The Badlands Rebel Landscape Vicki Milewski

The Badlands Rebel Landscapes by Vicki Milewski

Vicki Milewski vickimilewski@gmail.com http://vickimilewski.wix.com/vmartist Vicki Milewski copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved Organized and Designed by Vicki Milewski on the cover is Place Between Two Rocks (detail) on Front piece Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one)

Published for the Collection The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes

Created by

Vicki Milewski

Table of Contents for The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes

First Essays (at the beginning) The Zig Zag Trail in Spring Photograph: The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Exhibition Parameters

by Vicki Milewski

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Artist Statement

by Vicki Milewski

Narratives for each Art Work

by Vicki Milewski

Last Essays (at the end) The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes An Introduction

by Michael Milewski

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Part One: Vicki Milewski’s Badlands Roads Road Tripping in the 21st Century

by Jules Heffe

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Part Two: Vicki Milewski’s A White River Valley New Frontiers with Ancient Foundations

by Vicki Milewski

Ink on Paper Drawings (used throughout) Castle Trail in the Badlands, Badlands Loop Road (Route 244) Stars At My Feet View from Place Between Two Rocks Right up against the rock On top of Saddlepass Badlands Loop Road (Route 244) Badlands Dawn Days Passing with the Place Between Two Rocks

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Artworks From “Badlands Roads� Series Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) oil on canvas Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) pencil on paper Illustrations: Detail from Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) Google Earth Capture of Satellite view of Badlands Loop Road (Route 244) at Big Foot Pass.

Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe oil on canvas Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe pencil on paper Illustrations: Detail from Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe

Inside a Lakota Tipi photograph Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home oil on canvas Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home pencil on paper Illustrations: Detail of Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home Google Earth Capture of the White River when it flows past the Badlands

Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink oil on canvas Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink pencil on paper Illustrations: Detail of Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink Google Earth capture of the Badlands Loop Road by Conata Basin

Badlands Road: Above The Twelve Tribes oil on canvas Badlands Road: Above The Twelve Tribes pencil on paper Illustrations: Detail of Badlands Road: Above The Twelve Tribes Google Earth capture of Cross Section of Medicine Root Loop Trail

Badlands Road: Below The Green Road oil on canvas Badlands Road: Below The Green Road pencil on paper Illustrations: Detail of Badlands Road: Below The Green Road Sun Path Diagram for the Badlands National Park

Badlands Road Inside: Lighting Me Up oil on canvas Badlands Road Inside: Lighting Me Up pencil on paper Illustrations: Cross section of geologic features of significance in and around the Badlands Fault lines within the Badlands National Park

Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with the Milky Way oil on canvas Illustrations: Barn and corn fields detail of unfinished Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with the Milky Way Badland formations detail of unfinished Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with the Milky Way Mercator projection of the Milky Way and some bright open or galactic clusters A star chart showing a section of the Milky Way

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Artworks From “A White River Valley� Series Zig Zag Trail: Flexibility pencil on paper The Start of the Zig Zag Trail photograph The Zig Zag Trail photograph Zig Zag Trail in Spring photograph Badlands Mound with Moon: Meditation pencil on paper Badlands Mound: 1999 photograph Badlands Mound: 2006 (with auric channels) photographic collage Badlands Mound: 2012 (with chakras) photographic collage Badlands Mound: 2014 photograph Correspondences: Experience pencil on paper Badlands Mound Late Summer 2015 photograph Badlands Mound Late Spring 2015 photograph The Badlands photograph White River Storm: Introspection pencil on paper White River Storm 1 photograph White River Storm 2 photograph White River Storm 3 photograph White River Storm 4 photograph The Looking Conversation: Seeing the World pencil on paper Skeleton Dance Cliffs (elsewhere in the Badlands) photograph Skeleton Dance Cliffs (collage with skeletons) photographic collage Skeleton Dance Cliffs (collage with dancers) photographic collage Pranyama: Extending Beyond Ourselves pencil on paper Pranyama: Light and Dark (A Self Portrait) photograph Castle Trail in Spring (Inhaling) photograph Pranayama: Sun (Dreamtending) photograph Castle Trail in Fall (Exhaling) photograph Gloria in the Badlands: Pingala pencil on paper The Grassland: Ida pencil on paper In the Valley: Sushumna pencil on paper A Badlands Day 1 (Sushumna) photograph A Badlands Day 2 (Exposed Nadis) photograph A Badlands Day 3 (Ida) photograph A Badlands Day 4 (Pingala) photograph Vision of Water: Believing in Visions pencil on paper On the top of the Saddle Pass Trail Looking South (View from Visionquest Spot) photograph On the Saddle Pass Trail climbing up from the South (On the way to honor my Visions) photograph View of top of Saddle Pass Trail looking North (Visionquest Spot) photograph On the other side of the Saddle Pass Trail from the Castel Trail looking South (After Vision) photograph Place Between Two Rocks' Dawn: Embracing the Spiritual Life pencil on paper The Place Between Two Rocks Approach photograph The Place Between Two Rocks in the Heat of Summer photograph The Place Between Two Rocks Close photograph The Place Between Two Rocks Leaving photograph The Place Between Two Rocks Leaving photograph

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Artworks The Singularities The Place Between Two Rocks an altered book Place Between Two Rocks an experimental short film

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Artworks The Rebellion: Selected Photographs of the Badlands The spirits dance. 5” x 7” I Think of Dancing with Them Place Between Two Rocks with Spirits Place Between Two Rocks Storm Badland Flowers 1997 Castle Trail 1998 Castel Trail with Berlin Loop Road Sunrise Wildflower Rebellion in Green Wildflower Rebellion in Curves Wildflower Rebellion Amassed Wildflower Rebellion in Yellow Brule Formation Sunrise 1 Brule Formation Sunrise 2 Badland Winter 1 (2012) Badland Winter 2 (2012) Badland Awakening 1 Badland Awakening 2 Badland Awakening 3 Badland Awakening 4 The Dawning 1 The Dawning 2 The Dawning 3 The end is really the beginning

There are still visions to be seen and experienced‌

Days passing with the Place Between Two Rocks Ink and Paper

The Badlands: Rebel Landscape First Essays

The Zig Zag Trail in Spring Badlands National Park Photograph

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Exhibition Parameters: The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes has five main parts within it:  Badlands Roads series has 15 art works, 4 Satellite photos, pieces to display  A White River Valley series currently has 45 artworks available for display 1  The Rebellion series has 24 selected photographs of the Badlands available for display with an additional 4 photographic collages and 34 additional photographs which also work with A White River Valley series.  Place Between Two Rocks currently has one sculptural altered book and one 5 minute film both of the same name available for display 2  A White River Valley is a creative non-fiction book available for sale and for talks Exhibition parameters:    

All canvases are wired for hanging with all but 4 in specific frames All drawings and photographs are framed, matted and wired for hanging The altered book needs a table top or other display stand The film is on DVD

Exhibition Extras:    

Artist available for Talks, Lectures, Workshops Catalog available for sale Cards, posters and other merchandise has been created for popular pieces A White River Valley, a creative non-fiction book, is available for sale

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes have been exhibited in several different ways      

Individual pieces as part of group shows The Badlands Roads oil paintings with pencil on paper drawings A White River Valley pencil on paper drawings The Badlands: Rebel Landscape Photographs Place Between Two Rocks has been screened at film festivals The entire collection together

Please note: in addition to the art works, Vicki Milewki’s research culminating in these art works has also been created by the artist for exhibition purposes. Wall cards, poster sized illustrations and other ways of depicting this research adds another dimension to the art works and solidifies Vicki Milewski’s standing as a high quality artist whose works elicit aesthetic, intellectual experiences as well as enjoyment. Curators, galleries and individual organizations have much praise for the exhibitions that have been mounted thus far and the artist enjoys brisk sales that include contracts which persuade her collectors to allow exhibitions to stay together for the duration of their exhibition cycle which usually lasts 3-5 years.

All photographs can be exhibited in the following sizes: 8” X 10”, 16” X 20” 32” X 40” unless a specific size is indicated.

All images are available for websites, pr materials and other uses please contact the artist 1

Please note: A White River Valley has 7 oil paintings that are currently being created and will be available by the end of summer 2016 (these are not included in the current count of pieces available).

2 Please note: Place Between Two Rocks has several altered books currently being created as well as two more short films.

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Artist Statement The Badlands is an art collection filled with rebellion. Rebellion against conventional beauty and myths of the American West is embedded in oil paints and pencil on paper. Meditation on ancient oceans bring 21st Century ideas on film and in altered books. The roads, cliffs, trails and sunlight inspire forms and colors to dance with life. The heavens come tumbling down onto a trail, field or hill while the core of our being and the history of our world are exposed. The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes prepare us for a revolution in art.

Badlands Roads is about the roads we all travel upon physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually Physically South Below

Mentally North Above

Emotionally West Inside

Spiritually East Outside

These roads carry us where we choose to go and through the journey we understand our selves better.

These roads show a transformation of the American road trip from self discovery through acceptance that there are powers and experiences in our physical reality which are seldom spoken of in 21st Century life; to one of shared space where we all create our lives and live them as we choose.

A White River Valley is about places where we feel safe, where we have a sense of belonging, places where we find out power is not over anyone or anything but our power is in understanding our self and living our lives as we choose.

The White River Valley series is inspired by the Badlands of South Dakota where the landscape and sky meet in a gentle embrace allowing me to find my inner life more easily and learn more about my metaphysical life in the process. Bringing my Kriya Yoga practice to this place helps me to understand the reason why I practice since it is more than the health benefits attained, much more.

The White River, named for its milky color, created the valley where most of these places reside.

The Rebellion searches those places for new knowledge about nature and us.

The Singularity is found in an altered book and short film furthering the discovery of choice by bringing down the convention of old stories so that new ones may be written.

From study of Emerson it is clear that there are still visions to be seen and experienced. Once seen and experienced the primary purpose of a vision is found in sharing it. This collection shares visions and experiences that happened in the Badlands of South Dakota. After accepting the visions given to me I researched other visionaries artists, philosophers, prophets, shamans and more to find a way to describe my art. But none of my research defined or elucidated my work until I found a quote from Georgia O’Keefe: I know I cannot paint a flower. I cannot paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.

After reading this quote I understood what I do as an artist. I had up until that point allowed the abstract expressionist label to help get closer to my art, but now I understood that just as I had embraced Dewey’s experiential educational theories when I taught high school and college, I was an abstract experientialist artist. Alfred, Lord Tennyson said it best in his poem “Ulysses": Yet all experience is an arch, where thro' Gleams that untraveled world It is that untraveled world that all experiences take us toward and in moving toward the unknown we come closer to making it known.

Finding my personal rebellions matched in the Badlands is also a driving force behind this collection.

Finding a place where the landscape and sky meet in a gentle embrace has shown me how to embrace my own life and has opened us choices I did not know existed. My research into American Western mythology led me to Fredrick Jackson Turner’s The Frontier In American History which began as a speech he gave in Chicago in 1893 about the closing of the American frontier by the United States Census Bureau. He worked on his “frontier thesis” throughout the turning of the 19th Century and it is remarkable how true his words are still today during our full turning into the 21 st Century. His questions have been mine: What is the West? What has it been in American life? To have the answers to these questions, is to understand the most significant features of the United States of to-day.

It is questions like these that still drive Americans and the rest of the world toward the unknown future, toward new discoveries and ways of being. It is questions like these that this collection asks.

The beauty I find in the ancient ocean bottom that is the Badlands goes against convention, the thrill I have in going west from my Chicago and Wisconsin homes resists the authority of manifest destiny and revises it for the 21st Century. The absence of ordinary senses of time and space when in the Badlands breaks the bonds of those two control mechanisms. These are some of the reasons this collection of art is significant to the forward motion of American Art. Vicki Milewski The Badlands 2015

Castle Trail in the Badlands Ink and Paper

‌always roaming with an hungry heart, Much have I seen and known . . .

I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch, where thro' Gleams that untraveled world— from "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Road to Castle Trail Ink and Paper

Badlands Roads Artworks

Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) 16� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas.

Conservator-approved; archival quality

Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) Description: The canvas for this experience is a 16” x 20” Belgian linen with Gamblin Oil Paint, naturally dyed paints and Mica Schist. The finished canvas has been conservator-approved as being of archival quality. It is typically shown in a gold patinated Western style frame. The landscape is an aerial view of the Badlands Loop Road (Route 244) near Bigfoot Pass in the Badlands National Park.

South Dakota.

Narrative of Experience: Driving through the Badlands National Park during pre-dawn hours shows a pink, glowing light emanating from the formations and road. This pink light of the not yet risen sun colors the intricate hills and pinnacles showing a different sense of detail and form. One such early morning drive showed the road glowing strongly pink, I slowed and then pulled over to get out and walk on this pink road watching it smolder and change in color. How could this luminous pink infiltrate my life producing a more gentle way of going than I had been experiencing? Camping and hiking can have a toll on the niceties of being a girl; that I was often a girl alone on the road and in the wilderness or spending time with rangers and scientists brought with it a whole new set of situations. How could this pink road’s colors assist me in living more gently and dare I say more as a girl than an adventuring scientist boring into the remnants of glaciated ice as I had been for several summers in Glacier National Park?

I haven’t fully answered these questions begun that morning but the search for answers and balance stays with me to this day. I rebel against conformity each time I turn west and acknowledge the pull of my spirit to return to wilderness and wild areas. I resist authority in my work with glacial recession theorists, conservation minded park rangers and in working with elders from many cultural traditions who have taught and befriended me. I lead revolutions to change conventions of home, family and work so that others may feel more at home in self chosen paths, so that my struggles on paths different than others can help them and secure a future with more people able to follow their spirit’s call. These rebellions are not for naught.

This part of the Badlands National Park Loop road, Route 244, climbs over Bigfoot Pass hovering over it as it meets with the horizon line. The complimentary colored formations surrounding this pink road support its climb to its destination in the North, but they also allow it interconnectedness with its surroundings. The moment I made the realizations above I was facing north on this very windy road.

The Native American experience of walking a “Red Road” as being one that is filled with spirit and good intent is also a part of the understanding of this painting. That this road is pink and not red means I am still learning how to fully incorporate my spirit into my work as an artist.

Significance: As an American artist working on Western themes for this exhibit, Milewski utilizes O’Keefe and Marin as two influences on this artwork as well as her experiences with Lakota tipi paintings. Her incorporation of Mica Schist in the moon and stars and their corollary reflection in the prairie below mimics her experiences with this rock form and how it shines like stars and moon in the surrounding area. Her use of paints dyed with natural deposits found near Bigfoot Pass recreates the landscape and especially the pink road to bring a piece of the badlands area into her painting.

Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) 8” X 10” Prismacolor Pencil on Cotton Rag paper

Right Detail from Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) Left: Google Earth Capture of Satellite view of Badlands Loop Road (Route 244) at Big Foot Pass.

After both the drawings and canvases were finished I found this Google earth image of the Badlands Loop Road at Bigfoot Pass where I had an inspirational experience. I recognized then that my viewpoint for these artworks was from the sky as if my spirit were flying above me and had communicated the scene to me as I drew and painted. This 21st Century revelation connects me to the future while I stand here in the present.

Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe 16� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas.

Conservator-approved; archival quality

Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe Description: The canvas for this experience is a 16” x 20” Belgian linen with Gamblin Oil Paint, naturally dyed paints and Mica Schist. The finished canvas has been conservator-approved as being of archival quality. It is typically shown in a black Western style frame. The landscape is an aerial view of the Badlands Loop Road (Route 244) on Cedar Pass (looking South)in the Badlands National Park. South Dakota.

Narrative of Experience: During the late 1990’s and early 00’s I would visit the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota to camp, hike and rediscover my life with a Native American man named Joe. One evening just after dusk I was crossing Cedar Pass in the Badlands National Park headed south toward Joe’s home outside of Pine Ridge Reservation, when the stars fully appeared in the still dusking sky and on the lush, spring prairie grasses several hundred feet below me there were also stars shimmering. At first I thought the stars in the grass were reflections of those stars in the sky but they were not since they were in different locations and in different sizes.

When I mentioned the “stars on earth” to Joe, he made one of his standard reply’s, “As above, so below” reminding me of the people who would come to hike on Mt Harney and Bear Butte hoping for the hike to change their lives but when they returned to their cars unchanged Joe would say to me “As above, so below” referencing the person remaining the same on top of Harney and on the bottom of Harney because they wanted the hike to change their lives instead of changing it themselves. “The mountain can assist us but it cannot do the work for us.” But in seeing the “stars on earth” Joe said I was seeing my life already changed and this idea helped to sustain my work in creating a better life for myself steeped in my own personal and cultural history and living fully in the present. I then also knew that my travels out to the Badlands would not change the trajectory of my life—only I can do that.

Joe urged me to write a book about our time together and the lessons and information he shared with me. He scoffed at the idea that he could be a late 20 th Century Black Elk since he felt that Black Elk was trying to explain a past cultural experience that Black Elk felt was lost since the Wounded Knee killings of 1890. Black Elk said that a people’s “beautiful dream” had been lost that day. Joe would echo the phrase “beautiful dream” causing me to call the first drafts of my book Beautiful Dream since Joe would say, “You and I are here to revive the ‘beautiful dream’ but on our terms, for our times. We are here now and work here and now, the past is only good information for us to learn from but not to live, we must live now and our ceremonies, healing, art and magic must be based in the now. Just as many people want a mountain, or a trip, or a person to change their lives, only we can live the most sacred of ceremonies—that of living our lives.”

Significance: As an abstract experientialist with close ties to abstract expressionism, Milewski utilizes Kandinsky and Klee as two influences on this artwork as well as her experiences with Lakota tipi paintings. Her incorporation of Mica Schist in the moon and stars mimics her experiences with this rock form and how it shines like stars and moon in the surrounding area. Her use of paints dyed with natural deposits found near Cedar Pass as well as using ground cedar in the paint recreates the landscape and especially the cedar colored road to bring a piece of the badlands area into her painting.

Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe 8” X 10” Prismacolor Pencil on Cotton Rag

Top: Detail from Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe Bottom: Inside a Lakota Tipi photograph My experiences with Joe and other Lakota’s during the time that these drawings and paintings were being created inside me cannot be understated as influencers of the outcome of these artworks. My first time in a traditional Lakota tipi was when Joe’s cousin Gloria was living in Pine Ridge, SD and set one up outside Joe’s home for a night, inviting me to give it a try instead of my REI tent. The full moon shining through the painted tent is an effect I still attempt to achieve, but the early morning sun waking me with the stars shining made me take this picture and utilize that moment in several of the artworks for this collection.

Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home 16� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Casein Paint Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas.

Conservator-approved; archival quality

Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home Description: The canvas for this experience is a 16” x 20” Belgian linen with Gamblin Oil Paint, Casein Paint, naturally dyed paints and Mica Schist. The finished canvas has been conservatorapproved as being of archival quality. It is typically shown in a gold patinated Western style frame.

The landscape is an aerial view of the Badlands Loop Road (Route 244) approaching Cedar Pass heading home and East in the Badlands National Park. South Dakota.

Narrative of Experience: Leaving the badlands before even pre-dawn begins makes it possible to drive all the way home in one day (12 hours). Many times as I have driven the Loop Road East during this hour of night the road would start turning blue. I started to notice the hue of blue would be similar to my state of mind at the time of my leaving: a deep blue would mean I was deeply at peace, a lighter blue would mean I had a lightness of heart. On this particular drive my heart was quite light and the road was a beautiful cloud blue and it seemed fluid like water with a current flowing east, spilling me toward home.

That the road at this point is spilling upwards to cross over Cedar Pass never seemed to matter to me—it seemed a slight surrealism had crept into some of my art making just as it had after having metaphysical experiences with Joe and on my own in the Badlands. Later I found that the White River, which carved out the valley the Badlands sit in, also runs uphill and North from its source in Nebraska. Since I had chosen to call my book about these experiences A White River Valley to honor the beginning of my journeys I felt an even stronger kinship with this river because of these artworks and the movement of water up hills. The White River also gave the Badlands its name since the river is white due to the erosional deposits of sand, clay, and volcanic ash carried by the river making it non potable for both humans and animals which made this area a “bad land” to cross since the desert climate and lack of water meant a hard crossing. Now in the 21st Century we can bring water with us much easier and so the White River has become more symbolic for me since it is a geographical boundary for the Pine Ridge Reservation on one side, it is the geological remains of the last glacier to pass through here and the last piece of water that still flows through since before the last glacier when all this land was covered by an inland ocean. These badlands are also called “The White River Badlands” because of the deposits and erosion that have occurred due to this river flowing.

That the badlands have gotten their very name due to this river has made me spend much time camping alongside the river and learning from it. Many of my acts of rebellion in my art and in my life have stemmed from experiences I’ve had with this river. The image of the road like a river touching and melting into the sky is what I am expressing near the top of this work.

Significance: This painting is the first time Milewski used Mica Schist within a landscape to show how the stars make the formations here glow. This painting also merges her American artistic influences with her abstract expressionistic influences; however the merging of the road with the sky is something this experience informed. Her incorporation of Mica Schist in the three stars for Orion’s belt mimics her experiences with this rock form and how it shines like the stars in the surrounding area. Her use of paints dyed with natural deposits found near the White River in the paint recreates the landscape. The blue of the road was achieved by adding some casein paint to her oil colors.

Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home 11” X 14” Prismacolor Pencil on Cotton Rag

Right: Detail of Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home Left: Google Earth Capture of the White River when it flows past the Badlands

Amazing how even from space the White River looks white. Again it was a 21st Century revelation that my drawings and painting mimic the flow of the river as it goes past the badlands. The wide prairie valley that this river has to flow upon insures it will remain wild and free for some time.

Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink 16� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas.

Conservator-approved; archival quality

Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink

Description: The canvas for this experience is a 16” x 20” Belgian linen with Gamblin Oil Paint, naturally dyed paints and Mica Schist. The finished canvas has been conservator-approved as being of archival quality. It is typically shown in a black Western style frame. The landscape is an aerial view of the Badlands Loop Road (Route 244) by Conata Basin going up toward Dillon Pass in the Badlands National Park. South Dakota.

Narrative of Experience: Crossing over Big Foot Pass as the sun begins to rise causes the badland formations surrounding the road to turn into many hues of pink. One morning the center line on the road turned into a bright red and I smiled to think that I was on the right path and doing the right thing. I was headed north but needed to visit the badlands before going in that direction. The red center line told me I could camp on Conata Basin that night and prepare more for the glacial recession surveys we were doing in Glacier National Park for the next week. After hiking all day and watching the sunset blend oranges and browns across the badlands the new moon rose with two stars and tracked across the sky with them all night.

The next morning I left as the sun was rising and the badland formations rose up into the sky, looming larger than I had ever seen before. I saw stars inside the formations and a first quarter moon in one. The road no longer had a red center line but instead a pink one causing me to remember the first drawing and experience I had that began this collection: Badlands Road North: the Pink Road… however this time the outer edges of the road were a bright red which ran together to form a solid red road as it peaked at Dillon Pass on the Badlands Loop Road. At that peak the road seemed to lift off into the sky as five stars that shone bright red in the ever dawning sky. I immediately understood that these Badland Roads were to also be in the sky and was rewarded with four more experiences that created the next four canvases.

The reverberations of these formations as they rose up into the sky was almost like they were breathing since I could see them getting larger and changing in color as they grew. It is experiences like this one that inform my art making and this experience showed me a new way of looking at my art and my life.

Significance: This painting explodes the sense of abstract experientialism by creating undulating badland formations in vibrant colors and by placing certain stars within the badlands formations.

These two characteristics place this painting as a bridge between the first four Badland Roads which express the four cardinal directions of North, South, East and West and the next four Badlands Roads which embrace the other four directions of living; Above, Below, Inside and Outside. After working with her Lakota friend and shaman Joe, Milewski began integrating her other work with B.K.S. Iyenger and Hatha Yoga and the Sri Goswami Kriyananda and Kriya yoga as well as influences from her ancestors and personal experiences in the wilderness. This painting also mentions Milewski Pop Art influences. Her incorporation of Mica Schist and paints dyed with natural deposits found near the Conata Basin help recreate the landscape.

Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink 11” X 14” Prismacolor Pencils on Cotton Rag

Right: Detail of Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink Left: Google Earth capture of the Badlands Loop Road by Conata Basin After the first 21st Century revelation that my Badland Roads were seen from a satellite perspective, I looked for each of the roads to see if that was the case and found it was. I have chosen 3 of the 8 images from Google Earth that are the most meaningful to me for inclusion in this collection. The Google Earth image above shows the Badland Road as it is approaching Dillon Pass and on the bottom part of this image the beginning of the Conata Basin is shown in the darker colors. This basin is over 142,000 acres of prairie with badland formations interspersed. Much of it is BLM land which allows me to gather some of the materials that I use in my art.

Badlands Road: Above The Twelve Tribes 20� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas.

Conservator-approved; archival quality

Badlands Road: Above The Twelve Tribes Description: The canvas for this experience is a 20” x 20” Belgian linen with Gamblin Oil Paint, naturally dyed paints and Mica Schist. The finished canvas has been conservator-approved as being of archival quality. It is typically shown with no frame. This artwork shows the Medicine Route Trail lifting off into the sky with the Badlands wall in the background.

Narrative of Experience: After many metaphysical experiences along the Badland Loop Road I understood that my metaphysical experiences while hiking in the Badlands needed to also be shown.

During full moon nights when the skies are clear I love hiking familiar trails. The clean air is filled with wonderful scents of cedar, sages and more and there are different animals active that often appear as shadows before moving along on their ways. I have had many different experiences during these hikes but this particular experience I knew to be a part of The Badlands Collection.

Reading a new translation of Revelations I was struck by the use of the twelve tribes as stars in the sky which came down to become messengers of God. While hiking on the Medicine Root trail in the Badlands of South Dakota one early summer evening, I saw the trail lift off into the sky and then blue flowed from the sky onto the trail. The bright full moon had made other celestial objects disappear in its light but then stars started appearing with some of them appearing on the trail in the sky.

As all this happened the trail widened into a road and the scene hung there in front of me as the winds started to blow stronger. I smelled the green sage growing alongside me and felt myself perspiring at this vision. I had seen a road lift off into the sky at Arches National Park in Utah so I was not too surprised, but the stars shimmered so beautifully and were bathed in a clear blue light that I found myself holding my breath at such a wonder.

I counted twelve stars before the moon started glowing again, blocking out the stars with a light reflected from the sun. I walked on seeing how the trail glimmered from the light of the moon.

Significance: This painting continues the story from the Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink but is the first canvas to show a trail in the Badlands National Park instead of the Badlands Loop Road although the trail “loops’ in the sky in respect to the Loop Road. This painting is influenced by surrealists like Dali who helped Milewski see that anything could happen on a canvas (and in life) and also Kandinsky who helped Milewski explore the potential of having a movable horizon line as she moved away from representational art and more fully into her abstract experientialism. The twelve stars representing the twelve tribes of Milewski Judeo-Christian heritage tie her ancestral lineage to her 21st Century acknowledgements of Native American and Indian cultural experiences with the Lakota medicine man Joe and Milewski’s work in different schools of yoga. Her incorporation of Mica Schist and paints dyed with natural deposits found near this area help recreate the landscape.

Badlands Road: Above The Twelve Tribes 11” X 14” Prismacolor Pencils on Cotton Rag

Top: Detail of Badlands Road: Above The Twelve Tribes Bottom: Cross Section of Medicine Root Loop Trail I do a tremendous amount of research for each of my art collections looking at my experiences and responses to them from different perspectives and with new information. The cross section map of the altitude adjustments to the Medicine Root Trail almost mirrors the way I drew the Badlands Wall that is just to the South of this trail. Whenever I find correspondences between my works and other natural monitors I find it thrilling and almost like applause from the natural world that understand it.

Badlands Road: Below The Green Road 20” X 20” ” Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas.

Conservator-approved; archival quality

Badlands Road: Below The Green Road Description: The canvas for this experience is a 20” x 20” Belgian linen with Gamblin Oil Paint, naturally dyed paints and Mica Schist. The finished canvas has been conservator-approved as being of archival quality. It is typically shown with no frame. This artwork shows A badland formation as seen from the Sage Creek Wilderness Area near Dillon Pass.

Narrative of Experience: On a hike during twilight brought this view of a green road inside a large badland formation. At first it seemed contained in the formation until I saw how the tip of the road on top was not an ending point but that the road continued on into the formation. I tried to walk around the formation but could not climb over the steep grades. Later that week I was hiking on bear butte enjoying a cool morning and having the trail to myself when I came upon a Native American man tying prayer ties to a tree. The usual colors of red, white, yellow and black billowed out on the soft breeze but there was also a green strip of cloth.

I asked the man what the green one meant and he said, “The green road is to take care of the earth and tell the world about our relatives the trees, grass, rocks and water.”

I thought about the green road in the badlands formation I had seen and realized then it was a part of my Badlands Road Collection. Since it was inside the formation I decided that in addition to North, South, East and West there would be Above and Below and Inside and Outside.

This badland formation also separated the still strong night sky and the coming of the dawn and so its very presence during this experience was like it was a physical manifestation of twilight. The two stars are Mercury and Venus as they share the morning sky which occurs when they change places as the morning star and the evening star. Following the transit of these two planets has led to a whole new way of viewing celestial time and seasonal constructs.

The green road being inside it also brought me to a fuller awareness of my work in conservation ethics and trying to find a balance between ardent environmental theories and respectful use of our environment. This is the green road I walk. Getting to know my family’s farm in Wisconsin has been like getting to know myself since I have had to learn about conservation techniques as well as learn about the people who farm the land around me so that there can be a balance between what is used, what is saved and what is repaired. Now when I visit the badlands I choose a time when there are less people, I chose to stay for shorter amounts of time and I chose to learn more about this landscape so that I can do my part to find a balance that will sustain this area and its inhabitants.

Significance: This painting shows the strength of twilight, when it is easy to see things differently and to accept surreal experiences. Working as a conservationist has informed much of Milewski’s art and art making. This painting is informed by Abstract Expressionists like Kandinsky, especially his “Simple Pleasures” and Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines showing Milewski’s use of abstraction within the badland formation in order to elucidate this experience. Her incorporation of Mica Schist and paints dyed with natural deposits found near this area help recreate the landscape.

Badlands Road: Below The Green Road 11” X 14” Prismacolor Pencils on Cotton Rag

Sun path Today June solstice December solstice Annual variation Equinox (March and September) Sunrise/sunset Sunrise Sunset Time 00-02 03-05 06-08 09-11 12-14 15-17 18-20 21-23

Top: Detail of Badlands Road: Below The Green Road Bottom: Sun Path Diagram for the Badlands National Park The similarities between the way I drew the green road inside this badlands formation and the Sun’s Path for the June Solstice is not surprising since this experience happened on the solstice and it was the sun penetrating this formation that produced the green road I saw. Learning more about the science of our natural world has only increased my metaphysical experiences. At first I thought that more knowledge of how things work and why they are happening in a certain way would cause me to have different kinds of experiences. Instead, this added knowledge has only increased the strength, duration and quantity of metaphysical experiences while also making them more meaningful and resonant with a greater world.

Badlands Road Inside: Lighting Me Up 20� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas.

Conservator-approved; archival quality

Badlands Road Inside: Lighting Me Up Description: The canvas for this experience is a 20” x 20” Belgian linen with Gamblin Oil Paint, naturally dyed paints and Mica Schist. The finished canvas has been conservator-approved as being of archival quality. It is typically shown with no frame. This artwork was inspired by an experience during a full moon hike on the Medicine Root Trail.

Narrative of Experience: This road is inside me. After many years hiking, camping, meditating with and studying the Badlands I have found that its formations and skies are within me. My Lakota friend Joe would talk about how the universe we see is simply a mirror of our personal universes within. Sometimes I understand how expansive I am inside, how there are galaxies, star systems, planets, and me. Just as ancient alchemists would talk about what is above is also below, I understand now that what is outside is also inside since we create our world each moment.

This canvas is a continuation of Badlands Road Above: Twelve Tribes and connected to the final canvas of this series Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with the Milky Way. Similar experiences inspired all three of these canvases.

During a full moon hike on the Medicine Root Trail in the Badlands, the trail started to roll beneath my feet and then spiral up into the sky before coming back down and entering the White River Group of the Badlands wall which lay before me glowing under the moonlight. The trail had turned from the white dust at my feet to a yellow once it reached the lacustrine limestone foundation of a tall Sharps Formation of the Badlands wall then rose within it making its outer edges glow. The trail then lifted off into the sky, turning dark blue and looking like a river. Once it was blue there were stars sparkling inside it. When these transformation ended the moon had moved from the east to the west telling me I had watched this Inside Road for hours. I understood that I had caught a glimpse of my insides.

The sketch for this canvas is radically different than the canvas because it shows two parts from the same experience. As I thought about the experience many unknowns became clear and I thought of a Georgia O’Keefe quote, “ Make the unknown known.” And so I did. It is terrifying and energizing to expose some of what lies inside you. Often people ask how long it took for me to do a painting and my usual response is, “A lifetime.” But after working toward an understanding of this experience through these art works has shown me that the real answer is “Eternity.” I have worked on these ideas and will continue to work on them since my understanding of them changes as I grasp more information there is so much more to know!

Significance: This painting is rare since there were no preparatory sketches, no drawings or even notes. Milewski states that when she turned to do this canvas the entire canvas was lit up with what is on it now, “I’m not even sure I can take any credit for it whatsoever.” And even though the landscapes beyond the flowing blue trail with stars seem representational, the stars within them and the way they are like ripples of the same formation show them to be something other than real. Milewski’s incorporation of Mica Schist and paints dyed with natural deposits found near this area help recreate this experience.

Badlands Road Inside: Lighting Me Up 11” X 14” Prismaclor Pencil on Cotton Rag

Top: Cross section of geologic features of significance in and around the Badlands Bottom; Fault lines within the Badlands National Park Looking inside the land that has inspired me so much is never ending. Scientists’ inquisitiveness has created much information to study and wonder about. The fault lines above are very similar to how I drew the trail turning yellow and entering the badlands sharp formation. The cross sectional graphic shows how even the geology inside these formations are like reflections of one another, running along similar lines and curves.

Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with the Milky Way 20� X 20� Gamblin Oil Paint, Mica Schist and Natural Media on Belgian linen canvas.

Conservator-approved; archival quality

Badlands Road Outside:

Spinning with the Milky Way

Description: The canvas for this experience is a 20” x 20” Belgian linen with Gamblin Oil Paint, naturally dyed paints and Mica Schist. The finished canvas has been conservator-approved as being of archival quality. It is typically shown with no frame. This artwork was inspired by an experience on the Medicine Root Trail.

Narrative of Experience: This road is also outside me, connecting me with our known universe and beyond. To think of our Milky Way Galaxy holding the places and people we love in its constant rotation through other galaxies is an idea I had after assisting with an ancient ceremony which many of Joe’s friends believed would help him to walk on after he caught the Milky Way Galaxy almost like an entrance ramp onto another way of being. I was camped in a favorite spot Joe and I frequented in the Black Hills of South Dakota with a small fire burning which I added sage and sweet grass to intermittently. As I watched the sky full of stars I saw how the campfire smoke started to resemble the Milky Way Galaxy and then I saw the barn on my farm and rows of corn tasseling in the fields.

The next day I returned to the Badlands to hike the Medicine Root Trails. to go to my power spot—the Place Between Two Rocks. I enjoyed a warm fall evening after hiking all day, stretched out between those two rocks. The sky was clear and star gazing was great during this new moon time. The Milky Way stretched from one horizon line up and over me to touch the opposite horizon line. As I looked at this beautiful sight it began to grow hazy and I thought clouds were coming in but instead the inside of the Milky Way Galaxy started to reshape and show my farm with the barn and the corn growing in rows in the fields just as it looked the previous night but then those fields up there flowed into badland formations which then flowed into the Black Hills. I sketched for over an hour, picking up on the corn and the barn in one sketch the way the stars looked in the badlands that floated over my head. I then started to see other scenery, some places I recognized as other places which inspire me—Mt Shasta, Sedona, the Pacific Crest Trail and then as dawn started to show and the galaxy formation had leaned closer to the earth I saw sights I did not recognize and understood immediately that I am to go to these places, but first I have to find them.

For days afterward I sketched and then began drawings before having to turn towards home and work. I am still collecting information and working on drawings from this evening of spectacular visions.

This canvas is the culmination of my Badlands Roads series with this sense of reality begun with the canvas Badlands Road Above: Twelve Tribes and connected to the canvas Badlands Road Inside: Lighting Me Up. Similar experiences inspired all three of these canvases.

Significance: This painting will be one of many once all the sketches done on that night are understood. This painting also connects the Badlands Roads series with the next series of The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes which is The White River Valley series. The deep blues of the skies are from natural dyes and there are four different colors of mica embedded into the paint to light up the stars and other celestial bodies. There are several constellations considered on this canvas that Milewski sees around the Milky Way. Milewski’s incorporation of Mica Schist and paints dyed with natural deposits found near this area help recreate this experience.

Top: Barn and corn fields detail of unfinished Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with the Milky Way Bottom: Badland formations detail of unfinished Badlands Road Outside: Spinning with the Milky Way Taking photos of my artistic process has been an inspiration in itself. Seeing the canvas empty save for one element or piece of the story creates a whole new story. The curves and colors against the primed canvas almost beg to be left as they are and often I wait even after these sections are dry so that I can enjoy the experience anew of these moments that inform my art making.

Above: Mercator projection of the Milky Way and some bright open or galactic clusters Below: A star chart showing a section of the Milky Way The familiar arch of the Milky Way always comforts me, since our solar system is located near an edge of the galaxy we are able to view one half of the galaxy which appears to curve around us—like an embrace. The above image is one of many from NASA that has informed Badland Road: Outside‌I could almost see my farm fields and the Badland formations in this star chart. My travels to the Badlands have made me a better astronomer and I feel as connected to the celestial objects I see as I do with the Badland formations.

where the landscape and sky meet in a gentle embrace

Stars At My Feet, Ink and Paper

A White River Valley Artworks

Zig Zag Trail: Flexibility 11” X 14” Prismaclor Pencil on Cotton Rag Paper

Zig Zag Trail: Flexibility

Description: This drawing is on an 11” X 14” cotton rag paper and Prismacolor Pencils were used.

This artwork is inspired by an experience near the Yellow Mounds by Conata Basin on what I call the Zig Zag Trail.

Narrative of Experience: This is a favorite trail by Conata Basin near the yellow mounds area.

The trail is simply following how the grass grows in between the mounds and formations. The trail is not marked or even called a trail but the way the grass zig-zags through the yellow mounds and then into an open prairie with badland formations standing alone instead of in a wall has led me to call this the Zig Zag Trail. Each year the structures are different since they shift and change their colors, shadows and shapes and each year the grass grows differently, making the trail change directions and curve. I know I change too when I am awake and alert to my life and surroundings—with each moment I have a chance to learn, feel, see, taste, touch, smell and incorporate these into my foundation of self.

The Zig Zag Trail has also taught me about flexibility. First is physical flexibility which enables walking on the trail and climbing over small formations and into and out of valleys. Second is mental flexibility to encounter change and difference in an open and exploring way so that they are not obstacles or hindrances but teachers and lovers I can embrace. Last is spiritual flexibility to remember that love is the goal, the answer, the way; even though life changes and things may look different love stays the same by allowing these alterations a place and a time.

It is rare that the grass in the Badlands is as green as it was during my first experience with this trail.

It was lush and still short enough to walk through without worry of bugs. There were flowers along the trail then too. Even when I hike this trail when it is in its usual state of dried, brown grass and badlands dust I can still see the green grass markers and smell the deep scents of the grasses drying.

Significance: This drawing is rare since it was done to bring out the shape of this trail and in that shape to explain the type of experience which occurred. The yellow mound area is near the Conata Basin which extends out past the National Park boundaries and into BLM lands. The dirt road that heads out of the park here runs South/North and was a usual route for traveling towards the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Joe. The undulating sky shows how the increasing heat as early morning turns toward afternoon changes the coloration of the sky and makes even a clear sky seem to move and breathe.

The Start of the Zig Zag Trail

The Zig Zag Trail

Badlands Mound with Moon: Meditation 5” X 7” Prismaclor Pencil on Cotton Rag Paper

Badlands Mound with Moon: Meditation

Description: This drawing is 5” X 7” on cotton rag paper and Prismacolor Pencils were used. This artwork is inspired by experiences West of Cedar Pass Lodge in the Badlands, SD.

Narrative of Experience: I have studied and meditated with the mound for over 20 years. When the rest of the badland formations have shifted and changed, some beyond recognition, this mound has stayed pretty much the same size and shape. Over years I would take photos of this mound and one early evening I sat with it and watched how the sunset was reflected in it and once the sun was fully set the mound began to glow. It was that evening that I first started sketching it. I first noticed the mound’s indifference to time and erosion when I was cataloging photos for an exhibition of my Badlands photos. Each time I came across a photo of this mound it looked the same, I knew the years were different from marking on the photos and the shapes of the formations to the north of this mound. I started spending time with the mound then, sitting with it, meditating, watching day turn into night and how the light would play on its curves and connection with the surrounding land.

Sometimes there are grasses and flowers surrounding this mound, other times there is just dust.

Through Kriya Yoga meditation is a part of the everyday yoga practice. First the meditator energizes their body to prepare for meditation. Concentration, deep, sustained breathing balanced with other breathing techniques help to enliven the nervous system and purify the mind like there is a showering of oxygen cleansing the body and mind. Once energized, straightening the spine and becoming ever mindful of posture creates a point of attention that is then balanced with a concentrated chant such as “aum”. It is said “aum” is the metaphysical sustenance of all creation and when used during meditation it can expand consciousness beyond the body and current world reality and into the infinite universe of awareness. When meditating with this mound, stillness and allowing the space around to flow through easily in sound and other senses can create this awareness.

Significance: This drawing comes after years of sketches and study. It is the smallest drawing in this series because the smallness draws attention to this small mound in the foreground. The first quarter moon in the bright blue night sky shows when the original experience with this mound occurred and I saw it glowing after sunset. Although this mound is located in an area frequented by tourists, I enjoy their presence and familial feeling with all of them.

Badlands Mound: 1999

Badlands Mound 2006 (with auric channels)

Badlands Mound 2012 (with chakras)

Badlands Mound 2014

Correspondences Experience 11” X 14” Prismaclor Pencil on Cotton Rag Paper

Correspondences: Experience Description: This drawing is 11” X 14” on cotton rag paper and Prismacolor Pencils were used. This artwork is inspired by experiences West of Cedar Pass Lodge in the Badlands, SD.

Narrative of Experience: This is a drawing of the same mound at the height of day. The mound is glowing as it did during that first night I saw it glowing and that is what initially prompted the sketches I made which informed this drawing. It was easy to see on that day how the erosion from the surrounding badland formations were keeping the mound the same size and height. I also began a continuing study of phenomenology which has come to define my artistic practice in more than just a philosophical study of the nature of experience (or the phenomena of experience) since I found my process as an artist to be first an inspiring or metaphysical experience which leads to creating sketches or drafts of what occurred and then research ensues until I come to a tipping point where I have found whatever information I needed to understand the experience and why it was important for me to have it. Once the research phase of my process is near ending or has ended I begin to create the finished works of art. I dislike the word “finished”; however, I use it to mark a moment when I will leave a piece a work and begin work on others. For the most part the viewers of these art works consider them “finished” but I do sometimes return to pieces and change them if needed.

Through experience it becomes easier to understand how there are correspondences between sky and land, between my mind and my environment, between my life and my breath. This very hot day in the badlands showed me these correspondences between the sun, sky, badlands and myself.

After I had my initial experience with this badlands mound as shown in Badlands Mound with Moon: Meditation I returned to it whenever I was near the badlands and just as the Place Between Two Rocks has become a source of power for my spirit and a constant inspiration for my art, this mound has also provided much for me. Several years after that initial experience I had the experience which produced Correspondences: Experience and so I have begun research anew on this mound and its surrounding area.

Significance: This drawing continues work with the badlands mound from Badlands Mound with Moon: Meditation and it signals my movement into naming my type of art as abstract experientialist. This is highly significant to my artistic practice since I struggled with the abstract expressionist label that many curators and purchasers placed on my work even though I felt honored to be considered a part of that movement I never felt that it spoke to the whole artistic process I have developed over these decades as an artist.

Badlands Mound Late Summer 2015

Badlands Mound Late Spring 2015

The Badlands

White River Storm: Introspection 8” X 10” Prismacolor Pencil on Cotton Rag Paper

White River Storm: Introspection Description: This drawing is 8” X 10” on cotton rag paper and Prismacolor Pencils were used. This artwork is inspired by experiences in the Buffalo Gap Grassland along the White River.

Narrative of Experience: The White River is what formed the valley many of the badlands are situated in. The river is large and cuts through the rugged landscape with cottonwood trees and brush alongside it. The Buffalo Gap National Grassland has been preserved on either side of the White River as it passes close by the Badlands National Park and is a favorite place to hike in for a wider view of the badlands than the national park allows. This is also a great place to watch the weather and the skies which are immense and although I’ve done many sketches of these skies none of the drawings are quite right—yet.

I’ve many storms roll through the badlands and yet most do not come near me in my grassland retreat. It’s remarkable to watch the energy build up and then release over the badland formations. It is this energy build up that is expressed in White River Storm: Introspection since the clouds take on curving shapes right before releasing rain, thunder and/or lightning onto the scene. Whenever the weather turns toward a storm I know our atmosphere needs a stress release. I use introspection to produce the same inside me. When I take the time to think things over in a meaningful and metaphysical way, I am able to reduce the stress in my life. I think of this stress reduction as my “White River Storm”.

Significance: This drawing utilizes a technique I learned from Georgia O’Keefe that she called the “faraway, nearby”. She often took liberties in her landscape painting by making some of the formations she painted in New Mexico appear closer to her than they were while making others further away hence the name “faraway, nearby”. I have used this technique to bring the badlands much closer to the grasslands to maximize the curve of the badlands which mimic the sky and the grasslands.

White River Storm 1

White River Storm 2

White River Storm 3

White River Storm 4

The Looking Conversation: Seeing the World 8” X 10” Prismaclor Pencil on Cotton Rag Paper

The Looking Conversation: Seeing the World Description: This drawing is 8” X 10” on cotton rag paper and Prismacolor Pencils were used. This artwork is inspired by experiences in the the Big Badlands, SD.

Narrative of Experience: The formations in the part of the National Park are large and seem solid. On my first visit to the badlands I hiked into the badlands wall and had a metaphysical experience which I explain in my creative non-fiction book A White River Valley:

Then suddenly, the whirlwinds shift into skeletons rising even higher into the blue sky, dancing even as their bones continue materializing out of each whirlwind. These dancers are different and more literal than the dust, wind and shadow dancers which now shine on the tall, dancing skeletons. The actual cliffs add more substance to the dancers, making each skeletal footfall resound through the canyon. The long, thin lines in each cliff peel away and stand upright. The skeleton dancers from these cliffs utilize shadow to trace the same steps as the first dance, staying in rhythm and towering over her. Behind the dancing cliffs, the hewn sky rolls toward infinity explaining eternity in a single glance.3

After this experience I was forever changed and started to believe in myself as artist, as a dreamer, as a woman and as an individual. I was scared when these cliffs took on shapes of ghost dancers and skeletons but not as scared as I had been as my life slowly slipped away into a monotony of routine and a life not lived. My Lakota friend Joe, who turned out to be a medicine man, told me, “The most sacred ceremony is to live your life.” I have tried to remember those words and this experience.

Seeing the world as it really is, is a part of the Kriya Yoga experience. Living within illusions constructed to make a life not lived more tolerable is a part of being asleep to a greater life, a greater self. To awaken is not always a comfortable experience, I used to say that reality was too sharp and so I continued on in illusions that I knew I was constructing but seemed unable to change until I decide to follow my dream tending and travel west and walk on this travel and have these experiences. Now I know I must tell about my experiences to help others to awaken. So I do.

Significance: This drawing shows the moment before the cliffs changed and started to dance and so it shows the moment before I was fully awake to my life and the choices I could make in living it.

The deep blue sky makes the badland formations pop out and begin the process of awakening.

3

A White River Valley by Vicki Milewski, this is a short excerpt from a fuller description of what happened that day.

Skeleton Dance Cliffs (elsewhere in the Badlands)

Skeleton Dance Cliffs (collage with skeletons)

Skeleton Dance Cliffs (collage with dancers)

Pranyama: Extending Beyond Ourselves 11� X 14� Prismacolor Pencil on Cotton Rag Paper

Pranyama: Extending Beyond Ourselves Description: This drawing is 11” X 14” on cotton rag paper and Prismacolor Pencils were used. This artwork is inspired by experiences on the western start to Castle Trail, Badlands National Park, SD Narrative of Experience: Seeing the badlands formations breathing one day is what helped me decide to spend time studying Kriya Yoga. I had been having trouble breathing, it seemed I always had a bronchial congestion when I was in the city. After a few days in the Badlands and Black Hills I would start to feel my lungs open up. Learning that our lungs run the length of our torso was quite a revelation since in the city I was such a shallow breather and then when I would be in natural areas for an extended time I would feel how my breathe was reaching down toward my hips. But I did not fully understand breathing until I studied the Kriya Yoga techniques for breathe which are very similar to other yoga schools of thought on breathing.

It was an early Spring day that was warm but not the hot of summer. The previous evening camping outside had been cool and I had stayed up to watch the stars turn across the sky so I woke after dawn and started hiking around where I had camped. The breezes started to pick up and become so strong that it was hard to walk into the gusts, so I started letting the wind direct my direction. The wind felt like it was alive and communicating, but that is another experience to tell. It felt like the wind was coming from the upper reaches of the sky instead of what I was used to as a horizontal blowing. The vertical nature of the winds gusts made me look up toward the tops of the badland formations around me and I could see them breathing. The gusts were actually coming from those tops. I went back to camp and sketched with dust collecting on my papers as I tried to understand how to capture this breathing. The unusual formation that had an almost pointed hat look was particularly striking and creating some of the strongest gusts.

Pranyama: Extending Beyond Ourselves shows the experience which assisted me in moving beyond my normal routines for exercise and then health and learn how the quality of air we breathe is just as important as the amount, to learn how the quality of sleep we receive is just as important as the dream tending we do, to learn how I had to move beyond my comfort zones of certain friends, work and financial considerations in order to fully become who I am, who I have always been. Pranyama from its Sanskrit origins means “extension of the life force, extending beyond the breathe”.

Pranayama does not refer only to breathing in oxygen but is more about taking in life and through conscious control of the life force the release of the spirit into its world.

Significance: This drawing shows the experience I had seeing the badlands formations breathing.

The curved aspect of each formation si in showing its exhalation and inhalation of its life force. This is the first drawing in this series to deal specifically with a metaphysical topic and its results in my life.

Pranyama: Light and Dark (a Self Portrait)

Castle Trail in Spring (Inhaling)

Pranayama Sun (Dreamtending)

Castle Trail in Fall (Exhaling)

Gloria in the Badlands: Pingala 8” X 10” Pencil on Paper

Gloria in the Badlands: Pingala Description: This drawing is 8� X 10� pencil on paper. This artwork is inspired by experiences in Conata Basin Badlands, SD with Gloria Standing Eagle.

Narrative of Experience: Gloria is a relative of my Lakota friend Joe who at first did not like me since Joe wanted to teach me about his medicine and not her. Over time we became good friends and when Joe walked on, Gloria realized that she had the medicine she needed, that Joe did not have to give her anything more than he had. Her and I would try to meet each year for at least one camping day and night when I would visit with Joe. Gloria’s profound faith in the universe and its powers was always inspiring and I made many sketches in preparation for this drawing.

Gloria would rise before dawn, as Joe did, and give thanks to the day through song, prayers and burning some sage or sweet grass. Sometimes there would be phenomenal experiences that could be seen in the winds, the sky, the very earth; other times there would be what seemed to be just the ceremony but as Gloria and I had learned from Joe, these more quiet times were equally powerful.

This particular experience started when Gloria was finishing her ceremony which had gone on for over an hour that morning. The tipi she would camp with started shimmering and shining as she prayed including the American military troops in her prayers since the Iraq War was raging after the attacks on 9/11. Suddenly a large flag started rippling from out the top of her tipi and it soon turned into the form of a bird. It was a powerful experience and I attributed much of it to the still strong sense of warrior in Gloria and in this land.

Doing ceremony is something I find hard to do each morning. Outside of my morning stretching and short prayers I have tried to do ceremony like Joe and Gloria incorporating songs and prayers and incense that could go on for an extended time. Both Joe and Gloria would tell me that the length of the ceremony depended on the needs of the coming day or the lack from the passing night. I can fully get in tune with these but when I am home I have trouble using an hour or more for ceremony. It is something I work on. Through my study of Kriya Yoga I have gotten better at giving thanks, in doing ceremony and flowing my breathe throughout each day has become a ceremony in itself. Yogic breathing is meant to find a balance between our physical bodies and spiritual selves and in finding that balance to rejuvenate the physical body so that it is freer to release the spirit for its own travels and work. Often alternating breathing through the left or right nostril is a beginning to achieving this and when I think of Gloria and this wonderful vision when she was doing ceremony in the Badlands I think breathing in through my right side and filling the right side of my body with pure air. The right side of the nadis system is known as the Pingala.

Significance: This drawing is an illustration for my creative non-fiction book A White River Valley and I use the tent alone for symbolic purposes throughout the book. After having sketched Gloria doing ceremony many times I found this sketch to be the best and improved upon it to include in the drawings of this series.

The Grassland: Ida 8”X 10” Pencil on Paper

The Grassland: Ida Description: This drawing is 8� X 10� pencil on paper. This artwork is inspired by experiences in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands Badlands, SD. Narrative of Experience: The expanse of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands is always inspiring but it is quite a sight when the grass is luxurious and green. The grassland is found around the Badlands and is now an undisturbed prairie ecosystem with diverse plants and returning and reintroduced animals. Prairie grasses have particularly long root systems and my drawing The Grassland: Ida shows the prairie grass roots on an exposed grass covered small mesa. When I first saw this part of the Badlands I did not know what the shadowy marks running vertically down this mesa structure were. I remembered my Kriya breathing and worked on breathing on my left side, the Ida, which has always been difficult for me. Once I did research and learned that those shadows were part of the root system of the prairie grasses above I began to use the image when working on my Ida breathing.

Ida and Pingala are seen more as two distinct nadis running from the base of the spine to the base of the brain and they are thought to control the lungs and heart; therefore, breathing is their physical entry and invigoration. I think of the sustaining prairie root systems which have evolved over time in order to survive through deep winters and dry summers and also think about my own personal evolution, how the more I learn the deeper my roots may explore, but these are more evolutionary roots, more metaphysical than physical and so these deepening roots do not inhibit my explorations.

The Grassland: Ida may represent a place that is seen to be static and fixed in space and time; however, I see it as a place that is growing, changing and evolving over time, exploring in its own way.

Significance: This drawing is a connection point for me between my early work as an artist in completing my Chakra Collection which is oil paintings of the consciousness chakras found in yogic meditation and my art work from my western travels. Once I finished this drawing after doing my sketches I saw this connection point and understood that this drawing may one day be a part of my next work on the chakras since I am working toward painting the ontological chakras or which The Grassland: Ida may play a part.

In the Valley: Sushumna 6” X 10” Pencil on Paper

In the Valley: Sushumna Description: This drawing is 6” X 10” pencil on paper. This artwork is inspired by experiences in the White River Valley, SD. Narrative of Experience: Even though I have come to accept the metaphysical experiences I have and the visions I receive as real and a part of my reality I am someone who has naturally shied away from new age movements, others who actively seek out such experiences and many forms of religion.

Since I have a more scientific mind I use my research to prove to myself what I experience to be true, real and a part of the path I am on. I did not chose or seek out these experiences, my youthful art is made up of rural scenes from our farm in Wisconsin and word art made through altering my poetry, but once I started having these experiences I sought out reasons and explanations and a way forward.

It was natural that my art would be a vehicle for expressing how I understand these things and what I think they mean.

Once I started practicing yoga in the late 1980’s I did so because of an accident which had resulted in back pain. When I found that the yogic movements alleviated and then rid me of the pain I was happy enough to learn more about this practice and was lucky to have found an excellent teacher in B.K.S Iyengar. My reluctance to go to India and learn more about his practice meant I had to find another path and so I moved onto the Kriya Yoga path. Through both of these I have found many answers and even more questions.

The experience that created my drawing In the Valley: Sushumna, happened when I was camping along the White River in an open part of the prairie. It was a clear late Spring afternoon and I was reading and sketching when I felt the earth start to shake and rumbling overhead. I didn’t see any storm clouds but stopped what I was doing to see what was happening. I started to feel moisture collecting on my skin and yet it was not raining. The sun was exceptionally bright and it was hard to see up into the heavens but I started to discern that it was raining very high up and more than likely evaporating before it reached me but just enough was left to wet my skin. I then saw arcs of electricity in the upper part of the sky. These arcs were blue in color and after them there would be a rumble and the ground beneath me would shake. Then a bright pink bolt of electricity came down suddenly and hit the ground near where I sat making the air even taste like electricity and my skin felt a pricking all around from the currents in the air and the wetness that lay on top of my skin. This strange “storm” moved on toward the south and I watched it for some time.

When I mentioned this experience to my Lakota friend Joe he said he had had a similar experience a long time ago but that the bolt of electricity that came down to hit the ground near where he sat had been more purple in color. The wetness on his skin he also had and he felt this was to prepare him for the coming electricity so that he would feel it and taste it. He said then he knew he had to change the course of his studies, for some reason he knew he was missing an important part of what he needed to know to carry on as a medicine man, he later found that he had activated his medicinal powers but he had wrongfully put these powers into instruments like a drum, a rattle and some other possessions he owned. Through his redirected studies he found that he had to give his powers to people, and that

was one reason he waited for us to meet—he had seen me in many dreams and knew I was to be given certain powers he had been given through his lineage, powers I am still trying to understand.

So I had to come to the realization myself that I had activated spiritual energies through my yogic work and had not come to understand the path they should take. Through Kriya Yoga I learned that there are two purposes to yoga: (i) the awakening of kundalini, the spiritual energy, and (ii) the awakening of sushumna, the channel for the spiritual energy. The awakening of sushumna is very necessary because if sushumna is not awakened, then this spiritual energy may be conducted through the wrong channel. So it is not merely the awakening of kundalini which is important, but more important is the awakening of the channel through which this energy has to be conducted. To be in balance and to have the right flow of energy both these areas need to be cultivated.

Significance: This drawing is one of two that try to express specific visions I have had. At the time this “storm� passed over me I thought it was a metaphysical experience but it was also a vision of my sushumna. Just as Joe had found that he must channel his medicinal power into people and not ceremonial objects, he also found that when he found the right people to give his powers to it only increased his power to help people. I also rarely place myself in my art works, but in In the Valley: Sushumna I am the lone flower learning how to continue growing in a good way.

Illustration of the Nadis System known to have over 72,000 nadis which are pathways for our energy, our prana, our spiritual revelations to flow.

A Badlands Day 1 (Sushumna)

A Badlands Day 2 (Exposed Nadis)

A Badlands Day 3 (Ida)

A Badlands Day 4 (Pingala)

Vision Of Water 10” X 8” Pencil on Paper

Vision of Water: Believing in Visions Description: This drawing is on a 10” X 8” pencil on paper. This artwork is inspired by experiences in Conata Basin Badlands, SD. Narrative of Experience: This experience was a vision I had while camped in Conata Basin in the Badlands. It was a hot summer night and I was unable to sleep, overcast skies meant little stargazing so I started studying the formations around me. My dreams that night were of rivers flowing down from the highest badland formations and into my tent; but instead of water being inside my tent it was filled the stars and their light made the entire area glow. I woke up past dawn and the tent was filled with a glow from the sunlight which reaffirmed my dreaming. I spent the next few days looking at the highest points in the badlands and climbing the Saddle Pass Trail over the badlands wall and connecting with the medicine route trail. I kept walking east on the medicine route and this is when I found my Place Between Two Rocks.

The Saddle Pass Trail received its name from the pioneers who would somehow get their horses up and over this part of the Badland’s wall. How did the geography of this trail change in the last one hundred years? How many of the spirits here are not Indian but pioneer? How many men and women denied the connection they felt with this land after crossing over this pass? It must have been a difficult denial. Even though the beauty of the Badlands is rebellious and cannot be placed in a classical sense of beauty, the colors and light of both our sun and night stars must have made an impression on the early travelers. But the hardship of desert conditions including lack of water must have made many people pass through here quickly.

After my dreaming vision of water I researched more deeply into the Badlands and their geologic history including being the place of a large inland ocean that completely covered the badlands. The last glacier period of over 10,000 years ago created the White River that this series takes its name from and caused it to flow northwards before dropping down into the badlands and eventually emptying into the Missouri River. Some of the highest points in the Badlands are part of the Badland Brule Formations showing bands of sandstone marking ancient rivers and red striping which shows fossilized soils. The formations within the Badlands National Park are part of the geologically named White River Group. That five different rivers flow into two rivers which then enter my tent during my vision speak to the tributaries and other rivers in the area which do flow into two main rivers, the largest is the White River. Finding physical realities that support my metaphysical visioning has always helped move me closer to fully believing in my visions.

Significance: This is a rare drawing since it shows an actual vision I had while dreaming. Joe helped me interpret my vision and the interpretation can be found in my creative non-fiction book A White River Valley. This vision was important since it is one of many which led me to one of the most powerful places I know: the Place Between Two Rocks. This drawing is also an illustration A White River Valley.

On the top of the Saddle Pass Trail Looking South (View from Visionquest Spot)

On the Saddle Pass Trail climbing up from the South (On the way to honor my Visions)

View of top of Saddle Pass Trail looking North (Visionquest Spot)

On the other side of the Saddle Pass Trail from the Castel Trail looking South (After Vision)

Place Between Two Rocks' Dawn: Embracing the Spiritual Life 14” x 17” Prismacolor on Archival Paper

Place Between Two Rocks' Dawn: Embracing the Spiritual Life Description: This drawing is on a 10� X 8� pencil on paper. This artwork is inspired by experiences in the Place Between Two Rocks Badlands, SD. Narrative of Experience: The Place Between Two Rocks is a magical place full of visions, dreams and power. Since I was quite young I had dreamt of this place, these two rocks and how I would walk to them across a long expanse of grass and then sit with them for days, so once I saw these two rocks (or more accurately stated these two badlands formations) I knew where I was.

I had visited the Badlands several times before finding this place. I would hike and camp alone or with Joe and each time I would visit a new part of the area. Now when I go I visit with these two rocks before going elsewhere, even though they are not easy to get to, nor is it easy to stay long with them, I find the way to visit with them each time. This place and the experiences I have had there are central to my creative non-fiction book A White River Valley. I have made many sketches of different experiences and right now I only have this drawing completed about this experience.

I had stayed with the rocks through a summer evening and had stayed up all night watching the stars turn westward and meditating. I started to notice the first rays of dawn sunlight and then it seemed as if time stopped. For a very long time the dawn seemed to stay in one place and the last stars visible seemed to stay where they were. I realized then that I had stayed too long where I was in my spiritual and physical life and that I had to move forward, onward, continue on my path. But even after I realized this the scene seemed to be stilled in time. I gave thanks and did ceremony and when I finished, the dawn rays slowly crept higher in the sky and the night stars started slowly disappearing from sight. The drawn out dawning made the two rocks I sat between start glowing and vibrating, their shadows lengthening and growing into a deep red. It almost seemed like a battle between the night sky and the dawn sky, and then it seemed like a dance. Time seemed to have changed and I could no longer have a real sense of a minute or an hour, a second or a day. When the stars were fully gone from the sky and it was clearly morning I rose to leave since the heat of the day could become dangerous for hiking as far as I needed to. Once I rose to leave it seemed like it was the afternoon.

The heat became unbearable and I almost didn’t make it back to my car and water.

Once in the car I started it to drive into the town of Wall and was not surprised to find it was close to 7pm. Time had shifted out there and I am still trying to understand why and what it means but I know it has something to do with embracing my spiritual life more fully and with more meaning.

Significance: This is the largest drawing of this series and it shows the two rocks with the stilled dawn and night skies. The stars had shown me during this experience how the sky around them seemed to radiate out from them so this effect that I use frequently now was started with this experience and another one I had on Galveston Island.

The Place Between Two Rocks Approach

The Place Between Two Rocks in the Heat of Summer

The Place Between Two Rocks Close

The Place Between Two Rocks Leaving

First of all, there was the ideal of discovery, the courageous determination to break new paths, indifference to the dogma that because an institution or a condition exists, it must remain.— Fredrick Jackson Turner The Frontier In American History

View from Place Between Two Rocks Ink and Paper

The Singularities

Place Between Two Rocks 11” X 15” X 11” Altered Book

The Place Between Two Rocks Altered Book Description: This altered book is 11” in height, 15” in width and 11” in length and is made from my creative non-fiction book A White River Valley as well as artist materials.

Narrative of Experience: The Place Between Two Rocks has inspired many different pieces such as this altered book. Whenever I alter a book as art I try to make the experience of the original book a part of the process and outcome. This altered book is one I made from my own book, A White River Valley which is a story about an inner city high school teacher meeting an elderly Lakota man in the Black Hills of South Dakota; and learning from him the most sacred ceremony: living one’s life.

While going through revisions, I started making the central flower of this altered book artwork. It was this flower, growing in the badlands by a place I call the Place Between Two Rocks, that helped me understand I am to “tell the world about us”. The roots of the flower flow over the pages of this book opened to the part when I find this flower; the roots flow into a faraway picture of the Place Between Two Rocks. In the foreground are Joe’s tents set up with phrases coming out of the top like smoke, there are many tents since Joe and I camped in many places.

The Place Between Two Rocks is an actual place that I hike to using the Medicine Route Trail in the Badlands National Park. When I sit in that space I look south toward the white river and the prairie beyond it. I can sit all day with those rocks; having dreamt of them since childhood they helped me understand that dreams are real. Seeing them on the trail many years ago I thought the rocks a mirage, but once I sat between them I knew they are as real as me. They glow during dawn and dusk.

The Place Between Two Rocks is also a metaphysical place that I carry within me to provide strength and calm from my many times sitting between those two rocks and seeing life as sacred, staying overnight to watch the heavens turn stars toward the west and dreaming of this place before even finding it. This altered book artwork shows a part of the magic in the Place Between 2 Rocks by altering the book that tells its story and altering that book to tell a further story through three dimensional images and words.

Significance: I have made artist books and altered books for many years but this is the first time I began making one from a book I was writing while I was writing it. Knowing that I wanted to express the experiences, which inspired A White River Valley to become a book, made me keep over 15 different revisions so that I could work with the actual text describing a certain experience when making an altered or artist book about that experience. For instance the sculptural flower of this piece is made of phrases and sentences about the flower at the Place Between Two Rocks that introduced me to this special place and introduced me to a larger life.

Place Between Two Rocks altered book

Place Between Two Rocks (detail of tents)

Place Between Two Rocks (detail of the flower)

Place Between Two Rocks (detail of flower roots and rocks)

Trail to the Place Between Two Rocks (Photograph from Short Film Place Between Two Rocks)

View from the Place Between Two Rocks (Photograph from Short Film Place Between Two Rocks)

Place Between Two Rocks Experimental Short Film Description: This Experimental Short Film is 4 minutes and 50 seconds long and is made from experiences, art work, photographs and video of the Place Between Two Rocks. The soundtrack is a Vicki Milewski piano composition called The Place Between Two Rocks.

Narrative of Experience: The Place Between Two Rocks has inspired many different pieces such as this Experimental Short Film. My films have won awards and have been internationally screened.

Place Between Two Rocks has been screened 5 times and has won one award. Even though most of my films are categorized as “experimental” I believe in telling a story and having meaning attached to the viewing of each film. It is no different with Place Between Two Rocks which shows a full day hiking to the place, spending time with the two rocks and then hiking back before nightfall. The film’s pacing mirrors the rhythms of our diurnal world which is heightened through the piano composition I specifically wrote for this film. Sometimes my music fits into a film I am making but with this project I began working on the film and after several years of collecting material I then began writing the piano piece so that it would support the natural rhythms I love about this piece and bring another level of meaning to the experience.

After many years of hiking at dawn and then spending the entire day at the Place Between Two Rocks and then hiking back before darkness I decided to capture this experience for a film. The journey to the two rocks is part of the experience of them. Even driving from Chicago or my farm in Wisconsin is a part of this journey and is another film I am currently making. Selecting images and movements was informed by the feeling I wanted to express about knowing my dreams are real and living a dream tended life. Living also within reality and outside of it are a part of this film.

Significance: This is my first film that I deliberately took photographs and shot video with the intention of making an experimental short film. When I ran a small school of Radio and TV Broadcasting in Chicago’s inner city, I helped students tell stories about their lives and I collected scraps of video for a film I still want to make. There is some connection between the Place Between Two Rocks film and the one I will make about my small school. I have to make it first before I fully understand that connection.

My short experimental film Place Between 2 Rocks that can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/user/VickiMilewski

“There is in mankind a driving urge to explore the unknown. In past ages much of this exploration was geographical - the search for new continents and new seas. In our generation the most challenging frontiers lie in the search for new knowledge about nature and about man…”— Stanley Livingston, Fermilab Associate Director, 1968 (Quoted from “A New Frontier in the Chicago Suburbs: Settling Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, 1963-1972” by Adrienne Kolb and Lillian Hoddeson)

Right up Against the Rock Watching the sun move from east to west across a badland formation 1.

Fullest shadow 55 degree tilt 2. Less shadow approaching noontime at 40 degree titl 3. Minimal shadow at 15 degree tilt—finally lit when sun sets for about 15 minutes

The Rebellion: Selected Photographs of the Badlands

Glorious stars, glowing hills and spirits crowd this trail at night.

The stars speak through light moving with potential energy.

The hills speak through history in their crumbling stones.

The spirits dance.

I Think of Dancing with Them

Place Between Two Rocks with Spirits

Place Between Two Rocks Storm

Badland Flowers 1997

Castle Trail 1998

Castle Trail with Berlin

Loop Road Sunrise

Wildflower Rebellion in Green

Wildflower Rebellion in Curves

Wildflower Rebellion Amassed

Wildflower Rebellion In Yellow

Brule Formation Sunrise 1

Brule Formation Sunrise 2

Badland Winter 1 (2012)

Badland Winter 2 (2012)

Badland Awakening 1

Badland Awakening 2

Badland Awakening 3

Badland Awakening 4

The Dawning 1

The Dawning 2

The Dawning 3

I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon. ― Jack Kerouac

On Top of Saddlepass Ink and Paper

The Badlands: Rebel Landscape Last Essays

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes An Introduction Vicki Milewski’s art collection The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes has as its foundation the Badlands in South Dakota which inform Milewski in the art of rebellions in landscape, experience and convention.

Her art works question census interpretations from the 19th Century, the American Experience in the 21st Century and a transmuted Manifest Destiny. Milewski’s disobedience comes after a protracted study of the Badlands, its history, wilderness and geology with these three rebellious questions building her conviction that resisting conformity and control of self means she is free to be who she chooses. This rebellion pulses under her abstracted landscapes with unexpected colorations explaining inspirations and metaphysical visions openly exploring our present cultural dilemma in a seemingly eroding American Dream that still has an intact foundation in varied freedoms easily understood on open roads, in ancient river valleys and beyond.

The West’s calls to Milewski have been met with annual pilgrimages to certain places that always begin with a stop at the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Milewski says its her place to regroup before heading further into dream landscapes and a new sense of time. So it is fitting that her first art collection to center on a place out West starts with The Badlands. After decades of study of the remarkable light in the Badlands highlighting formations that erode as much as an inch each year; after research into a history that includes paleontology that takes one back millions of years, Native American historical moments from over 10,000 years ago that still shape our cultural consciousness of the West; a Wilderness history that is luckily contained within a place that has been allowed (for the most part) to retain its wild nature and Milewski’s own personal history as a rebel—only after all these studies in disobedience did this art collection begin to take shape.

Within the collection there are Milewski’s trademark Abstract Experientialist canvases that have natural immersions from the Badland’s area that assisted in dying paints, making shining moons and stars with mica schist and other fragments that help recreate landscapes that have become their own places. These canvases are grouped in two series: Badlands Roads and A White River Valley.

Milewski’s creative non-fiction novel, A White River Valley, about her experiences in the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota, is a part of this collection along with the photos and illustrations of the Badlands area that are included in the book. Her altering of this book to express specific experiences are the sculptural pieces that are also a part of this collection. And the music Milewski has composed for piano and voice that are used as a soundtrack for short, artistic films about the Badlands are a fitting edge to this collection as a whole.

Vicki Milewski’s art collection The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes may have as its physical foundation the Badlands in South Dakota which rebels in its surreal beauty and other worldly presence but the metaphysical foundation for these art pieces lies in Milewski’s vision of America’s future frontiers, her use of historical revelations to interpret these visions as well as her own resolute belief in “the courageous determination to break new paths...it is in the blood and will not be repressed.”4

By Michael Milewski Chicago 2015 4

Fredrick Jackson Turner, The Frontier In American History

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Part One: Vicki Milewski’s Badlands Roads Road Tripping in the 21st Century When viewing Vicki Milewski’s art series Badlands Roads at Galaudet Gallery as part of their exhibition of her art collection The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes, the viewer has a sense of transformation and movement. The roads in question all exist in the badlands of western South Dakota and in Milewski’s artistic experiences making them new points of reference for the transformation of the American road trip and our almost 200 year strong burgeoning sense of manifest destiny. The connections Milewski makes between her travels in the Badlands Loop Road’s surrounding area and a greater sense of our 21st Century world create a moment not unlike Turner’s “Closing of the American Frontier” when Fredrick Jackson Turner proposed that the American West had been settled because the census data of 1890 supported that proposition; however, Milewski’s series of roads propose something else is occurring and has occurred in 2015.

Since the early 1900’s the American Road Trip has been a part of American mythology and consciousness but it wasn’t until the 1950’s that cross continental travel was eased by the Interstate System of Highways. Milewski follows her father’s lead in traveling out west and has documented these travels in many different ways. Her art collection The Badlands is just one exhalation from her mystical dream tending while on the road. Her Badlands Roads series of this collection speaks directly to American Road Trippers’ fantasies about visionary experiences, life altering moments and just plain redefinitions of beauty. The self determination found in driving on open, free roads across expanses of land and seemingly through time itself is found in forms, colors, subjects and feelings in viewers persuaded by these canvases to believe that a road trip can still help form someone’s conscious actions toward dream attainment. Milewski’s reactions to the experiences that inspired these canvases lead one toward the freedoms America promises and still delivers. That those freedoms, some articulated in our Bill of Rights, are the foundation to our crumbling American Dream is not lost in these canvases since their subject is roads that float above the bottom of an ancient ocean which is now a vast desert and prairie system that has geologic formations which loose as much as an inch of mass each year to erosion. Our American Dream has eroded just as much but because we have the foundational freedoms and the chance for firsthand experience of those freedoms on the open roads of our country means each inch that erodes is replaced by something else. Luckily we have artists like Milewski to replace our current losses with promises made and fulfilled on these canvases.

Along with the mythology of the American Road Trip is also a sense of a 21st Century manifest destiny.

This 19th Century idea sought to strengthen the resolve to populate the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the borders of both Canada and Mexico. Throughout the 20 th century an undercover “manifest destiny “ sought to prop up imperialistic motions outside our borders and even near the late 20th century allow our homeland to suffer from disrepair. Now in the 21st Century, there is a turning back to the land the United States lives upon and in this turning back a new resolve to protect, conserve and responsibly use these lands for our present and future dreams. Milewski has felt this turning for over a decade and has researched what it means to recognize the power manifest destiny still has on our cultural consciousness, so she has imbued this collection with transformative

imagery and ideas to embolden our spiritual powers to create responsibly respectful a global art that can help inform decisions to be made about the environment and our role within it. Milewski sees her metaphysical roads as existing across the earth, they are roads all of us have been on in varying degrees and she hopes that sharing her experiences through words and art is one way to bring together artists who are similar and who want the same thing—a sane and beautiful world5 secure for future generations. This art can begin transforming manifest destiny into something that all people of the earth hold the same.

Fredrick Jackson Turner’s proposal, that the Western frontier was closed as of 1890, stemmed from census reports that the West had been thoroughly populated enough to warrant closing the Western states from the definition of “frontier”. What is lost in Turner’s proposal was the evident fact that a frontier is defined as a boundary after which lies wilderness, so by 1890 the census bureau had already closed the West from a definition of “wilderness” and had then closed the West from a definition of “frontier”. Many people during the late 1800’s saw this idea as the closing of manifest destiny, the closing of a cultural consciousness which viewed the west as frontier, as wilderness, as the “other” that had yet to be civilized. With reports, and Turner’s proposal, the general public began to accept that the United States (at that time period) had been settled, no longer to offer wilderness or frontier experiences. Milewski counters this proposal over a hundred years later with a resounding, “no” there are many parts of the West that still offer frontier experiences, wilderness experiences, isolated moments. Even though most of her Badlands Roads lie within the Badlands National Park, even the surrounding area can offer chance for these experiences. The difference is that all the land has been spoken for by private or government managers but that does not mean that the experience of the frontier, of wilderness has been lost, indeed it may be safer, it may be found in a smaller area, it may not have a requisite hardship associated with it, but the land, the skies, the very essence of these places where Milewski has her experiences that fuel her art are still very much with us as a nation, as a people who live together sharing this land. Milewski sees the beginning of these experiences within Turner’s proposal which she sees began a new myth about the west that many at first thought disassociated our cultural consciousness from gaining insight through frontier or wilderness experiences in the west when in fact Turner was simply pointing out an eventual change in consciousness that the West is still as powerful as it was during any point in our national history, its power though is more hidden, more centralized, less scattered and for those like Milewski who find these powerful experiences and use their insight and inspiration to create art, the world is better for it.

The experience of the American West has been transformed into one of self discovery and humble acceptance that there are powers and experiences that are a part of our physical reality but which are seldom spoken of in our 21st Century lives.

Badlands Road North: The Pink Road (a gentle way to learn the red one) (2014) climbs over Bigfoot Pass in a gentle way that shows a care for the surroundings as well as an understanding of the historical nature of the named pass. 6 That the road is pink also shows an understanding that learning the Native American red road takes time and means sacrifice of exemplar ego and restrictions in how reality is defined. Although this road, and the 7 others of this collection, seem localized to the badlands area they are also eminently open ended and can be found on any road or trail we care to see them in. The complimentary colored formations surrounding this pink road support it and allow it to 5

Louis Sullivan, from his Introduction in his book A System of Architectural Ornament According With the Powers of Man, 1915

6

History of the Badlands National Monument: and the White River (Big) Badlands of SD, Ray Mattison and Robert Grom, 1968 Espe Printing Co

climb to its destination in the North, but they also allow it interconnectedness with its surroundings.

Even though this road lies on top of these forms and seems almost to hover over them, it is a part of these forms and as it meets with the horizon line on top it shows that it will bring a sense of these forms with it.

Yet while Badlands Road North… may deliver its travelers to the horizon line with formation baggage, Badlands Road South: Going to See Joe (2014) takes its cue from the alchemical idea of, “as above, so below” 7since it shows a star studded sky ostensibly mirrored in the prairie grasses below it. But upon closer inspection, those stars in the prairie grasses are not mirror images but stars that stand alone and apart. When Milewski asked her Native American friend, Joe, about these prairie stars his alchemical reply was familiar to Milewski but then he launched into a story about inner knowledge: “reminding me of the people who would come to hike on Mt Harney and Bear Butte hoping for the hike to change their lives but when they returned to their cars unchanged Joe would say to me ‘As above, so below’ referencing the person remaining the same on the top and bottom of Harney because they wanted the hike to change their lives instead of changing it themselves. ‘The mountain can assist us but it cannot do the work for us.’ Joe would say. But in seeing the ‘stars on earth’ Joe said I was seeing my life already changed and this idea helped to sustain my work in creating a better life for myself steeped in my own personal and cultural history and living fully in the present.” 8 Badlands Road East: Road Like a River Spilling Me Home (2014) and Badlands Road West: Hills Breathing Pink (2014) are similar in their soft shading and coloration with one being called “the blue one” and the other being called “the pink one”. Both represent a movement toward self and an understanding that our environment is alive since the hills are ‘breathing” and the road is like a “river”, both of these elements show a commonality in their support that everything is alive. Milewski states that the blue road mirrors her state of mind depending on the hue of the road; while the pink outlined road reminds her to remain gentle and soft—it is when we are open to new experiences that they are able to occur.

The two pieces which seem the most other worldly are the Badlands Road Below: The Green Road (2014) and the Badlands Road Above: The Twelve Tribes (2014). The former shows a spiraling green road within a badlands formation. The shape and movement of this road show again that these formations are alive even though many of them hold the fossilized remains of a prehistoric ocean which covered this area, but also a concern for the environment is present in that the green is “inside” the formation. Milewski states that she saw this twice during her time hiking and camping in the badlands area and both times were separated by a decade which saw her shift her environmental focus from working with environmentalists 9to being more “gentle about my approach to our environment and feeling more akin with conservationists. When I recently saw the green road in a badlands formation again I knew I was on the right path for my time spent conserving environmental resources instead of my past work in trying to get people to radically change their approach to environmental resources usage. We have to be able to live our lives, and as long as we use common sense and a gentle approach we should be in harmony with our resources.”

7

Spiritual Alchemy, Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, 1989 Prosveta

8

Tell the World About Us, Vicki Milewski, 2014, OFM Publishers

9

See Milewski’s work on legislating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into a Wilderness Protected area at www.vickimilewski.com

Badlands Road Above: The Twelve Tribes (2014) shows a blue road spiraling up into the sky.

Milewski says she was hiking during a full moon night and that the trail “lifted up into the sky and then became a road.” The full moon then dimmed and twelve stars started shining, some of these stars were in the sky and some were on the blue road connected to the trail Milewski was hiking. She thought of the Native American ghost dancers from the 1890’s who used the moon and stars as symbols of rejuvenation on their clothing and who also thought that water would wipe out the “white people” or the “bad people” who were not honorable and who were forcing Native Americans to change their way of life. 10 But even more so, Milewski see connectedness with the twelve tribes of Israel and the blue of their priestly tradition since she is a Christian. That this vision of the blue road and twelve stars appeared to her in a place she has found to be spiritual and a symbolic representation of the desert region many of God’s people had to traverse to reach a promised land only makes sense to her. That she has found many modern day monks and mystics go out into the desert to avoid distractions from modern day society only to find the distractions really exist within their own minds is also a part of this painting. 11 Milewski is currently working on the 8 canvases represented by sketches here with a completion date of Fall 2014. It will be great to see another exhibit by her which includes both drawings and their companion canvases. She will employ mixed media on the canvases utilizing pigments, rocks and other items found in the badlands during her annual pilgrimages.

Milewski’s Badlands Roads Collection has much to offer in the way of art that can stand alone as art but also as art which holds much more for contemplation. There are still visions to be seen and experienced today just as there were yesterday and will be tomorrow and Milewski knows that as long as she continues to tell the world about her experiences it will help others to share what they have experienced. From her counseling and education background, Milewski has found that the more she shares about her personal life the more she can create a space that is accepting of everyone as they are not as society needs them to be. “My art is a way to create that space and I am overjoyed to be a part of this gallery that supports such a space and enables conversation about these ideas to take place.”

By Jules Heffe Chicago, 2015

Badlands Loop Road (Route 244) Ink and Paper

10

The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, James Mooney, (1891) 1991 Bison Books

11

Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton, 1960, Abbey of Gethsemane

The Badlands: Rebel Landscapes Part Two: Vicki Milewski’s A White River Valley New Frontiers with Ancient Foundations Moving westward, the frontier became more and more America The "West," as a self-conscious section, began to evolve. 12 The art series A White River Valley holds the rebel landscapes of the Badlands of South Dakota loosely in grasp allowing visions of a past frontier to move into vision of a new frontier. These landscapes are rebellious since they are not pretty, nor do they hold a substantive awe for the viewer; instead, their allure is much more subtle and disarms most who come into contact with them through their harmony of color and curve—much as the natural landscapes which inspired these artworks do for the tourist and pilgrim who venture into them. That there is a balance maintained between a sense of an untraveled frontier with the knowledge that each portion of this land has been surveyed and bought and sold twice over is not readily evident in these drawings since these ideas lie between the image and the viewer much like our atmosphere envelopes us without us seeing it. That there is also a place for a Kriya yoga practice to inform the inspirational moments these images spring from is also silent, repositioning the very space between the image and viewer to consider what a 21 st Century life means, has and desires. The landscapes that make up A White River Valley do all this and more.

During the 1990’s and early aughts, the artist visited the Badlands at least once a year at first to visit her Lakota friend Joe and then because the pull of the West was still strong. As she grew in strength as an artist, so too she grew as a yoga student first working with B.K.S. Iyenger and then developing her own methodology that would serve her as an individual. Kriya Yoga concepts helped expand her practice and entered into her sketches for A White River Valley quite innocently at first and then these concepts became a part of each drawing that was made from those sketches. A fellow Chicagoan, Sri Goswami Kriyananda13, founded a Kriya Temple in Chicago and taught about a system for experiencing a transformation in consciousness: The technical term for becoming free from our karmic limitation is called enlightenment. The path to enlightenment begins by watching the flow of your thoughts, softening the negative thought patterns, replacing them with positive thoughts, and finally manifesting expanded self-conscious awareness. In short, mysticism and Kriya Yoga are based on the spiritual psychology of the soul. 14 - Sri Goswami Kriyananda The similarities between Goswami’s teachings and those of her friend Joe were striking and helped ease the loss of Joe in the early aughts. The requirements for the practice of Kriya Yoga were also strikingly similar to what the artist feels are the requirements for making transformative art: a healthy body and a sound mind. Because both teachers had a down-to-earth nature, it was easy to learn and not feel it was a shallow New Age proposition; instead it was a New Time for the artist and her art. Each art work in A White River Valley subsequently uses Kriya Yoga concepts in the titles since it was also from these concepts these drawings came into being.

The other part of these drawings lies in the artist’s research of ideas found in Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis, “The Frontier In American History” and Adrienne Kolb and Lillian 12 13

Fredrick Jackson Turner, The Frontier In American History

An internationally known author, he has written over a dozen books and produced an extensive library of lectures, seminars, and classes on Kriya Yoga, the doctrine of karma, astrology, yogic philosophy and mysticism.

14 From The Breath/Consciousness Relationship by Sri Goswami Kriyananda, from Pathway to God-Consciousness

Hoddeson’s talk “A New Frontier in the Chicago Suburbs: Settling Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, 1963-1972” which utilized Turner’s essay to formulate ideas about the frontier of science and beyond. That these two writings spring from the artist’s native Chicago is no coincidence since the Midwest region has long been seen as the foundational geography for Western expansionist thinking and Chicago is still a city of transformation.

Turner sought to guide the American psyche through the closing of the American frontier in 1893.

Turner used this moment, when the frontier was considered “closed” by the U.S. Census Bureau because of population data, to look at the West as “history” and to look at it with a close proximity of time. Seeing this transitional moment, Turner tried to turn the American consciousness away from seeing the West as a frontier filled with wilderness and free land and more toward an American consciousness of the West based on conservation, responsibility and land ownership both public and private. Turner saw what had happened to many European countries who took too long to see these transitional moments and so wanted America to learn from these mistakes. One of the reasons Turner’s thesis has had opposition since it was spoken in 1893 is because many people had, and still are having, trouble believing America’s physical resources are limited. Turner wholly believed in the unlimited resource in the American psyche—mind and spirit beyond merely the physical; however, Turner could see that the American frontier was now considered closed and that meant a new management of resources should occur.

To create this new view of the West, Turner asked questions like “What is the West? What has it been in American life?” without answering the question but instead offering what the answer might mean, “To have the answers to these questions, is to understand the most significant features of the United States of to-day.” 15 We can still ask this question today since the mythology of “The West” lingers over our land and our lives as Americans even in the 21st Century. Making art with questions like this in mind allows time to be transformed, allowing a return to frontier states of mind not to relive a past time but to explore how to move beyond seeing the West as a manifest destiny still holding unlimited physical resources and also to create a new consciousness based on the unlimited resources of our minds and spirits. Then the artists allows this new consciousness to guide explorations and experiences that inform art making. Turner senses these ideas by stating: First of all, there was the ideal of discovery, the courageous determination to break new paths, indifference to the dogma that because an institution or a condition exists, it must remain. All American experience has gone to the making of the spirit of innovation; it is in the blood and will not be repressed.16 This is as apt a description of a 19th Century American as it stands for a 21st Century one and even embracing a sense that it is a larger more expansive description that includes all people on earth.

Turner states that, “The appeal of the undiscovered is strong in America.” 17 it is this sense that urges art making in places like the Badlands, in places that appeal to a sense of the undiscovered even when it is situated in a place that has been discovered time and again, because of the erosional features and the pure sense of isolation when amongst the badlands a feeling of discovery exists with each visit.

Turner’s thesis also points out directions for future American discoveries. First in his sections on conservationism that was an all but unheard of idea in the late 1800’s, but with the closing of the American frontier, Turner knew that meant land and water would eventually need to be conserved instead of incessantly “cut and burned” or controlled since even in 1893 Turner felt that, “ To-day we are looking with a shock upon a changed world. “ changed by the onward American expansionism.

15

Fredrick Jackson Turner, The Frontier In American History

16

Ibid

17

Ibid

Turner also looked toward the future of the frontier as an idea, “In place of old frontiers of wilderness, there are new frontiers of unwon fields of science, fruitful for the needs of the race; there are frontiers of better social domains yet unexplored. Let us hold to our attitude of faith and courage, and creative zeal. Let us dream as our fathers dreamt and let us make our dreams come true.” With this in mind Adrienne Kolb and Lillian Hoddeson’s wrote about the work of Fermilab and its particle accelerator and other work in physics, I would like to speak about two frontiers: the American frontier explored in the 18th and 19th centuries by pioneer settlers in the West, and the scientific frontier explored in the 20th century by physicists who built Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory…. created … to explore the frontiers of the mind - “where no one has gone before” –… The frontier image, as used both by Turner and the physicists, speaks to the imagination. The emotive power of the frontier symbol conveys a sense of mission - an unknown region needing to be settled. As a former Fermilab Associate Director, Stanley Livingston, said in 1968, “There is in mankind a driving urge to explore the unknown. In past ages much of this exploration was geographical - the search for new continents and new seas. In our generation the most challenging frontiers lie in the search for new knowledge about nature and about man, and the most dramatic progress has been made on the frontiers of science...The frontier of high energy and the infinitesimally small is a challenge to the mind of man. 18 It is in this thinking that the artist has integrated her work in Kriya Yoga, her research into the American frontiers both physical and metaphysical and her art making of the rebel landscapes found in the Badlands of South Dakota. As planet earth eyes the skies of outer space for the next frontier exploration based in the physical, there is always a corollary metaphysical exploration into the psyches of the explorers and those they explore for. It is for these reasons that this artist seeks out new experiences and recreates them in the form of art works since she agrees with Goswami, Turner and the scientists at Fermilab that the respective frontiers build into the awakening of a culture’s mind and the people who experience different frontier are shaped by that experience. To create new paths through new frontiers, not to a similar frontier experience of the past one of awe, over use and then a mad scramble to try to keep things going, but new paths that will lead us to a furthered awakened consciousness. We are at another transitional moment and so our task is to shape ourselves in order to experience the new frontiers of the 21 st Century and beyond toward areas we have not even envisioned yet, art making with this in mind is the right start to such an endeavor.

By Vicki Milewski Chicago, 2015

Badlands Dawn Ink and Paper

18

From A New Frontier in the Chicago Suburbs: Settling Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, 1963-1972 by Adrienne Kolb and Lillian Hoddeson

“This is The Place Between Two Rocks, it is the true start of the Medicine Root Trail. Many have come here for healing and lessons. You come here to learn how to trust yourself.”— Vicki Milewski A White River Valley, Chapter 14

The end is really the beginning