Amen Ra’s Extra-Planetary Visions

“I met him two years ago walking painfully with diabetic feet on Temple Street on the Green. He had rolled up papers stuck in his backpack. Artwork. His.”

So recounted artist and theater director Peter Webster about meeting artist Amen Ra, a.k.a. Ghostra Knowstra, two years ago. Ra’s artwork, along with that of artists Deborah Norah and Marta Machabeli, is in an exhibit entitled ​“Local Documents” at the Grove on Chapel Street.

The exhibit, which opened in mid-September, is closing Nov. 5.

“I bought him food cart stuff and he told me he was an artist. He slept, sitting up, in a Dunkin Donuts for nine months. He drew in libraries and DD’s, and painted shop signs,” Webster said.

For his part, Amen Ra is not at all circumspect when discussing his period of homelessness and is quick to credit Webster with lending a helping hand. Webster paid Ra’s entry fees to this and last year’s City Wide Open Studios. During the opening of the three-person exhibit at the Grove, a thriving downtown co-working space, Ra unrolled several sizable canvasses.

The Grove exhibit will be a stop for Wine On9 on Nov. 4, 6 to 8 p.m., where there will be a tasting and closing reception for the show.

For the artists in this exhibit, ​“music played an important role in the artists’ visual documents of lives spent tuned into energies, dreams and passions that flow when music is allowed to rise in volume and seduce the subconscious,” according to the curator’s notes.

A professional singer who has been documenting her experiences for 25 years, Norah (who also did the curating) said she has performed on stage with all the photographic subjects in her part of the exhibit, locally and in other countries.

Images of objects and moments that carry special meaning individually are strengthened symbolically when juxtaposed with images hung directly opposite or next to images of people in the show. Both color and black-and-white photographs are represented. Among her other creative endeavors, Norah is working on her first solo CD of original songs and a book of her ​“Local Documents” theme.

Artist Marta Machabeli describes her acrylic paintings as ​“spiritual surrealism/expressionism.” The strongly-lined portrait paintings, enlivened with saturated patches and strokes of bright hues, gaze at their viewers with the intensity that recalls some works by 20th-century German expressionist Egon Schiele, though without Schiele’s raw, sexual overtones. In her portraits, Machabeli said she ​“seeks to unveil the individual’s soul, which most of the time is hidden behind the mask they choose to wear.”

“My spiritual phase,” states Machabeli, which started roughly around 2005, ​“began with an introduction by a friend to 13th-century Sufi mystic poet Rumi. The more I read his words, the more his visions, thoughts, and experiences started to manifest themselves in my life.”

For Machabeli, music was a reliable antidote to periods of artistic malaise: ​“These were the times when I would paint abstract accompanied by music, and with no thought at all to direct a stroke on canvas; I would let the spirit move through music and pour out of my hand onto a canvas.”

Ra said he owes a lot to Adam Christoferson, founder of Musical Intervention, which uses music to help people with special needs. Ra is the official 2016 visual artist in residence at Musical Intervention, which has a recording studio and performance space at 23 Temple St.

Ra’s imagery ​“challenges perceived rules of the cosmos that favor the powerful,” according to his artist’s statement. Works are primarily created with pastel or ink on paper and relate to Ra’s belief system of human connection with universal and extraplanetary forces. He sometimes incorporates ancient Egyptian (Kemetic) symbology as a bridge to ancestral secrets and wisdom.

Ra said he used to volunteer at soup kitchens and believes that many of the people who access those services are often among the most talented — and for many of them, their talents are dormant. ​“Nine out of ten people are artists,” said Ra. His own life, work, and art are testament to art’s transformative power.

The Grove Gallery is located on the second floor of 760 Chapel St., and open during regular business hours Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. or by appointment.