threads of the spiderwoman: Memoirs 2: Lithographs and Other from the 80's

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Memoirs 2: Lithographs and Other from the 80's

"Gaia" (1985)

I wanted to finish sharing these "forgotten" Lithogrgaphs from the 80's. This was the height of New Age. Extraordinary people like Carolyn Myss Energy Healing, Gloria Orenstein with Ecofeminism, Psychologists such as Stephen Levine and Jack Kornfield bringing Vipassana meditation and Theravada Buddhism into contemporary psychology, Starhawk, M. Macha Nightmare, and their colleagues creating the Pagan religious path for Goddess spirituality and a return to Nature, Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman bringing Shamanism into the modern world, Joseph Campbell inspiring everyone with the Power of Myth, Shirley Maclain and Crystals................ so much, such a glorious international opening of spiritual re-discovery and re-invention. Yes there were excesses, as always will happen, but I am always annoyed at the mindless censorship and cynicism with which people now scoff at "New Age", not realizing how many important ideas practices and institutions arose from the era of openness and re-discovery

"Day of Radience" (1985)

I love this piece, which spontaneously gave a photo in my studio of the artist Catherine Nash a "halo". She is a powerful artist whose work is highly spiritual: I was not surprised then, nor am I now.

"A House of Doors" (1987)

"A House of Doors IV" (1988)

"The Daemon Lover" (1987)

A HOUSE OF DOORS was the theme for my MFA show in 1987, and I produced a number of paintings and also a Spoken Word poem (in collaboration with Catherine Nash) inspired by the amazing works of Laurie Anderson. I am thinking I will make the next post about that particular show.

"Skin Shedder" (1986)

By 1985 I had discovered the evolving Pagan community and ritual practice, and also began to learn about the Goddess. I was inspired reading Starhawk and The Spiral Dance deeply. When I began to learn about the many, many manifestations of the Divine Feminine throughout the world, it felt like a vast sustenance and truth was entering me, to fill up the emptiness I had often felt in my lack of religion. Here was, as Gloria Orenstein , one of the founders of EcoFeminism, wrote in her book THE REFLOWERING OF THE GODDESS the return of the Great Mother to a world desperately in need of Her. Here was the need for a new Iconography that I, as an artist, could entirely respond to and devote myself to.