Guest Author - Elsa Neal

Jerry Wennstrom’s memoir The Inspired Heart describes his journey of transformation after his soul-searching decision to destroy his early artwork, give away his possessions, and discover his true spiritual identity.

Even before this defining moment in Jerry’s life, he began approaching his existence with grace and openness. He describes an experience with a group of youths who invited themselves into his home. Jerry’s trust and openness with them caught them off guard, but their lives were changed when he showed them his paintings – symbolically a glimpse into an existence beyond the ghetto – and turned a possibly bad situation into a powerful force for good.

After giving up his material life, Wennstrom took a creative approach to interacting with the people who moved through his life – alternatively keeping a distant silence until moved to say something, or becoming extremely involved in providing psychic nourishment. He offered himself frequently as a channel through which other people could draw what they needed to heal themselves at that moment.

After a number of years Jerry eventually began to create transient art, usually produced for somebody who needed it on the spur of the moment. “My artwork was accumulating in the world,” Jerry says, “yet it was invisible as a whole. It could only be experienced at the location where I created it, often for only a short period of time. Some of what I created was not meant to last forever and would deteriorate. Like living beings, my works of art were born, lived their lives, and died.”¹

In his memoir, Jerry tells three specific stories (Marilyn’s dream, Erika’s lightning bolt, and Lucy’s face) of creating an artwork while counselling and being present for a friend in need, finding that his artwork symbolically pre-mirrored what was going on in the person's life, inadvertently pointing the way to healing.

Grounded by his developing relationship with his wife, Marilyn, Jerry continued to integrate some of the missing links in his creativity, especially that of honouring his talent for mechanics and engineering passed down from his grandfather.

Jerry describes some of his mechanised sculptures in detail in The Inspired Heart, and the synchronicity with which the components were found and lives touched. For the time being, Jerry’s story concludes with his ambitious construction of a flaming stupa meditation tower which was completed in time to be blessed by visiting Tibetan monks.

The structure of the book reflects how he moved from defining himself through his art, to defining himself through his relation to other people, to evolving into spiritual awareness. Like all things spiritually guided this process is timeless and achronological.

¹ Page 125: The Inspired Heart by Jerry Wennstrom, published by Sentient Publications 2002

Photographs copyright Jerry Wennstrom, used with permission

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The Inspired Heart is available from Amazon.com.