The Art That Saved My Soul
- wcarpenter915
- Mar 10, 2025
- 15 min read
This is the origin story of Door Cosmos, a wandering gallery or sacred art based in Door County, WI. Check out visuals of Door Cosmos’ inaugural exhibition here.
This is a story about survival; this is a story about love.
Survival: surviving 2020 — most of all, the survival of one’s soul.
Love: falling in love — romantic love, a love that came on fast — the kind of love you may never recover from. In this case, love of a certain kind of art, from Nepal.
Surviving Lockdown
Here’s a conversation starter: ‘Where were you when COVID happened?’ As for me, I was in Nepal — the magnificent little Himalayan country sandwiched between India and China — visiting the temple where the Buddha was born, Lumbini, some 2500 years ago.
As I’m sure we all remember well, everything happened quite suddenly as the ‘coronavirus,’ hand-in-hand with fear and panic, started spreading around the world, and countries took extreme measures, or didn’t. As timing goes, I felt quite fortunate that, just before the government of Nepal imposed a very strict lockdown, I had returned to Kathmandu, to stay with a lovely family I had previously stayed with, at their all-things-considered pretty cozy homestay. I had a bad to sleep in, food to eat, and even hospitable company — it was a fine place to be. Little did I know I was soon to spend so many hours lying in that bed that my body-print would ruin the mattress.
That was February of 2020. In the following months, though I could have bucked up and signed up for one of the occasional evacuation flights organized by the US government (as my mother surely wished I would have), doing so never felt quite right. I felt safe and relatively okay in Kathmandu. The lockdown was severe, but there were very few cases of COVID. Yes, many people were suffering (both economically, due to the lockdown, and mentally/emotionally, as many people were across the globe) — but, when I followed the news of what was going on and how people were reacting in the US, I sensed that the overall atmosphere was far more troublesome in my home country than it was in Nepal. So I ended up staying about 8 more months, until October.
Yes, these were rough times — time to find silver linings. I was thankful to have enough money to get along. Grocery vendors were allowed to open for a couple of hours most days, so I could easily wander down onto the dirt street and pick up some powdered coffee, crackers, potato chips, soda pop, and the like — every food group. Every day around mid-day, the family I stayed with gave me one incredibly nourishing and delicious dahl baht — the national food of Nepal, replete with lentils, rice, veggies, some spice, ghee, a little of this and a bit of that. Yes, I sometimes felt, eating that dahl baht, God is truly good, after all.
About once a week (or more often, if I could find a good excuse), I would go up on the roof top to do my laundry by hand. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing. There was a nice view of Kathmandu, and some crows liked to perch nearby and come peck at the food scraps left for them by Vidya, the father of the household. Sometimes Vidya would tell me a story about the Buddha, or he might be practicing playing his harmonium, or working on some electrical project. Doing my laundry on the rooftop, on special days I’d catch sight of someone else, taking care of their own business on their own roof. On the most magical of days, we might even make eye contact and wave. Ah, human contact. What a precious thing.
The son of the family, Vinay, was about my age, in his late twenties. For the first month or so of lockdown, we met every morning in the ground-level locked-down cafe, to share espressos and simple conversation. Those daily talks were my lifeblood — until the espresso machine broke, and we stopped meeting and pretended like the it had never happened.
I joined a couple of different Zoom functions, which, while sometimes annoyingly virtual, were nourishing in their own ways. I even started a series of Zoom meetings myself, based around meditation and giving people space to share personal stories in a healing way. That was also beautiful while it lasted.
Overall, though, if I’m honest, my day-to-day during lockdown was closer to surviving than to thriving. I did manage to keep a steady meditation routine of one-hour-in-the-morning, one-hour-in-the-evening, but besides that… Netflix and gaming, basically. I have always loved how video games (even only on a little smartphone) let you enter so fully into other, incredible worlds — to leave this one behind… Yes, this can be a dangerous kind of escape.
So, besides rooftop laundry and daily dahl baht — during those fearsome, isolated times, the question was alive and urgent: how can I keep myself tethered to the beautiful and good things of this world?
Falling in Love
Looking back on those times, one thing gave me so very much: those special days, now and then, when the lockdown lightened enough that I could the tiny, precious art gallery of my friend Kalsang, and drink tea with him.
The tea was always in the Nepalese style, with milk and sugar, served piping hot in a small mug.
As for Kalsang, he is a solid, decent man if I never knew one. Besides owning his art gallery, he is an artist himself, who in my view, lives a wonderfully balanced life: he creates beautiful art, makes a decent living, supports his family, cares for his communities… Kalsang doesn’t seem to draw a line, as some do, between spiritual versus practical matters. Maybe it sound obvious, but in my case it has taken years to truly integrate: anything truly spiritual is utterly practical. If our lives are not evidence of that (i.e. if we’re living a ‘head in the clouds’ spirituality), we’ve managed to fool ourselves in a major way.
On those special days when the lockdown was partially lifted and some shops were allowed to open (or Kalsang simply let me know he would be in his shop), those ordinary conversations with Kalsang over tea gave gave me so much life. We talked about regular old things, or about the mood of the city and how people were coping, or about the art, or simply who-knows-what… regardless, I felt immersed in such richness, such vitality.
Besides the delicious, steaming milk tea and the rock solid friendly dudely presence of Kalsang, I attribute a lot of that feeling of richness to being in the shop itself. Kalsang’s little gallery is truly little — it must be only about 16x8 feet in total — but the smallness only means that the positive atmosphere is all the more concentrated. Every inch of the walls there is plastered with layers of Nepalese paintings — landscapes of the Himalayas, portraits of buddhas, geometric mandalas, deities — most commonly, some kind of thangka painting.
If thangka is a new term for you: essentially thangka is a Buddhist style of painting originating from Nepal’s neighboring region, Tibet. Thangka paintings often depict deities as a way of representing Buddhist teachings, and inspiring devotion and spiritual practice.
Besides deities, many thangka paintings depict mandalas: intricate geometrical patterns that can be used as spiritual guidance, an aid to meditation, and sometimes as a map of the whole cosmos.
All around Nepal — all the more so in tourist-focused places, like Thamel — you can find thangka shops. There are thangka schools, master thangka painters who paint for decades until their eyesight starts to worsen… Thangka is important to many Nepalese people themselves, but is also a medium of sharing the richness and beauty of the spirit of Tibet. And, it sells.
Over the span of those months, I fell in love with thangka paintings (and other art, but thangka most of all) for the same reasons Kalsang mentions when he talks with customers about why they might like to buy a painting — namely, I viscerally experienced the positive effect of spending time with those paintings. In simpler terms — especially contrasted with the dismal mood of the city and world during lockdown times — it felt damn good to be sitting there in Kalsang’s shop, surrounded by those paintings. That was my honeymoon phase of falling in love with thangka.
Kalsang showed me many paintings during those times, and through our talks, I started to appreciate his own relationship with the paintings. As an artist, Kalsang is sincerely devoted to the energy, the power, the good of the paintings themselves. Though he is not naive when it comes to business, the way he does business is united with the sincerity of his heart: he gauges what people are looking for, suggests a few paintings that they might resonate with, and explains in plain terms what those paintings can offer the person.
Of course art is a matter of personal taste, and within the realm of thangka, each painting offers its own flavor of life-giving vibe. A painting of White Tara, the goddess of compassion, fills my heart with the warmth of her infinitely loving smile.
A geometric brown and yellow mandala of the ‘seven realms’ gives me cosmic energy that never ceases to hit differently every time I look at it — an endless energetic kaleidoscope.
Gazing upon the wrathful, wild-looking deity Mahakala makes me feel like I already have everything I need to cut through the bullshit of life, to see what’s really going on, under all the masks we’re accustomed to wearing in our day to day lives.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the point — every painting has a certain, one-of-a-kind energy of its own, and these energies can nourish our hearts and minds on a daily basis.
When I speak about the ‘energy’ of a painting, I don’t mean anything so flighty or ‘woo-woo’ — what I mean simply, is that, for example, if a painting gives off positive energy, when you look at it, you feel good! It’s that simple. It’s very practical.
Putting Down Roots
When I finally returned to the US in October of 2020, putting those paintings up on the walls changed my life. The home is such a sacred space — the sights we surround ourselves with and witness every day deeply impact our psyches. As some people recommend, I have tried meditating with thangka paintings a few times — but truly, most of the benefit I received was simply from seeing those paintings in passing, or sometimes gazing at one for a minute or two if it was really speaking to me.
As much as I loved Nepali art, culture, and the friends I had met there — I had loved the natural beauty of Door County ever since childhood vacations visiting Grandma and Grandpa Pfeifer, who lived in the woods near Jacksonport. Though I’d felt like a wanderer most of my adult life, Door County felt more like home than anywhere else — and I finally felt a desire to be rooted.
So, I decided to apply for a job waiting tables at a restaurant called Island Fever. I had never eaten there, but I had really liked that place back when it was JJ’s of Jacksonport. If you ask me, JJ’s was as about as good as a restaurant can be — for many reasons. But that’s a different story.
When I applied to work at Island Fever after returning from Nepal, the story I told myself was something like: Will, you’ve spent a lot of your life at meditation retreats, seeking ‘far out’ experiences, floating around here and there like a leaf in the wind… Why don’t you spend some time in a regular old restaurant, getting to know some salt-of-the-earth, regular old people? Why don’t you ground yourself — put down roots, even?
At the time, I had no idea how much truth there would turn out to be in that little story I was telling myself in my head. Over the course of my time working four seasons waiting tables at Island Fever, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been talking to a customer, starting to share about my time in Nepal, or about working with a shaman in the Amazon, for example, and I’ve started thinking something like, How in the world am I going to explain this in terms that this regular, down-to-earth Wisconsinite will relate to?
And then, somehow, presto, the person understands what I’m trying to say perfectly well, even if I can’t seem to find the right words to say it. I think that’s because, for me, these ‘far out’ experiences aren’t ultimately about anything other than ordinary life. Sure, some wild things may or may not happen in the midst of days-long meditation or ceremony — but for me, at the end of the day, it’s about connecting with the simple essence of life itself — about getting to know my own heart, getting to know what’s real, what really matters. Every human speaks the language of the heart.
Or, another way of putting it would be to say, for example — we can all appreciate a beautiful painting of the Himalayas, whether we’ve been there or not.
In Zen Buddhism, a popular phrase they say is, ‘Carry water, chop wood.’ You’re just as likely to find that kind of practical sensibility on a Wisconsin farm, as you are at a Japanese Zen monastery.
The Yearning Returns
After rooting in Door County for a couple of years — working at the restaurant, doing some caregiving work, and settling into Door County as a true home — again I felt a yearning for the unknown. In fact I had tried to attend a couple of different meditation retreats during that time, but somehow they hadn’t panned out. Feelings of complacency and stuckness crept in. And in equal proportion grew the old seeker’s longing — for truth, for God, for adventure — for another escape from the comfortable cage I’d made for myself.
So, in 2022 I returned to Nepal.
That trip is a story and a half in itself (a book, in fact), but today let’s stick to ‘thangka love story.’ I showed up to Nepal for a 20-day vipassana meditation retreat. As you might imagine, when you’re sitting on a cushion for 20 days with absolutely nothing to do besides watch your own crazy mind, your mind is probably going to come up with some wild stuff, as a kind of entertainment (or, insanity), fighting the perceived ‘boredom’ or threat of silence. One contemplation that I thought was a little crazy, but not too crazy was, What’s the deal with all these thangka paintings anyway? Why can’t I stop buying beautiful art? Is this some kind of shopping addiction, or should I fully commit, and open a gallery of Nepalese art back home in Door County?
In the depth of enlightened meditation, my infinitely wise mind offered up an answer: ‘Not a shopping addiction — go ahead and commit.’ Thus was born the gallery DOOR COSMOS — and I had the green light to let my art-shopping addiction run wild.
That second visit to Nepal was a wild, aimless, devoted kind of time. I was searching for a cave to meditate in, searching for a hidden Himalayan guru… and then, seemingly out of nowhere, I fell in love with a wild, beautiful snake woman.
Among all the twists and turns, ups and downs of that adventurous time, I felt that only one thing, besides the trusty old meditation routine, kept me grounded: I started learning thangka painting.
Kalsang kindly offered lessons whenever I was in the neighborhood. He is like a grounded rock of a man in the first place — but also, everything about the thangka process was grounding: working with the hands, with natural materials; gridding and mapping out the painting; working step by step to bring life to the small, meticulous details of the mandala, day in and day out. In fact I’ve found that thangka painting concentrates the mind more easily than many kinds of meditation. If you’re the kind of person who says ‘I could never meditate,’ first of all I would say, you’re probably kidding yourself (there are so many misconceptions about meditation), but secondly, you might get a lot of benefit from trying something like thangka painting. (Or, more likely, you’re probably already in touch with your own personal kind of ‘meditation,’ like knitting, or building miniature airplanes, or whatever.) In any case, I found thangka painting to be an immensely centering practice during those turbulent times.
Brothers, Tree Temples, Deeper Learnings
During that second trip to Nepal, I also became friends with a number of groovy artists. A couple of them, named Tarpan and Grace, are true soul brothers. I loved riding up the foothills to visit them on the outskirts of Kathmandu. They lived right near a restaurant called ‘Tropical Restaurant’ (the Island Fever of Nepal?), or ‘Tropical Rest’ for short. I met them through attending a sound healing performance they put on, and sometimes Tarpan and Grace performed at the Tropical Rest — singing bowls, didgeridoo, reggae, dance music, drums — something like that. Their living space was full of plants, paintings, and open space. I loved the easygoing, free-flowing feeling of being there; it took me back to my college days of living with art majors — jamming, joking, just hanging out, feeling free…
Around that time, I became interested especially in the tree temples of Kathmandu: shrines that were originally man-made, but over time become enveloped by trees, so that the little temples seamlessly reside within the base of the tree. These temples are such lively intersections of history, meaning, and life — if anything has heart and soul, well, tree temples sure do.
So, amidst my wandering and spiritual seeking, I began exploring art based on the tree temples, with Tarpan and Grace. Kalsang taught me the basics of thangka painting, and at the same time I threw myself into collecting paintings for DOOR COSMOS.
Collecting paintings turned out to be such a learning process, in so many different ways. Yes, I admit — in some cases, I paid more than I should have, or I got duped into thinking the quality of a certain painting was higher than it actually was. But as with everything else in life, failure is the path to success. As I was soon heading home from the second trip to Nepal, I took it as a real compliment when Kalsang said to me, ‘You’re starting to choose the same paintings I would!’ With that praise combined with recently finishing my first thangka painting (with a lot of guidance from Kalsang, of course), I felt something substantial may have acutally come out of this trip (not to speak of the spiritual seeking and romantic endeavors).
A Deathless Love, On Display
Art can create and bind communities in new and wonderful ways. Even if you never set foot in Nepal, I hope that this exhibition (as well as the collection of Door Cosmos as a whole) can give you a little bit of the feeling of what Nepal is like — of the people, the spirit, the land — of the feeling of being there.
But, as Frank Zappa said, ‘Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.’ If find that this quote applies to all kinds of things in life — including art.
As the scientists say, everything in the universe is vibration. Or a particle — everything is a wave, and a particle, both and neither at the same time — am I getting that right? Good thing I’m not a scientist. The point is, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down (love, appreciation, openness to new and beautiful experiences), I imagine you might enjoy the exhibit. If you happen to be out of state or immobile, you can see the virtual exhibition online here.
If you’re still reading this, I’ll mention one last, important thing, which is that 10 percent of all sales from the exhibition are donated directly to the Nepal Youth Foundation, and another 10 percent are going toward creating the Kalki Artist Residency outside of Kathmandu, supporting the Kathmandu community through Nepalese art.
My first goal in this writing was to share with you my love affair with Nepalese art. Here is a stupid joke about that:
Knock, knock
Who’s there?
Art.
Art who?
Art you falling in love?
As for me, this is a young love — a strong love, which shows no signs of withering — rebirth and renewal, yes — but no death.
I hope it comes across that I’ve put my heart and soul into every single step of this process. In fact, this love of art has opened my heart in ways I didn’t know of. And the artists themselves — Tarpan, Grace, Kalsang, and the many, many others — of course they have also poured their hearts and souls into these paintings. I’m so honored to be putting this thing together — to give you the chance to connect with these beautiful artists — to see how they see — to receive their beautiful offerings.
Yes, it’s true what they say —
beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
May you find art that you really fall in LOVE with —
art that changes your life, for the better.
Will Carpenter,
Riberalta, Bolivia
October 1, 2024
instagram @cosmic.Will
Lastly, a BIG thank you to the Egg Harbor Public Arts Initiative (especially to Emily Roedl), to the folks at the Kress Center, and all the other wonderful beings who helped this exhibition come into being.
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