Confluence of Ideas

I’ve just returned from a trip to Luang Prabang, Laos where the peace is palpable, the food delicious, and the scenery lush and exotic with the mighty Mekong River merging with the smaller Nam Khan at the end of the peninsula. This was my fourth trip to this World Heritage town.

Temple Door Decoration

As always I photograph ideas where ever I go finding earring designs in temple decorations, necklace ideas in store fronts, and painting visions in my dreams.  Other artists creations get my juices flowing and idea sketches flavor the pages of my notebook.  

Ken, an American, who has lived in Luang Prabang for over five years, was a novice in a monastery for a year. Now he makes spirit houses out of found and created objects.  These have a life of their own, or taksu as we say in Indonesian.

I brought one of his creations back to Bali, carefully packed in a handmade paper box. I call it ‘The House of Smiling Spirits’ because it makes me smile whenever I gaze at it.

Ken Yarbro's Spirit House

Creativity is where ever you find it - in the swirl of a glazed ceramic tile, a plaster bas relief decoration over a doorway, a cloud cluster, a reflection. 

As the composer Richard Wagner said, "I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired."   

These vibrations are loud and strong in Luang Prabang, Laos.