We are very sorry to tell you that Hildy Maze was found dead at her home on Long Island on Thursday. There is not much specific information. It was apparently quite sudden. On Wednesday she was with friends at the beach and appeared in good health. She missed an appointment the following morning and her friend went to her home and found her.
Hildy was a student of Chögyam Trungpa and was a member of the New York Buddhist community since the mid 1970s. She attended the Vajradhatu Seminary in 1982 and was an accomplished and prolific visual artist. Art was practice for her. A selection of her work and her commentaries can be viewed on her website, here: https://hildymaze.com. There is a brief, delightful bio found on the ‘contact’ page of that website.
There will be a Ceremony of Sukhavati for Hildy on Monday July 6th at 11:30 am Mountain Daylight Time, led by Randy Sunday. It is a virtual gathering and following is the information you’ll need to log in. Please arrive a bit early.
—Phil Karl
for Ri-mé Society
Zoom Link: Sukhavati for Hildy Maze
Time: Jul 6, 2020 11:30 AM Mountain, 1:30 PM Eastern Time
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85769841843?pwd=NmRaNUhxMklLRjgwbG1Da215eCs5UT09
Meeting ID: 857 6984 1843
Password: GarudaHUM
Nothing I could write would be enough to pay tribute to darling Hildy.
Her friendship has been like a diamond in my life. Hildy was one of the bravest travellers, most sincere lovers of the earth, most devoted dharma sisters, and most uncompromising free spirited, adventurous, true hearted beings I have had the privilege to know and relish in my life.
Impossibly broke, creating uncounted priceless art forms, following inspiration in everything, adoring and caring for this world almost without limit. Hildy’s jubilant life was dharma art itself and her wisdom and compassion always rode hand in hand.
To lose her is almost unbearable. Perhaps we never shall, she was so integrated with everything, in every bird, animal, tree or ocean wave.
CTR is under injunction to take the very best care of her. I’m sure he will.
In honor of a dear friend, who, I just found out has passed, a prolific artist with a grand heart... The painting is titled 'The Negation and Yearning of XOH' from a photograph she sent me and a discussion we had on the role of women in art, as model, as muse, as artist.
In our chats and comments she always added XO, I added the H for Hildy...
APPRECIATING THE MUSE...
Me too
Us together
Loving you
Hugging me
Painting you
Keeping the enigma in tact
has not been as hard as all that...
The wild Dakini approaches
and floats on the sea
feeding the gulls and talking to me
her hair is it's own entity
flowing on to eternity
Her pink lips soft and salty
her fangs are there if you dare
only to find she has no fear
so please beware
She'll steal your heart when least expecting
palpably beating as you stand bleeding
blindsided by her warmth and sweetness
falling in love had such greatness
She inspires these verses
spontaneously flowing
goodnight my dear
must be going...
©stephen.futral / 17.july.2009
Hildy applied for the Guggenheim Fellowship; and although she did not receive a fellowship, she was certainly deserving. Part of that application was a "narrative," a brief biography of sorts. Below are excerpts from that narrative.
My mother, Helen Maze, late in life, gave birth to me on a snowy day in November. I am of Turkish, Russian and Austrian heritage. My mother, an exotic-looking woman with a palette of white hair and dark skin, was a classical pianist who received a scholarship to The Julliard School of Music, but was barred by her father from accepting admission because of the family’s difficult finances during the Depression. But throughout her life, my mother continued to pursue musical expression. Often her beautiful operatic whistling could be heard throughout our home. She shared with me, from a very young age, her love of the arts. I studied ballet beginning at age 5, began to play the piano at the age of 6, and later at the age of 9 even pursued acting. My father Eli, nicknamed Lucky by his younger brother, was a C.P.A and champion amateur golfer, a progressive thinker with eccentric tendencies, great kindness, and a dry sense of humor....
While attending an art class at Forest Hills High School I discovered I could draw and paint. But upon graduation, still interested in theater, I apprenticed at Williamstown Summer Theatre, then attended Emerson College in Boston for one year to continue my theater studies. I eventually transferred to Pratt Institute, where I earned a BFA focusing on graphic design. The teacher who most influenced and inspired me was the graphic designer Charles (Charlie) Goslin. He had more confidence in me than I had in myself, and his rigorous critiques of my work pushed me to think precisely, pay attention to detail, and to relax more without worrying about the result....
During my last semester at Pratt, I had the good fortune to work for Milton Glaser as his assistant during the celebrated launch of New York Magazine. While at Milton Glaser Inc., I was editor of the award winning Audience Magazine, a journal of short stories, poetry, essays, photography and art; and organized an installation at the World Trade Center, as well as designed a piece for the exhibition. In my spare time I did commercial design projects of collaged assemblages, constructions and installations made of found objects. I became a full-time commercial free-lance designer, making assemblages and constructions for The New York Times, various book publishers, music companies and magazines for about two years during the 1970s....
In 1984, I no longer wanted to struggle to maintain my increasingly expensive New York City loft. I decided instead to move from my beloved Tribeca apartment to East Hampton, New York, to be near the ocean while continuing my meditation practice and developing my painting. My desire was to merge formal meditation with daily life and making art, and to be able to communicate this to others....
Essentially I view my work as an evolving inquiry. I continue to live, make art, and to study the principles of Buddhist contemplative philosophy, a pursuit not unlike cleaning the dust off the windows in a house in order to see the world and oneself more clearly and precisely, with less aggression and with more equanimity, kindness and humor.
I and the seagulls at Maidstone beach will miss our Springs friend very much. Perhaps she’s soaring with her gulls...
Naked Ladyness
Song to Hildy Maze
If I were a painter,
I would plunge into the ocean of your nakedness
and drink thereof all the colours of the rainbow
oozing in your oils
engollopped by your curvaceous gouaches
washed in your glistening fluid watercolors
stamped by your lithographic, obiliscoid monumentality.
If I were a musician,
I would capture your cackle
mellifluate your moans
serenade your sighs
symphony your sobs
libretto your laughter
and legato your luscious, dulcet-toned voice -
especially when sotto voce!
If I were a baker
I would culture your smile, your gaze, your aromas
into leaven of enlightened fecundity
permeating the dough of this seeming-solid body mandala
with fruitional expansion of all-pervasive space
baked in the oven of your enlightening warmth and compassion,
cooled with the ardor of authentic appreciation and ordinariness,
eaten with the gusto of self-liberated desire
of natural unrestrained passion.
If I were a man,
I would drown in your gaze,
swoon into wakefulness at the touch of your smile,
melt into co-emergent compassion and equanimity whilst holding your hand,
plunge and ride the luminous bindus of your self-secret essences,
and arise a true tantrika thanks to your blessings.
If I were a poet,
I would be speechless!
If I were a practitioner
I would dwell stable beyond thought
peaceful in the transmission of your wisdom-luminous red-lettered emanation.
If I were in the bardo,
I would see you and find you
and then our union would dance more stars into being and oblivion
making the Moon Herself jealous
of the blissful trail of sukra and blessings
we would leave in our wake,
glistening on her silvery beams
which tendril in feminine mandala sub-realms
into the dreams of those who lie sleeping below
all luminous,
all awake,
all enlightened,
if only they would know it,
and not fall back into the karmically obscured sleep of the outer body mandala
when they get up in the morning.
H.M, you are the cat's miaow,
you take the biscuit
the crème de la crème,
the Queen of Sukra,
the Body of Desire,
the painter of all poetry,
the poetry of all paintings,
the artist of the ineffable,
the Heroine of the Hamptons,
the beach of the best,
the lover out of time and mind,
ever-young
ever-naughty
ever-lovely
ever-ever
never-never
ever-ever.
A. H.
March 4 2015.
Cape Breton Island.
