New Old Work........

Persephone

Last spring I began a series of 4 masks, inspired by a friend who wished to use them for a ritual theatre process based upon the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece.  We don't know exactly what occured in the Mysteries, because participants were forbidden to tell what occured - "Mystery" derives from a work that means "that which cannot be spoken".  But the  Eleusinian Mysteries  combined spirit of place and mythic enactment to transform pilgrims as they  enacted the death/rebirth cycle of nature, based upon the Triple Goddess Demeter/Persephone/Hecate  for almost 2,500 years, and probably longer, as, like many places of pilgrimage today, the origins go back far into prehistory. 

I wanted to try to make the masks look old, and tried to imagine what they might have looked like as painted Greek masks..........these don't really look much like ancient Greek masks at all, but I like them anyway.  They were recently used by a ritualist in California, so they have some energy instilled in them and I hope they'll "travel" to others who might want to use them to explore these important myths.
 

Demeter

Hades

Hecate

I've written quite often about Hecate, the Underworld Goddess who bears two Torches to assist Persephone, and the immature unconscious parts of all of us, through the Underworld to mature empowerment - here's a recent post.

Hecate

Persephone

Here's another recent variation..............Demeter aren't done yet.  But I had fun making the masks look "bronze".  I like the idea of these masks, and the other sculptures that seem related, really looking sculptural, with a heavy, strong, dark,  metal presence. 

Black Madonna

Here's an other theme that keeps arising, and it's good to come back to these images, play with them again.  The Primal Black Madonna, Earth Mother, Gaia, the Source that sustains us all.

Transformer:  Yin and Yang

I love these paper casts of a dead snake that I found years ago and made a plaster cast of.  Snakes were very sacred in ancient times as a symbol of the renewal of life because the snake sheds its skin.  Snakes also represented the serpentine movements of nature, the spiral of the Goddess that moves through nature's cycles, through life/death/rebirth again and again.  The Snake is identified with Demeter and Persephone, and in ancient Egypt the word for snake or cobra was the same as the word for female deity.

I did this "Skin Shedder Mandala" back in 1986, when I was studying "The Spiral Dance" by Starhawk as a graduate student at the U.A.  A lot of people found it dark or grim............but I still love it.  

The Black Madonna (2013)

Black Madonna earlier version...............

  And I'm having fun making these variations on the Torso .................... I guess the next one is a "copper patina" effect.  Good to be in the studio again, having my discussions, in the symbol language of art I think, with the Dark Goddesses of  Winter....................

Cast of sculpture from IPark in 2005

"Black Madonna" 2013

"Black Madonna" 2013, mixed media

I seem to be fascinated with the Black Madonna, and if I was Catholic, I would undoubtedly join one of the many, very ancient and traditional, Pilgrimages to the Black Madonna that occur throughout Europe, including Poland, Spain, France, and elsewhere.   Many believe that the Black Madonna has its roots in Pre-Christian worship of Isis, portrayed with Her child Horus throughout the Roman world and, of course, Egypt. 


But I believe the origins may go back even farther. 

The Black Madonnas are almost always associated with Sacred Sites, places that contain a holy well, spring, or are associated with a sacred cave.  In other words, places of numinous power within the earth, places that ancient peoples knew to enhance visionary experience, heal, raise energy, enhance fertility, and facilitate communion with the spiritual realms. 

The earliest representation of the human figure, going back as far as 40,000 years and possibly farther...........are the ubiquitous so-called "Venus"  figures, such as the famous "Venus of Willendorf", as well as representations of a stylized vulva found in visual iconography.    In the  2010 film Cave of Forgotten Dreams  ,   Werner Herzog  followed an exclusive expedition into the nearly inaccessible Chauvet cave in France, which houses the  most ancient visual art known from the upper Paleolithic era.  Archeo/mythologist Mirrium Dexter pointed out that the only human image within the site is a female lower torso, or vulva form......the bull image was painted above it a later time.  Although it's never commented on in the movie, or in most discussions of the cave,  Dexter suggested that the  cave represented the womb/tomb where the magic of rebirth occurs, and by the act of honoring and representing  the animal powers which were both allies and sustenance, they were offering them for re-birth within the cave/womb of the Great Mother.

So perhaps my sculpture is a contemporary echo of that image, the "Black Madonna" in Her most primal form, roots and source and life radiating out from Her belly, Her breasts.  This is a Diety that brings us back to our own very primal roots, reverence for the Earth Mother that births us, sustains us, and takes us back to be re-born. 

Another aspect of the Black Madonna to me, which of course I so often refer back to, is the element of "composting" (which isn't unrelated to "rebirth").  Composting is a biological process of renewal, and I believe it's a soul process as well. 

"I do what the poet Gary Snyder calls "composting" — You let everything you do/learn/think/read/feel sink down inside yourself and stay in the dark, and then (years later maybe) something entirely new grows up out of that rich darkness. This takes patience."

Ursula K. Leguin

2005

It's believed by many that the earliest pilgrimages on the "Camino" in Spain were made to the "Black Madonna of Compostella", a very ancient effigy. Compostella comes from the same root word as "compost". Compost is the fertile soil created from rotting organic matter, the "Black Matter". The alchemical soup to which everything living returns, and is continually resurrected by the processes of nature into new life, new form. Matrix/Creatrix. Matter. Mater. Mother.

"From this compost -- life and light will emerge. When the pilgrims came to the Cathedral at Compostella they were being 'composted' in a sense. After emergence from the dark confines of the cathedral and the spirit -- they were ready to flower, they were ready to return home with their spirits lightened."

~~ Jay Weidner