, mathas, mandirs, koils, gompas, lamaseries, wats, viharas, community is a powerful spiritual practice.

So we’re making a monastery.

No, it’s not the one pictured above—the famous Cluny Abbey, founded in 910 by William the First of Aquitaine—which I include in this post because, although it grew into something massive (such a symbol of opulence that it was destroyed during the French Revolution), it started out modestly enough. William donated his Burgundy hunting preserve and an abbey was born.

Starting out even more modestly, we are making an Art Monastery in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I met Art Monastery Project co-founders Betsy McCall and Christopher Fülling in April of 2008, a few months after they had moved to Italy to start the pilot Art Monastery, and a couple months before I received an MBA in Sustainable Community Economic Development from BGI. I volunteered for the Art Monastery Project in Italy for 17 months out of the next two years.

Last October, I moved to the Bay Area to be with my fiancée, Phoebe, and to start a new Art Monastery here. Since then, between the 8-night Artmonk Retreat and four chapter meetings in Berkeley and San Francisco, after conversations with Phoebe, Joel, Michelle, Tom, Nancy, Annette, Derek, David, Lesley, Eden, and a dozen others, I have a rough idea for how to make it happen.

As I learned in Italy, birthing a self-sustaining community of monastically-inspired artists is an almost unbearably hard and tortuous process. Yet, as far as I and a few others are concerned, there’s nothing more valuable, nothing worthier of our time and our steady effort (aside from, perhaps, practices of contemplation and art-making).

Living in intentional community is not for everyone—the idea triggers an autoimmune response in some people, for whom it might signify the sacrifice of personal autonomy and individuality—but once you develop a taste for the stuff, it doesn’t fade. I unabashedly love it.

Since I began this blog-inquiry into monasticism just six months ago, dissecting Taoism, Vedanta, Eastern and Western Christianity, as well as the various vehicles of Buddhism into what I have called the elements of monasticism, community is an element I haven’t written about directly much at all. Yet it figures in my mind as an important piece of what all monasticisms are aiming at. For those individuals who dwell in abbeys, ashrams, friaries, priories, sketes, lavras, mathas, mandirs, koils, gompas, lamaseries, wats, viharas, community is a powerful spiritual practice.

So we’re making a monastery.

No, it’s not the one pictured above—the famous Cluny Abbey, founded in 910 by William the First of Aquitaine—which I include in this post because, although it grew into something massive (such a symbol of opulence that it was destroyed during the French Revolution), it started out modestly enough. William donated his Burgundy hunting preserve and an abbey was born.

Starting out even more modestly, we are making an Art Monastery in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I met Art Monastery Project co-founders Betsy McCall and Christopher Fülling in April of 2008, a few months after they had moved to Italy to start the pilot Art Monastery, and a couple months before I received an MBA in Sustainable Community Economic Development from BGI. I volunteered for the Art Monastery Project in Italy for 17 months out of the next two years.

Last October, I moved to the Bay Area to be with my fiancée, Phoebe, and to start a new Art Monastery here. Since then, between the 8-night Artmonk Retreat and four chapter meetings in Berkeley and San Francisco, after conversations with Phoebe, Joel, Michelle, Tom, Nancy, Annette, Derek, David, Lesley, Eden, and a dozen others, I have a rough idea for how to make it happen.

As I learned in Italy, birthing a self-sustaining community of monastically-inspired artists is an almost unbearably hard and tortuous process. Yet, as far as I and a few others are concerned, there’s nothing more valuable, nothing worthier of our time and our steady effort (aside from, perhaps, practices of contemplation and art-making).

This is a living document:

Vision [1. Much of this work was inspired by my time in Italy and in particular, a “Visioning Retreat” we did in Labro last fall. I am indebted to Betsy, Christopher, Liz, Charles, Molly, Iwona and “Judith”.]

Simply put, we envision a self-sustaining community of artmonks in the Bay Area.

By “self-sustaining”, we mean that there will be one or more mechanisms of revenue generation. Whether through the production of art, running Artmonk Retreats, or a related social enterprise “Business Unit” (effectively a division of the project, but perhaps legally a separate business) whose profits go to the development of this and other Art Monasteries, money and land are the keys to getting this thing started and running smoothly.

This community (of 30 or so permanent residents, 10-20 artmonks-in-residence, and a few paid staff) will live an experimentally-monastic life together: through a shared routine, shared rituals and celebrations, shared contemplative time (if not shared contemplative object), shared meals, periods of silence, retreat, and philosophical debate, shared monastic rule (community agreements) and vows (statement of personal intention), and the guidance of tripartite leadership team (an abbess or abbott, a spiritual director, and an artistic director), developing together an open-source art monastic lineage (e.g. the Otherhood of Artmonks) in close affiliation with the Italian pilot Art Monastery and other Artmonk chapters around the globe.

We will inhabit a beautiful monastic site (an existing one or a newly built one that is architecturally inspired by monastic tradition, yet which honors California’s weird spiritual architectural heritage) located within a two-hour drive of San Francisco or fifteen minutes away from a BART stop. This site will have private spaces for living, performance and gallery spaces, musical practice spaces, a vast garden, kitchen & dining hall. We will collaborate and perhaps even share space with existing local arts and academic institutions (e.g. the Graduate Theological Union here in Berkeley).

Throughout we will create world-class art (through e.g. a resident theater company, dance company, musical ensembles, visual art installations, sculpture gardens, a poetry and literature publishing house, a film residency) together.

What kind of art will it be? The kind of art that could best happen in an Art Monastery in California.

Values

As an Art Monastery, we value art. We value the discipline, contemplation and sustainability of monasticism. We value monastic art, and artistic monasticism (a form of “social sculpture”). We value the process, as well as the final product.

As a business we honor and respect people and the environment. We seek to do no harm. Our profit goes to the common good.

As an organization, we honor the vertical as well as the horizontal. We are an egalitarian community, yet we utilize the effective power of credential, authority, hierarchy, and institution. We believe in transparency & accountability (open communication; checks and balances of power, etc.).

As a community of individuals, we honor autonomy & privacy, as well as self-transcendance & community. We honor paths of personal, interpersonal (community), and transpersonal (spiritual) development.

As artists, we value virtuosic, world-class art, yet we believe that, as Joseph Beuys said, “everyone is an artist.”

As Artmonks, we aim to live at the intersection of the good (ethics & activism), the true (spirituality & contemplation), and the beautiful (art & creativity), and to serve as a mirror for the world (reflecting its sanity in our rules, while reflecting back both sanity and its insanity in our art).

As part of an order, the International Otherhood of Artmonks, we share our models, tools, structures and solutions with other communities within and without the Otherhood. We act as an autonomous representative of the brand, open-source lineage, and institutions of the Otherhood.

As humans (and as representatives of Northern California), we honor the mystic as well as the skeptic; the hermit as well as the cenobite; the sacred as well as the profane; stabilitas as well as flux; individual religious faiths as well as no faith at all; sexuality as well as celibacy; singleness, monogamy and polyamory; homo-, hetero-, bi-, trans- and a-sexuality; intoxication as well as sobriety; the dual as well as the non-dual.

From the Ground Up

“I have one word of advice,” my friend and adviser Joel Levey said to me a couple months ago as I was talking to him about this grand project: “Pacing.”

Five Parallel Tracks of Development

The creation of our monastery will happen as a result of five parallel tracks (in order of initial importance):

1. Income (e.g. business unit and revenue stream development)
2. Community (e.g. the Artmonks that live there; weekly artmonk sangha/liturgy lab; quarterly chapter dinners)
3. Context (e.g historical and place-based research & theory: “What does an Art Monastery in Northern California look like?”; affiliations with existing institutions)
4. Art (e.g building artistic credibility through performances and works)
5. Site (e.g. land & buildings)

Pacing & Phasing

Timeline and measurable benchmarks:

2011 – Income goal: We will spend this year laying the foundations of our “Business Unit”[2. Stay tuned for more about this mysterious “Business Unit.” Needless to say, it will sell things and/or offer services in exchange for money. As it stands, until the Bay Art Monastery is sufficiently housed in a monastery, its profits will go toward that end. In addition to providing a salary for 2-3 full-time employees, the business will be staffed by 10-15 Artmonks. In exchange for their labors (~10 hours a week each), they get a stipend and a small stake in the company ;)] and its income stream; we will break even and pay back first-round investors, and seek second-round/angel investment. Community goal: Our second 8-night Artmonk Retreat. Building the local chapter of interested artmonks. We will start a seed community (perhaps of just 4-6 artmonks living in a warehouse). We will strengthen our relationships to existing institutions. Context Goal: We will establish connections with 1 local religious group, interested in partnering with us. We will continue to research monasticism from around the world, and explore the monastic communities that already exist in Northern California. Art Goal: We will put on at least 1 original Art Monastery performance. Site Goal: We will familiarize ourselves with the area and pinpoint preferred location.

2012 – Income goal: Business Unit’s profit growing modestly. Second round of investment in Business Unit. Community goal: We will grow the seed community, and continue to develop our artmonk liturgy (arturgy?). Third of our 8-night Artmonk Retreats. First Artmonk Dathün (monthlong retreat). Context Goal: In the fall of 2012, Nathan will begin a PhD program (either at GTU, CIIS, or one of the UC’s), the aim of which will be to deepen my research of Art & Monasticism and document the creation of our Art Monastery. Art Goal: Two original performances/installations. Site Goal: We will continue to research properties in the Bay Area.

2013 – Income/site goal: We have enough capital and acquire the land to begin building a monastery (if an existing, empty one hasn’t surfaced yet). Work begins on a gardens, chicken coop, beehives, and 2 hexayurts are erected. Community goal: Fourth and fifth 8-night Artmonk Retreats; second Artmonk Dathün (monthlong retreat). The initial seed community of 4-6 is ready to grow. We establish official processes by which new members enter the community. Rules and vows are codified (yet always evolving). Context Goal: We establish an official relationship with medium-sized academic institution. Art Goal: Three medium original performances/installations, one large. A group of 3 Bay Area Artmonks heads to Italy for 1 month in the summer.

2014 – Income/site goal: Building (stage 1: “The Architecture Monastery Project”): A cob dining facility, straw-bale houses, hexayurts, tents, shipping containers and covered wagons. Garden provides 10% of our food for the year. Community goal: The monastery admits five “novices” who will enter a year-long trial period before full-Artmonkery is achieved: four are artists, one is a GTU PhD candidate interested in monastic living. 3 one-month artist residencies. Context Goal: We begin to nail down the brand—What does an Art Monastery in California look like? What are its practices? How is it styled? We establish an official partnership with medium-sized arts organization. Art Goal: 3 medium original performances/installations, 2 large. A group of 4 Bay Area Artmonks heads to Italy for 2 months in the summer.

2015 – Income/site goal: The planning of Building (stage 2: Art Chapel). Community goal: The 4-6 seed Artmonks vote on 2014’s five “novices”, and admits five new ones: 3 who are artists and 2 who are grad students. Garden provides 25% of food. Goats acquired. First arts-based youth empowerment camp (PYE Global model). 6 one-month artist residencies. Context Goal: Continued experimention with meditation, liturgy, chanting the hours of the office, ritual theater, celebration, performance. 1 Artmonk leaves to tour monasteries of the world and make a documentary. Art Goal: 4 medium original performances/installations, 2 large. A group of 5 Bay Area Artmonks heads to Italy for 2 months in the summer.

2016 – Income/site goal: Building (stage 2: Art Chapel). Planning of Building (stage 3: cloister). Community goal: Vote on 2015’s novices. There are now 10-15 Artmonks. Admits 3 new novices: 2 who are artists and 1 a grad student. 1o one-month artist residencies. Art Goal: 8 medium original performances/installations, 3 large. A group of 8 Bay Area Artmonks heads to Italy for 2 months in the summer.

2017 – Income/site goal: Building (stage 3: Cloister).

2018 – Context Goal: Nathan finishes PhD.

2019 – Income/site goal: Building (stage 4: a performance/installation venue, official dining hall and practice rooms.)

2021 – Income/site goal: Bay Art Monastery complete. Profits begin to be divided between the business unit (30%), Bay Art Monastery (30%), worker-owners (15%) and AMP International (15%). Garden provides 50% of our food. Community goal: Goal of 30 artmonks reached.

2031 – Income/site goal: A second piece of land is acquired further afield. A new monastery begun, with a component youth outdoor education center.

Creating an Art Monastery by Nathan Rosquist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at wp.me.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.artmonastery.org.

Notes:

This is a living document:

Vision [1. Much of this work was inspired by my time in Italy and in particular, a “Visioning Retreat” we did in Labro last fall. I am indebted to Betsy, Christopher, Liz, Charles, Molly, Iwona and “Judith”.]

Simply put, we envision a self-sustaining community of artmonks in the Bay Area.

By “self-sustaining”, we mean that there will be one or more mechanisms of revenue generation. Whether through the production of art, running Artmonk Retreats, or a related social enterprise “Business Unit” (effectively a division of the project, but perhaps legally a separate business) whose profits go to the development of this and other Art Monasteries, money and land are the keys to getting this thing started and running smoothly.

This community (of 30 or so permanent residents, 10-20 artmonks-in-residence, and a few paid staff) will live an experimentally-monastic life together: through a shared routine, shared rituals and celebrations, shared contemplative time (if not shared contemplative object), shared meals, periods of silence, retreat, and philosophical debate, shared monastic rule (community agreements) and vows (statement of personal intention), and the guidance of tripartite leadership team (an abbess or abbott, a spiritual director, and an artistic director), developing together an open-source art monastic lineage (e.g. the Otherhood of Artmonks) in close affiliation with the Italian pilot Art Monastery and other Artmonk chapters around the globe.

We will inhabit a beautiful monastic site (an existing one or a newly built one that is architecturally inspired by monastic tradition, yet which honors California’s weird spiritual architectural heritage) located within a two-hour drive of San Francisco or fifteen minutes away from a BART stop. This site will have private spaces for living, performance and gallery spaces, musical practice spaces, a vast garden, kitchen & dining hall. We will collaborate and perhaps even share space with existing local arts and academic institutions (e.g. the Graduate Theological Union here in Berkeley).

Throughout we will create world-class art (through e.g. a resident theater company, dance company, musical ensembles, visual art installations, sculpture gardens, a poetry and literature publishing house, a film residency) together.

What kind of art will it be? The kind of art that could best happen in an Art Monastery in California.

Values

As an Art Monastery, we value art. We value the discipline, contemplation and sustainability of monasticism. We value monastic art, and artistic monasticism (a form of “social sculpture”). We value the process, as well as the final product.

As a business we honor and respect people and the environment. We seek to do no harm. Our profit goes to the common good.

As an organization, we honor the vertical as well as the horizontal. We are an egalitarian community, yet we utilize the effective power of credential, authority, hierarchy, and institution. We believe in transparency & accountability (open communication; checks and balances of power, etc.).

As a community of individuals, we honor autonomy & privacy, as well as self-transcendance & community. We honor paths of personal, interpersonal (community), and transpersonal (spiritual) development.

As artists, we value virtuosic, world-class art, yet we believe that, as Joseph Beuys said, “everyone is an artist.”

As Artmonks, we aim to live at the intersection of the good (ethics & activism), the true (spirituality & contemplation), and the beautiful (art & creativity), and to serve as a mirror for the world (reflecting its sanity in our rules, while reflecting back both sanity and its insanity in our art).

As part of an order, the International Otherhood of Artmonks, we share our models, tools, structures and solutions with other communities within and without the Otherhood. We act as an autonomous representative of the brand, open-source lineage, and institutions of the Otherhood.

As humans (and as representatives of Northern California), we honor the mystic as well as the skeptic; the hermit as well as the cenobite; the sacred as well as the profane; stabilitas as well as flux; individual religious faiths as well as no faith at all; sexuality as well as celibacy; singleness, monogamy and polyamory; homo-, hetero-, bi-, trans- and a-sexuality; intoxication as well as sobriety; the dual as well as the non-dual.

From the Ground Up

“I have one word of advice,” my friend and adviser Joel Levey said to me a couple months ago as I was talking to him about this grand project: “Pacing.”

Five Parallel Tracks of Development

The creation of our monastery will happen as a result of five parallel tracks (in order of initial importance):

1. Income (e.g. business unit and revenue stream development)
2. Community (e.g. the Artmonks that live there; weekly artmonk sangha/liturgy lab; quarterly chapter dinners)
3. Context (e.g historical and place-based research & theory: “What does an Art Monastery in Northern California look like?”; affiliations with existing institutions)
4. Art (e.g building artistic credibility through performances and works)
5. Site (e.g. land & buildings)

Pacing & Phasing

Timeline and measurable benchmarks:

2011 – Income goal: We will spend this year laying the foundations of our “Business Unit”[2. Stay tuned for more about this mysterious “Business Unit.” Needless to say, it will sell things and/or offer services in exchange for money. As it stands, until the Bay Art Monastery is sufficiently housed in a monastery, its profits will go toward that end. In addition to providing a salary for 2-3 full-time employees, the business will be staffed by 10-15 Artmonks. In exchange for their labors (~10 hours a week each), they get a stipend and a small stake in the company ;)] and its income stream; we will break even and pay back first-round investors, and seek second-round/angel investment. Community goal: Our second 8-night Artmonk Retreat. Building the local chapter of interested artmonks. We will start a seed community (perhaps of just 4-6 artmonks living in a warehouse). We will strengthen our relationships to existing institutions. Context Goal: We will establish connections with 1 local religious group, interested in partnering with us. We will continue to research monasticism from around the world, and explore the monastic communities that already exist in Northern California. Art Goal: We will put on at least 1 original Art Monastery performance. Site Goal: We will familiarize ourselves with the area and pinpoint preferred location.

2012 – Income goal: Business Unit’s profit growing modestly. Second round of investment in Business Unit. Community goal: We will grow the seed community, and continue to develop our artmonk liturgy (arturgy?). Third of our 8-night Artmonk Retreats. First Artmonk Dathün (monthlong retreat). Context Goal: In the fall of 2012, Nathan will begin a PhD program (either at GTU, CIIS, or one of the UC’s), the aim of which will be to deepen my research of Art & Monasticism and document the creation of our Art Monastery. Art Goal: Two original performances/installations. Site Goal: We will continue to research properties in the Bay Area.

2013 – Income/site goal: We have enough capital and acquire the land to begin building a monastery (if an existing, empty one hasn’t surfaced yet). Work begins on a gardens, chicken coop, beehives, and 2 hexayurts are erected. Community goal: Fourth and fifth 8-night Artmonk Retreats; second Artmonk Dathün (monthlong retreat). The initial seed community of 4-6 is ready to grow. We establish official processes by which new members enter the community. Rules and vows are codified (yet always evolving). Context Goal: We establish an official relationship with medium-sized academic institution. Art Goal: Three medium original performances/installations, one large. A group of 3 Bay Area Artmonks heads to Italy for 1 month in the summer.

2014 – Income/site goal: Building (stage 1: “The Architecture Monastery Project”): A cob dining facility, straw-bale houses, hexayurts, tents, shipping containers and covered wagons. Garden provides 10% of our food for the year. Community goal: The monastery admits five “novices” who will enter a year-long trial period before full-Artmonkery is achieved: four are artists, one is a GTU PhD candidate interested in monastic living. 3 one-month artist residencies. Context Goal: We begin to nail down the brand—What does an Art Monastery in California look like? What are its practices? How is it styled? We establish an official partnership with medium-sized arts organization. Art Goal: 3 medium original performances/installations, 2 large. A group of 4 Bay Area Artmonks heads to Italy for 2 months in the summer.

2015 – Income/site goal: The planning of Building (stage 2: Art Chapel). Community goal: The 4-6 seed Artmonks vote on 2014’s five “novices”, and admits five new ones: 3 who are artists and 2 who are grad students. Garden provides 25% of food. Goats acquired. First arts-based youth empowerment camp (PYE Global model). 6 one-month artist residencies. Context Goal: Continued experimention with meditation, liturgy, chanting the hours of the office, ritual theater, celebration, performance. 1 Artmonk leaves to tour monasteries of the world and make a documentary. Art Goal: 4 medium original performances/installations, 2 large. A group of 5 Bay Area Artmonks heads to Italy for 2 months in the summer.

2016 – Income/site goal: Building (stage 2: Art Chapel). Planning of Building (stage 3: cloister). Community goal: Vote on 2015’s novices. There are now 10-15 Artmonks. Admits 3 new novices: 2 who are artists and 1 a grad student. 1o one-month artist residencies. Art Goal: 8 medium original performances/installations, 3 large. A group of 8 Bay Area Artmonks heads to Italy for 2 months in the summer.

2017 – Income/site goal: Building (stage 3: Cloister).

2018 – Context Goal: Nathan finishes PhD.

2019 – Income/site goal: Building (stage 4: a performance/installation venue, official dining hall and practice rooms.)

2021 – Income/site goal: Bay Art Monastery complete. Profits begin to be divided between the business unit (30%), Bay Art Monastery (30%), worker-owners (15%) and AMP International (15%). Garden provides 50% of our food. Community goal: Goal of 30 artmonks reached.

2031 – Income/site goal: A second piece of land is acquired further afield. A new monastery begun, with a component youth outdoor education center.

Creating an Art Monastery by Nathan Rosquist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at wp.me.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.artmonastery.org.

Notes: