Bio

Fariba Bogzaran, artist/scientist/visionary founded the first dream studies graduate certificate program at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, California. She taught at JFK University in both the Departments of Consciousness Studies and Arts and Consciousness for over two decades and was adjunct professor at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco for twenty years. She has given lectures and retreats internationally since 1984.

As part of the team conducting scientific studies on lucid dreaming at the Stanford Sleep Laboratory (1986–1989), she led the first scientific research on lucid dream incubation and transpersonal experiences (1989). Her pioneering art-based research, Images of the Lucid Mind: A Phenomenological Study of Lucid Dreaming and Modern Painting (1996), examined the parallels between transpersonal lucid dream experiences and the visual art of influential artists such as Roberto Matta, Lee Mullican and Gordon Onslow Ford.  Among her many publications are two coauthored books: Extraordinary Dreams (2002) and Integral Dreaming (2012) both published by the State University of New York Press. 

Fariba’s artwork is informed and inspired by both her deep connection with nature and her collaboration with the two states of consciousness: hypnagogic and lucid dreaming. Among her solo exhibitions are The Third Script (2008) based on her work on energy and light held at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and a retrospective exhibition, Lucidity (2013), curated by Peter Selz and Anne Brodzky at the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco, and The Art of the Lucid Mind at the Bolinas Museum, California (2022). 

Fariba was in dialogue and collaboration with surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford for thirteen years. During this time, they envisioned and created the Lucid Art Foundation (1998) of which she is founding director. Fariba coined the term “Lucid Art”, which is a direction in art focusing on the phenomena of the inner worlds and art. She is the editor of the award-winning publication, Gordon Onslow Ford: A Man on a Green Island (2019) and her recent book is A Place of Creation (2024) about 97 artists and 11 scholars in residence at the Lucid Art Foundation.