The Nomad Junkie Reflects on Sibyll Kalff’s Tent in the Sky

There is something mysterious about Sibyll Kalff's art work. 

Perhaps it is because her work speaks from some indescribable center of care; an understated regard for things that seem 
to float and move around, above, and within us.

Sibyll Kalff is not a mystic, but her work speaks through a filter that has been constructed from the strings of meditation, 
hope, and memory.  Her work is compassionate, sometimes cheery, and always honest.  It is restrained, but aggressive enough 
to make its presence known.  It is also the worldview of a gypsy; a woman with seeds all over.  

Like me: new-wave Nomads looking for a place to rest and soil to sow.  The “all over-ness” of Sibyll’s work is something we 
can connect to.  Sibyll’s insistence on layered thoughts and ideas; on overlapping themes of home and what it means to have 
a home (a spiritual center) are not overwhelming but rather slyly touching and they work their magic on you innocently.  
Think of a child’s finger paint or an afternoon sketch made with crayons.  

But crayons that have blood all over them. 

We understand the pain and concern that goes into something as "purile" as Tent in the Sky.  Anyone who has ever been displaced 
or homeless understands the wish, or implication, of a tent in the sky.

And what a lovely tent it is.  

There are exactly 12 different renderings of the tent in the sky, an unlimited edition of drawings in colored pencils, from 2006.  
They work better separately, I feel, but taken as a whole they are an impressive repetition of hope and tenderness and could 
alter depending on your mood or time of day.  The first arresting image of the tents is in orange, blue, and green –with the 
dashed circumference of the earth seen supporting its fragile, but permanent tent: empty and waiting patiently for a beating 
heart to fill it.

This is what I think of and feel when I see this image. 

Could you imagine a tent above all these earthly concerns; a tent where heaven could exist inside your head, your home – 
where you could sleep? I feel connected to such images and ideas, no matter how sentimental they might seem because I 
have struggled for a home and place outside and inside.

The internal conflicts often mirror the external; the rugged exteriors represent the harsh interiors.  The terrain is rough 
and maddening.  If I am lonely, disconnected, scrambling for security and a self of self—it would probably be of no shock to 
others that I was “homeless” or in constant search of a home.



I am obsessed by these notions because in an ever-increasing world of monopoly and world banks and globalization and gentrification, 
how could I not be obsessed and maybe paranoid that my tent in the sky will never be truly mine?

I bet the Africans in Darfur are dreaming of a tent in the sky.  I know many people within a hundred feet who are dreaming 
of a tent in the sky. 

Idealism, childish naiveté, silly putty?  Call it what you will. But idealism is not childish. Children are not ideal, 
they are simply children.  They don’t know how to be anything other than what they are.  Idealism is a choice and requires such 
a commitment to human possibility and is convinced of mind over matter.  John Lennon was right—the first step is to imagine peace. 
Most people cannot even do that.  Because most people are not involved with themselves, they are involved with their egos, 
which is different, and emulating the cracked reflection that is shone to them on buses and TV’s and billboards 
and movies and magazines…

Why live with so many chains? Why not become Daniel and go into the Lion’s Den.  In this case, that Lions’ Den is refuge 
and peace and comfort of soul, mind, and body. In this case, it is imagination and the will to make what others say you can’t.

Images of this kind, art that hurls hope for tomorrow, possibilities of new ways to perceive and live, excite me and touch me 
in ways that mere political sloganeering (look at our current presidential candidates and all their “hip” slogans and sound-bites) 
or out-of-touch thinking—can’t. Hope, at the end of the day, is no solution.  That’s like saying “Let’s leave it up to God.” 

Faith can be put into imagination and the imagination can be made actual. That’s how chairs and blankets and spoons and 
fishing poles and guitars were made.  But, unfortunately, that is also how wars are made and woven into the daily fabric 
of our lives.

Until I can have my own tent in the sky, I will settle for my own plot of land.  Because it actually works better to 
look up and see the infinite possibilities above us, while touching and feeling and looking at the infinite possibilities 
within us…on paper…drawn by Sibyll Kalff.