I was first introduced to Adi Da Samraj in 1972. At the time, I owned a natural foods cafe that included a small bookstore. The cafe featured books on spirituality, health and nutrition. The cafe carried several titles by Adi Da, who at that time was known as Franklin Jones.

I have always had an interest in art but during that time, I did not know that Adi Da was an artist as well as an author. Eight years later I moved to Northern California and opened a gourmet natural foods restaurant. Adi Da was living in California at the time and that’s when I first learned about His Transcendental Art.

I immediately wanted to use Adi Da’s art in my restaurant and inquired to see if any of it was for sale. At that time, Adi Da had made available limited edition prints of what He now calls His, Transcendental Drawings. The Transcendental Drawings are a series of brush and ink drawings He made in the Sixties. For me, these Drawings have a traditional Zen like quality to them that I felt would perfectly match the restaurant’s Mogul decor. I purchased three of the Drawings and hung them between the murals in the dining room. They looked absolutely amazing and visibly brightened the restaurant from every angle.

As it turns out, I have pretty good taste in art. Adi Da Samraj was featured as an official solo collateral artist at the 2007 Venice Biennale and then became the first contemporary artist to ever be given a solo exhibition by the city of Florence. And in the fall of 2010, Adi Da will be the solo artist featured at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York city. In response to the art of Adi Da, internationally known art critic Donald Kuspit has written, “It is a rare artist that can convey, convincingly, being face to face with the source of Being.”

It’s now thirty years later and I have again purchased one of Adi Da’s exquisite pieces, from a collection he calls his Spectra Suite. This newest piece hangs in my office at The Blue OK and I am moved beyond my self every time I see it. Adi Da himself has said of his art, “The images I make invite people to a participatory and transformative process. My images serve a mode of participation and perception that is non-ordinary, that breaks beyond the “box” of body-mind. “point of view”, or the ego’s mode of viewing existence, is gone beyond, undermined–not “flattered”, not permitted, in some sense–by the very nature of these images.” . . . This is exactly what I feel whenever and wherever I see his art.

Many of the images in the video above can be purchased from Da Plastique. You can see more of Adi Da’s work and learn more about his art at http://daplastique.com. If you are interested in purchasing any of Adi Da’s art, please contact my friends Stanley Hastings or Marchelle Deranleau at Da Plastique. Tell them you heard about Adi Da’s art at The Blue OK!    - Scott Morrow
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