WHAT are Conceptual Mandalas?

Conceptual Mandalas is a term the artist frames to title the pieces.  Conceptual, meaning: A concept, idea, ideology, mental model or framework that describes relationships and behaviors of a system.  Mandala is a Sanskrit word for circle.  The circle contains and identifies boundaries, which is the most challenging process the artist discovers in every unique Conceptual Mandala.  Scale, qualitative sigils that can invoke shared meaning and the ability of anyone that can read a written language are the major considerations the artist reflects on for weeks and months before beginning each piece.  They were inspired after years of classroom and fieldwork of taking illustrated notes for ease of recalling the information later.  The mind operates primarily in symbols and sigils, not words and sentences.  We use words and language to share and define the internal images of an internal and external realities.

Conceptual Mandalas are meant to be a pathway for sharing useful information across multiple cultures, merely by altering the language that defines the sigils.  The artist is using the same or similar sigils embedded within the multiple pieces in each series.  In other words, a historic sigil intended for fire or heat is an upward facing triangle.  This sigil will remain constant throughout multiple conceptual mandalas and the more familiar one becomes with each new mandala, the more easily they will be able to make meaning of the successive ones.

WHO are the stakeholders of CMs?

Everyone is a stakeholder.  The artist intends to see useful information in recognizing connections and patterns between elements within systems, from healing the body, mind and community to restoring nature’s ecosystems.  Being able to learn which plants might help sooth inflammation or increase oxygen supply in the blood can be quite useful.  That makes YOU a stakeholder in the useful information.  If you see something that isn’t useful, please let me know!  I encourage all forms of feedback.

WHERE are the Conceptual Mandalas?

Currently, the artist offers direct sales via email contact only.  International orders and pickup options are available within the Pacific Northwest.  Because the artist resides in Portugal, shipping within the US needs to be coordinated via email.  Here is a MAP where some mandalas can be seen in person.

WHEN will Conceptual Mandalas reach my area?

Ask a local shop or business to contact the artist.  If you are international, I will need support in translating and at least a month to print and another couple weeks for delivery.

WHY are Conceptual Mandalas important?

Not only do Conceptual Mandalas draw the attention of any passerby, invoking a sense of curiosity, but every sale contributes financial resources toward non-profit organisations that improve community resiliency, foster useful relationships with homeless and underserved populations, including civilians and veterans worldwide AND to scholarships and grants that focus on sustainably minded pilot projects and useful information sharing opportunities.  To learn more about the Sustainable Community Building Creative Projects Fund, click here: ENCNPO Fund and SCBCP Fund

HOW can I get involved?

Do you consider yourself a stakeholder now that you know what is at stake?  Do you intimately know a useful system that you would like to see illustrated, something that could potentially be shared with cultures that natively speak Portuguese, Spanish, French, Chinese or Arabic?  By now the reader must realize that only serious inquirers to sharing useful information need reply.  Mental models like agroforestry techniques in various ecological spheres, local native plants and their uses, medical cosmological relationships, multiple natural materials that can be used to build housing, rocket stove concepts…all of these and many more are worthy of being co-created and shared as hard copies which cannot be erased by solar flares or magnetic storms.  We are living in the communication age, where an individual can communicate via video from almost any location near the Earth to another location simultaneously, and in rare occasions, prior.  Yet, in this paradoxical epoch, many of us are finding it quite challenging to speak with our family and neighbors, those closest to us.  One of the intentions and mission of Conceptual Mandalas is to facilitate the expression of useful mental models, to promote self, community and environmental awareness, mind & body healing, social & environmental justice and promoting inquiry into existing known systems worldwide.