Old Masks

These tales of old disguisings, are they not

Strange myths of souls that found themselves among
Unwonted folk that spake an hostile tongue,
Some soul from all the rest who'd not forgot
The star-span acres of a former lot
Where boundless mid the clouds his course he swung,
Or carnate with his elder brothers sung
Ere ballad-makers lisped of Camelot?

Old singers half-forgetful of their tunes,
Old painters color-blind come back once more,
Old poets skill-less in the wind-heart runes,
Old wizards lacking in their wonder-lore:

All they that with strange sadness in their eyes
Ponder in silence o'er earth's queynt devyse? 

Ezra Pound

I've been working like crazy this summer on ceramic sculptures, and my studio is full of clay and half finished Personae everywhere, all asking not only for completion, but for stories.  Sometimes I swear they are all whispering at me some long lost, forgotten story or conversation.  They are all part of the "OUR LADY OF THE SHARDS" theme I undertook this year, a kind of mythic archeology, the "reclaiming, un-earthing, re-telling" of lives and faces from the shards of the buried and broken past. 

When one is in Flow, those voice seem to arise, they can be heard, not just when you are working, but when you are walking, or doing dishes it seems.  So far I have only finished the one piece above, "Old Masks", but I like it so much that I'm doing a longer, more complicated version.  Also in progress:  "Our Lady of the Desert Spring", "The One Who Wove the Stories", "Our Lady of the Midwives", "Black Madonna", "The One Who Remembers".  Whew.  Good to be working, to have this Conversation going on! 

What will I do with all of this work when it (presumably) is finished?  Well, I don't know.  I'd like to have a show again somewhere, but shows are hard to find or come by these days.  We'll see.

Reliquary for a Lost Forest

"Reliquary for a Lost Forest" (2016)

I seem to be making Reliquaries, containers for Artifacts that emanate and remember what is sacred.  Traditionally, in the Church, these contained the bones of saints - this practise of creating vessels for some part of the body of a saint is found among the Buddhists as well.  The idea is that these bones still are imbued with the power and holiness of those they once belonged to.

My bones seem to be the Bones of the Earth, the places that need to be cherished and remembered........and grieved at their loss as well.   So many of them keep arising from the "speaking clay".

"Rain Shrine" (2014)