Topic: Process Thought & Aesthetic Qualities and Beyond.

Presenters: Elvi Bjorkquist

Using her own paintings, Elvi Bjorkquist, who recently completed the Cobb Institute Certificate Program, will show the connection between Art and the Process thought of Whitehead. For both Whitehead and Buddhism the world is permeated by “aesthetic qualities.” It is these aesthetic qualities that are the content of religious experience within the Whiteheadian and Buddhist process traditions. Whitehead also believes that aesthetic apprehension is complementary to scientific apprehension and helps to complete it. He believes that deeply felt intuitions highlight and illumine nature and that there are multiple ways of knowing that can be jointly affirmed and harmonized. Thinking is actually a form of feeling; aesthetic wisdom and rational inquiry are complementary. Both can be contexts in which people discover higher ideals in which to live and give a sense for the mystery and beauty of the universe. It becomes a means to the end of cultural transformation. God has given all cultures choices on how to relate and this affects what kind of world we live in. By using Process thought and universal art we can help create an ecological change in our world relations.

Elvi Bjorkquist has been an artist all of her life. She graduated with a BFA degree in Art and Art History. A lifetime ELCA Lutheran, she graduated with both a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theological Philosophy from Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. When John Cobb taught a class at Iliff, Elvi found and immediately loved Process thought. 

She was the owner of the Elvi Design Group which worked nationally and internationally for many years. She lives in Denver, Colorado and is now painting and showing her artwork. She’s on the board of the Parker Artist Group.

She was invited to present her thesis, “Andean Originality and Creativity Were Used to Survive and Redefine Selfhood,” at the SARTS Convention in San Antonio in 2016. The paper, titled “Counter-Hegemonic Aesthetics and Spiritual Aesthetics and Spiritual Transformation in the Viceroyalty of Peru,” is presently on “Academia” online.  Also available on “Academia” is the Spring Board PowerPoint presentation she did to fulfill requirements for the Cobb Institute Certificate Program, “Process Thought & Universal Art Creating Intertwining Between Cultures.”

Watch for further details, including information about a series of Saturday conversations with presentations by the authors. 

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