The Clear Brooks Family was founded in 1977 when the then young artist Bozidar
Mandic (b.1952), with his wife Braila (b.1954) and five months old daughter Ista left the town of Novi Sad and moved to an old abandoned house in the woods under the Rudnik mountain in central Serbia. They left town deliberately, wanting to leave civilization and dedicate themselves to nature. The resultant artists' commune was enlarged by people who joined the family throughout the years; living a simple, country life, with no electricity, hot water, or TV. They dedicated their life to a close relationship with nature; practicing rituals dedicated to plants' growth, land fertility, Earth's sanity, and sending their good will by a special "antenna" made of wood to the cosmos. They also worked on having open relations between people by welcoming every guest to the commune. During the past 30 years around 25,000 people have visited and stayed with them for a while. All have received free food and place to sleep. The Clear Brooks Family's main principles are living with ecology, culture and humanism.

In an interview from 1990, Bozidar Mandic stated: "The materialistic world has come to its culmination. I really think that now a door for a spiritual age is opening. Not a religious, I have to stress it, but spiritual. Spirituality is what the humanity is lacking, and I am trying above all to offer spirituality to people, and after that the existential reactions. That is what I am striving for, for those invisible spiritual worlds, as in life, also in art."

(From Spirit Art website)