Welcome!

(in-person or online)

Spirituality and art share a primordial connection dating back over 12,000 years to the Neolithic Revolution, when humans worldwide first began creating art in the form of cave paintings and carvings — artwork symbolic of their religious beliefs and worldviews. The creators of these spiritually charged artworks undoubtedly held special status within their communities—an archetypal role known by many names throughout human history and across cultures: shaman, wizard, witch, mahāsiddha, ṛṣis, bruja/o, curandero/a, or "artist."The modern "artist as a practitioner" is someone who maintains this human tradition of serving as a bridge between the visible and the invisible—accessing spiritual dimensions through altered states of consciousness —in order to create art that promotes healing and spiritual development, confronts collective trauma, and inspires new perspectives on the world.Psychedelic Sangha and The Religious Studies Program at Eugene Lang College invite you to participate in Psychedelic Buddhism 2026: "The Artist as Practitioner."We are honored to host the following distinguished artists, who will give in-person keynote speeches at New School University on Friday, April 24th: performance poet Anne Waldman, visionary artists Alex Grey and Allyson Grey, and avant-garde jazz musician William Parker.This year's conference will focus on the modern artist as a spiritual practitioner, exploring how Psychedelic Buddhism and art can deepen awareness, promote compassion, and uncover the profound, non-dual essence of existence.Our program features both in-person and online activities, including a film screening, a plenary session with keynote speakers at the New School University, three virtual panels, and an in-person art event at Judson Memorial Church.Last year, we held our inaugural conference—a historic event, the first conference entirely dedicated to Buddhism and Psychedelics. It drew more than 600 people, both online and in person (see Matteo Pistono’s “Attitudes are shifting about Buddhism and Psychedelics”)..To guide our exploration of the Artist as Practitioner, we have invited an extraordinary group of artists, Buddhist teachers, and scholars.Please scroll down to view the itinerary and participant bios.

Anne Waldman

Poetry Keynote

Anne Waldman is a pioneering poet, performer, activist, and cultural organizer who has been central to the "Outrider" experimental poetry tradition since 1974. She co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University with Allen Ginsberg and Diane di Prima, establishing a Buddhist-inspired academic and artistic space that continues to influence contemporary poetics.The term "Outrider" describes a visionary, boundary-pushing role in poetry—neither an outsider nor an outlaw, but a shaman-like figure who travels the edges of consciousness, culture, and language. As Waldman defines it, the Outrider "rides the edge—parallel to the mainstream, is the shadow to the mainstream, is the consciousness or soul of the mainstream." This identity embodies imaginative consciousness, compassion, commitment, and the interventionist power of poetry in social and political life.Her most recent book is MESOPOTOPIA, Penguin, 2025, also on AUBIBLE. And most recent album is “Your Devotee in Rags”, 2025 from Siren, in Toronto.

Alex Grey & Allyson Grey

Visionary Art Keynote

Alex Grey and Allyson Grey are visionary artists whose work has significantly shaped contemporary psychedelic and spiritual art. Through painting, installation, and community building, they explore themes of consciousness, perception, symbolism, and the relationship between inner experience and collective culture.As co-founders of COSM, they have created a space dedicated to art, contemplation, and creative exploration that draws artists, seekers, and thinkers from diverse traditions. Alex Grey is widely known for figurative works that map the human body and psyche in luminous, interconnected forms, while Allyson Grey’s abstract symbolic paintings investigate pattern, language, and the structures underlying perception.Together, their work reflects a long-standing engagement with art as both expression and inquiry, influencing visual culture across music, spirituality, and psychedelic communities worldwide.

William Parker

Sonic Keynote

William Parker is a composer, bassist, multi-instrumentalist, author, and educator whose work has shaped contemporary creative music for more than five decades. Born in the Bronx in 1952, he has recorded over 40 albums as a leader and appears on more than 150 recordings, working across solo performance, small ensembles, and large orchestral projects such as the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra.A longtime collaborator of artists including Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, and Henry Threadgill, Parker’s practice integrates improvisation, composition, writing, and community building. He is the author of Who Owns Music, The Mayor of Punkville, and Observations, and has received honors including the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a Vision Festival Lifetime Achievement Award.His work approaches music as a spiritual and social inquiry, rooted in deep listening, collective expression, and the ongoing evolution of creative tradition.

Lama Justin von Budjoss

Vajrayāna Buddhist Teacher & Panelist

Lama Justin von Budjoss is a vajrayana Buddhist teacher, writer, and co-founder of Bhumisparsha and Yangti Yoga Retreat Center. As former Executive Director of Chaplaincy for NYC Department of Correction, he supervised 30 chaplains and led staff wellness programs. Ordained as a repa by Gyaltsab Rinpoche, he teaches at institutions like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. He authored Modern Tantric Buddhism and contributed to Buddhism and Whiteness: Critical Reflections.

Lama Liz Monson PhD

Vajrayāna Buddhist Teacher & Panelist

Elizabeth Monson, PhD, is the Spiritual Co-Director of Natural Dharma Fellowship and the Managing Teacher at Wonderwell Mountain Refuge. Liz was authorized as a dharma teacher and lineage holder in the Kagyu Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism and has been studying, practicing and teaching in the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages for over thirty years.

Robert Spellman

Artist and Panelist

Robert Spellman is an artist, educator, and longtime Buddhist practitioner in the dharma art tradition of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He studied at Massachusetts College of Art and has spent decades integrating contemplative practice with visual art and performance. He taught at Naropa University, including as Chair of the Visual Arts Department, and retired as full professor in 2018. With artist Joan Anderson, he co-founded Mountain Water in southern Colorado, a retreat space dedicated to meditation and creative practice.

Matt Marble PhD

Musicologist and Panelist

Matt Marble (b. Meridian, Mississippi, 1979) is an artist, media producer, and the director of the American Museum of Paramusicology (“brilliant and humbling,” The Paris Review). He is the author of Buddhist Bubblegum: Esotericism in the Creative Process of Arthur Russell hailed by the New York Times as “groundbreaking work.”Matt's creative practice and archival research explore the intersections of music and metaphysics in American history. He is the creator of the podcasts Secret Sound and The Hidden Present, the editor of the AMP Journal, and the curator of the archival exhibition I Hear Strange Music at NYU's Occult Humanities Conference. Featured by Warp Records, Mississippi Records, Dublab Radio, and the Philosophical Research Society, his work has been presented internationally and supported by a research fellowship at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music.He holds a PhD from Princeton University, a B.A. in Speech & Hearing Science from Portland State University, and a black rattlesnake from his dreams.

Zoe Brezsny

Artistic Collaborator

Zoe Brezsny is the author of neuron waterfall (Heinzfeller, 2023), brume d'amour (Wonder Press, 2024), and Ecstasy (Topos Press, 2021), an audio cassette of poems. She records a weekly guided meditation for WFMU 91.1 FM radio. Bug Mobile (Façadomy, 2026), a collaborative book with the artist Henry Gunderson and Wives of the Bath with Anne Waldman (Staircase Books, 2026) are forthcoming this summer.

Jesse Jarnow

Artistic Collaborator

Jesse Jarnow has been an artistic collaborator with Psychedelic Sangha since its inception. He co-directs our Bardo Bath series and is a music journalist and WFMU radio DJ.Jarnow is the author of Big Day Coming: "Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock" and "Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America."
His writing on music, technology, and culture has appeared in the Times (London), the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Wired.com, Relix (contributing editor), Dupree's Diamond News, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and hosts The Frow Show on the independent Jersey City radio station WFMU. He tweets at @bourgwick and @HeadsNews.Image: Christopher Bruno
www.christopherbrunophoto.com

Alystyre Julian

Film Director & Speaker

Alystyre Julian is a writer, filmmaker, and photographer. She is the director of Outrider. In 2024, Julian co-curated Language and Light: The Films of Ed Bowes at Anthology Film Archives. She has been the stills photographer on award-winning feature films Diane (2018), Monsters and Men (2018), Goldie (2019), and others, and has directed and worked on numerous short films, videos, and documentary projects. She holds an MFA from Bard College, and previously taught creative writing at Long Island University, Montclair State University, and screenwriting at New York University. Her poems have been featured in publications such as Poetry Project Newsletter, Chain, Talisman, and Pharos. She lives and works in New York City, where she is at work on a new film project related to Black Mountain College.

Mario Miron

Artistic Collaborator

Mario Miron is a New York-based artist, musician, and curator whose creative practice intersects painting, woodworking, experimental sound, and community arts programming. He co-organizes Gern en Regalia, an artist-run project space in Manhattan that presents solo and group exhibitions by emerging and under-recognized artists, often bridging visual art, poetry, and performance in collaborative formats.Miron’s work as a painter and woodworker has been exhibited nationally and internationally. His studio practice engages oil painting, custom furniture, and sculptural works that explore materiality and form.

Garcia Peoples

Artistic Collaborators

Garcia Peoples, formed in Rutherford, New Jersey, originally included Tom Malach, Danny Arakaki, Cesar Arakaki, and Derek Spaldo. Influenced by '60s and '70s jam bands, they played often in Brooklyn, gaining fame for live psychedelic improvisations. In 2017, they added keyboardist and released their debut album Cosmic Cash in 2018. They followed with Natural Facts in 2019 and a third album, One Step Behind, later that year, featuring a guest saxophonist and two new members, Cush and Gubler. The band toured extensively, releasing several live recordings, and in 2020, released Nightcap at Wit's End, shifting from jams to more structured songs. Their fifth album, Dodging Dues, came out in 2022, showcasing expanded songwriting contributions.

Ellen Pearlman PhD

New Media Artist & Scholar

Ellen Pearlman is a new media artist, curator, and educator. A four-time Fulbright grantee, she is currently a Research Affiliate at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and a former Research Fellow at MIT. She created "Noor" a brainwave opera, "AIBO", an emotionally intelligent artificial intelligent brainwave opera, "Language Is Leaving Me", an AI Cinematic Opera of the Skin" and is currently developing a full operatic production of "The System Cannot Fail" in collaboration with the German Federal Government's "AI & Art" grant, premiering in fall 2027. She received her PhD from The School of Creative Media, Hong Kong City University.

Michael Prettyman

Painter & Panelist

Michael Prettyman is a contemporary artist and scholar of comparative religion. He has been a maker his entire life. He is permanently at home in his work, creating a sprawling body of paintings, essays and lectures that bring together his interests in contemporary representational painting within the corpus of world wisdom texts and ideas found in cross-cultural eschatological traditions. Michael’s art practice is concerned with postmodern iterations of classic representational painting as informed by esoteric spiritual practice and study. He pursues his material practice as a meditation, whether it is in drawing, painting or sculpture. He has trained in classical drawing, painting and sculpture at The School of Visual Art, the New York Academy of Art and received advanced instruction in thangka painting at the Tsering School of Art in Kathmandu, Nepal. He has studied Tibetan Buddhist meditation and thangka painting in India, Nepal and in monasteries in Massachusetts and New York. He has a master’s degree in theology from the Harvard Divinity School. He has exhibited drawings and paintings in New York, Hong Kong, Barcelona and Almaty, Kazakhstan. He has permanent mural installations in the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Gardens, The Bronx Zoo, and St. John’s Church. Michael teaches Religion and the Visual Arts at Hunter College in New York City, and lectures widely on creativity, spiritual practice, mysticism and ideas of the divine. He is currently working on a book about creativity and spiritual practice, as well as body of paintings addressing the Anthropocene Sublime. He lives and works in New York City.

Karma Phuntsok

Artistic Collaborator

I was born in 1952 in Lhasa, Tibet. My family and I, fled Tibet after the uprising against the Chinese in 1959, escaping into India as refugees. I studied drawing and painting through my school years in India. In 1973 I studied Thanka Painting with a master of traditional Tibetan Thanka painting in Nepal. Since then I have been making paintings based on Tibetan Buddhist deities.In 1981 I migrated to Australia and now live in the “Bush” north of Kyogle with my wife.My paintings are collected world-wide, and published in various books and magazines. My recent paintings are mostly experiments, interweaving traditional techniques and symbols, with modern inspirations.“The art of Karma Phuntsok is a unique and dynamic expression of contemporary Buddhist Art. Though formally trained as a traditional Thanka painter, Karma applies different techniques and materials in his work, often creating futuristic expressions of the time-honoured craft. The startling beauty and richness which graces his work is influenced by his diverse life experiences: from a childhood in Tibet under Chinese oppression to life as a refugee in India; his love life in the Australian Bush, and the veneration with which he holds His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Internationally acclaimed, Karma’s work is scattered throughout the world, in private collections and galleries, and in Australia at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Queensland Art Gallery.” (by David Templeman)

Miriam Parker

Artistic Collaborator & Panelist

Miriam Parker has been influenced by her experience as a dancer, her study of Buddhism, phenomenology, and her connection to the free jazz tradition. Parker creates durational films that accompany performance, within which she creates movable sculptural sonic elements in site-specific environments. Through re-organizational practices, Parker refines her understanding of individuality, outside of traditions built from oppressive ethics. Her practice is to find new modes of freedom through multiple narratives as a means to evolve. Her work is rooted in a mission to explore the intersections of dance, visual and performance art, and architecture and is particularly intrigued by how architecture designs movement. As an improviser and a reactive artist, Parker views space as a choreographic element, shaping and being shaped by the movement and the moment. Growing up in the East Village supplied her with a vibrant art community that has deeply influenced her creative practice. Parker views her work as a living organism and is interested in keeping it alive through animating and reimagining the possibilities of static spaces. Using the work as a way to map out ideas that cannot be materialized, questioning how we depict ethical behaviors, and creating liminal spaces through building structures that must adhere to the experience of freedom, Parker crafts immersive environments where these ideas are not just imagined, but actively lived and continuously redefined.Parker has recently shown work at Yeh Art Gallery in Queens, NY and performed at the Merz Festival in Berlin, Germany. She was an artist in residence at Mana Contemporary in 2022 where she participated in a group show with the Monira Foundation. In 2021 she received the Toulmin Fellowship through CBA and National Sawdust in collaboration with Marisa Michelson. Parker has performed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art(New York), PS1 MoMA(New York), The Fridman Gallery(New York), The Shed(New York), Festival Sons d’Hiver(Paris), Every Women Biennial(New York), Survey Dover Plains(New York), Vision Festival(New York), the Satellite Art Fair(Miami), and Clement Soto Velez Cultural and Education Center(New York) amongst others. She has shown work in residency at École Normale Supérieure(Paris), at 2B&2C Gallery(New York), Brackish Film Festival(New York), Soft Network Showroom(New York), Triskelion Arts(New York), Pioneer Works (New York), and has participated in residencies at Governors Island in the House of Poetics curated by Cooper Union, BASC in Accord, New York, Nars Foundation Residency on Governors Island, FiveMyles Summer Residency, and more.

Carolyn Gregoire

Panelist

Hi! I’m Carolyn—I’m a Brooklyn-based writer exploring the intersections of psychology, philosophy and Buddhism. As an editor, “book doula” and bestselling collaborative writer, I’ve helped dozens of authors navigate the creative process to bring their ideas to life.My eclectic clientele includes Ivy League psychologists and psychiatrists, Vedic spiritual teachers, executive coaches, shamans, healers and conscious leaders. With my support and guidance, my clients have landed six-figure deals with Big Five publishers; written proposals that have become New York Times bestsellers; and penned “big ideas” books grounded in intellectual and spiritual depth.I bring to this work a deep understanding of the psychology of creative people and creative processes. I’m the co-author of Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (Penguin), with psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, which explores the rich inner lives of great artists and thinkers. The book has sold over 40,000 copies, and the New York Times called it a "satisfying overview of creativity research that is likely to provide nuggets of wisdom to even the most seasoned creative spirit.” I’m also the creator of the Webby Award-winning CREATIVE TYPES personality test, which has been taken over 15 million times. A revised and updated version of the test was released last year in partnership with TED for TED 2025: Humanity Reimagined.A former Senior Writer for the Huffington Post and Editor for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, I’ve also written for publications including Scientific American, Harvard Business Review, TIME, Inc., Fast Company, Quartz, Yoga Journal, The New Republic and The Greater Good Science Center. My work has been featured in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Psychology Today and The World Economic Forum blog, as well as on NPR, MSNBC and The TODAY Show.

Margaret Groton

Artistic Collaborator

Margaret Groton is a New York–based artist whose work explores image-making as spiritual practice. Rooted in automatic painting, her process unfolds as a meditative act of surrender, allowing form and color to emerge intuitively. Grounded in a long-standing engagement with yogic and Buddhist philosophy and deepened through long-term travel in India and Southeast Asia, her work reflects themes of non-separation, impermanence, and luminous awareness. For Margaret, the artist and practitioner are one; painting becomes both discipline and awakening.

Clau Zerez

Artistic Collaborator

Clau Zerez is a creative technologist blending technology and spirituality to create immersive visual experiences inspired by consciousness and sacred geometry. Her work spans generative art, visual effects, and live performance, integrating light, sound, and motion into cohesive environments that explore vibration, symbolism, and the interaction between light, frequency, and human perception.

Fanny Perez

Artistic Collaborator

Fanny Pérez Gutiérrez is an interdisciplinary artist whose work centers the body as a site of knowledge, alignment, and awakening. Her practice weaves ritual, somatic intelligence, visionary movement, and explorations of expanded states of consciousness to create participatory environments that cultivate collective coherence and heightened awareness. Drawing from ancient techniques for modulating consciousness—such as breath, movement, and sound —she investigates mechanisms of trance, ecstasy, and the role of emotion in shaping experience. Through these embodied frameworks, her work seeks to demystify capacities modern culture has conditioned us to overlook, including attention, presence, and non-dual perception.Her work has been presented in collaboration with local and international artists, institutions, and cultural organizations including Psychedelic Sangha, Grace Exhibition Space, Persian Parade, Woodstock Festival of Awakening, Performing Arts Mosaic, Go! Push Pops, Guadalupe Maravilla, Pittsburg International LitFest, Universidad Iberoamericana (MEX), Centro Morelense de las Artes (MÉX), among others.
Photo by Bob Krasner

KENDRAPLEX

Artistic Collaborator

Kendraplex, working in sound and print, alone and with Names Divine, rock and roll and minimalist traditions, atmosphere of emotional intimacy, transfer, transformation, printmaking as social practice, circulation, iteration, pattern recognition, image and sound, repeating, transforming, God through the human experience, LCD, and Freaking Out with Kendraplex on WFMU.

Chris Dingman

Artistic Collaborator

Chris Dingman is a New York-based vibraphonist and composer. Chris Dingman is known for his distinctive approach to the instrument, which is at once sonically rich and conceptually expansive. In his captivating solo performances, he casts an enveloping atmosphere, creating layers of simultaneous sound that take listeners to a transcendent place. Chris has worked with the legendary artists Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter and many other of today’s jazz and world music luminaries. Based in NYC since 2002, Chris had been documenting his solo improvisations privately for many years. When his father entered hospice care in 2018, he created the 5-hour extended album Peace. This led to an ongoing evolution of his solo music and his critically acclaimed albums Journeys Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Chris actively tours and has performed worldwide. He has been profiled by NPR, the New York Times, AMNY, and many other publications. He has received fellowships and grants from Chamber Music America, New Music USA, South Arts, and the Thelonious Monk Institute.

Macrodose

Artistic Collaborator

Macrodose consist of visual artists Chris Georges and Gregory Thrasher. Together they create psychedelic light shows and projections for bands all over New York City and Brooklyn. Using 60’s techniques updated with modern tools, Macrodose aim to create one of a kind live visuals with liquids, video synthesis and cameras to give concertgoers a synesthetic experience. There are no laptops used and we do not press play, everything is live and manipulated by hand.

Yosuh Jones

Artistic Collaborator

Yosuh Jones is a multimedia artist from St. Petersburg, FL, based currently in the Midwest. He works steadily in acrylic painting, but also explores collage, mixed media, and, more recently, animation and video art.
His works emphasize color, fluidity, and space. Some recurring themes include nature, Buddhist or Eastern religious imagery and concepts, and an array of symbols and psychedelic imagery, with a simultaneous folk-art feel or simplicity.He employs styles ranging from abstract to classical, geometric, surrealistic to representational.Yosuh's works have featured in art happenings, gallery shows, and media design, including collaborative work with Psychedelic Sangha, a video backdrop for a conference talk by Erik Davis, and album cover design for Elkhorn, to name a few.

Lama Mike Crowley

Conference Organizer

Lama Mike Crowley, born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1948, has studied Buddhism since 1966, specializing in the Kagyud lineage. He has also studied Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mandarin. Mike has lectured at institutions like the California Institute of Integral Studies and University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work appears in Fortean Times and Time and Mind. In 2016, he received the R. Gordon Wasson Award for his contributions to entheobotany. He serves on the advisory board of The Psychedelic Sangha and teaches at the Dharma Collective in San Francisco.

Doc Kelley

Conference Organizer

Doc is the co-founder and Director of Operations at Psychedelic Sangha LLC. He is also a Buddhist scholar-practioner who teaches in the Religious Studies Program at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School in New York City.Doc holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Religion (Buddhist Studies) from Columbia University, where he studied under Dr. Robert Thurman.His academic and teaching expertise spans Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist ethics, and experimental mysticism.Beyond academia, Doc is a creative force who blends Buddhist philosophy with avant-garde art and performance. In 2018, he directed "FluxBuddha," a performance art concert at the Rubin Museum.He is currently collaborating with various musicians and visual artists on a series of live and recorded immersive Dharma Art experiences dubbed "Sonic Sadhana" (i.e., Bardo Bath, Vibing Vajrasattva, and Chöd).

Tomas Sander

Conference Organizer

Tomas Sander is a Buddhist practitioner and author based in New York. He is practicing in the Tibetan tradition. He has studied with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, and Greg Goode. He co-authored Emptiness and Joyful Freedom, a book that explores Buddhist insights into the nature of reality using tools from Western philosophy.Tomas is an early member of Psychedelic Sangha, where he is co-hosting a speaker series that explores the intersection of Buddhism and psychedelics.
Tomas holds a doctoral degree in Mathematics from the University of Dortmund, Germany, and works in the tech industry, specializing in data privacy.

David Boon

Conference Organizer

Dave is an organizer for groups that explore the intersection of psychedelics and Buddhist practice. Through the Tergar Meditation Teacher Program with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, David is developing meditation programs both grounded in traditional Buddhist teachings and designed for psychedelic preparation and integration with an emphasis on harm reduction. He has over 18 years of professional experience guiding entrepreneurial organizations and holds an MBA with Honors from the University of Chicago.

Matthew Heston

Conference Organizer

Matt lives in Chicago and is interested in the intersection of Buddhism and Butthole Surfers.