Showing posts with label mythos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mythos. Show all posts

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theatre (and Artist in Residence for 2017)


Coreopsis





An Artist’s Statement

By Lauren Raine


“Myth comes alive as it enters the cauldron of evolution, 
drawing energy from the new storytellers who shape it.”

– Elizabeth Fuller, the Independent Eye Theatre


Mythos is the archetypal ground on which cultures are built, the sometimes fluid template of religions, and the means by which we decide what is sacred and what is not.  In other words, as the poet Muriel Rukeyser famously said, “The world is made of stories, not atoms.”  Artists are technicians of story.   So what are the stories that we are telling about our world, and how are they manifesting?  How are we, as artists, acting as myth makers?

Ritual is a way of bringing the storied realm into the physical realm.  There is something incredibly transformative about not simply observing, but becoming part of the story.  By putting on the mask, or passing the magical chalice, or touching the Earth with imagined roots we embody mythos.   Meaningful ritual is by and large lost in the contemporary world – but it’s a potent, creative field that is wide open for artists to re-animate.

When I went to Bali to study temple mask traditions I was fortunate to produce collaborative masks with Balinese mask makers while there. In traditional cultures, such as Bali, sacred masks are regarded as “vessels for the gods” to gain entry into this world, to bless or to instruct.  Their sacred mask traditions inspired me to create the Masks of the Goddess collection, which was devoted to the divine feminine throughout the world.  As the masks were used by dancers, storytellers, and ritualists, I found myself in a grand conversation, and the masks themselves gained energy, story, and “manna” from those who used them.    After 20 years, they are still travelling, most recently to the Parliament of World Religions.

Another series of masks, collectively called Numina after the Roman word for spirits of place, is a celebration of my lifelong conversation with the numinous intelligence in nature, and I offer them to others to give them voice. We have always personified the vast, mysterious and yet intimate forces of nature, as gods and goddesses, as kachinas, as the fey.   What might the Spirit of the River have to say as humans pollute our waters?  What might the Spirit of the Forest speak of?  What knowledge could the the Mountain Gods impart?

How might we use theatre, and participatory ritual, to engage others in the Great Conversation?  How might the renewal of contemporay Ritual Theatre help us to "re-enchant" the world?

Lauren Raine MFA

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Everyday Goddesses.........

Our Lady of the Green Heart (2015)

Lately I've begun to paint again, tentatively and trying to find my hand again.  It used to be so easy!
Everything I make is an Icon, in one way or another.  And I also think, as I create portraits of people I know, that the Goddesses are great universal archetypes that belong to the Collective Sacred Mythos, etc., but............they also live right here, in the contemporary here and now, in real women.  

And thinking that, synchronistically, women have turned up who seem to embody those Goddesses - I snap pictures of them, and the Goddess looks out at me from them, smiling and at ease in the 21st Century just as much as 500 B.C.  A young Chinese doctor is staying at my house, and a Quan Yin mask is evolving from her compassionate face.  A beautiful German nurse is renting my guesthouse, and as she walks with such kind, lush, and un-selfconscious  beauty, I see Freya in scrubs, Goddess of love and healing and beauty.  
Green Heart (2009)

Anyway..........the first painting I have done, rusty as it is, wants to be called "Our Lady of the Green Heart".  But maybe she is also Gaia.

I wanted to make a better version of a self-portrait I did years ago (on right), but, although (I confess) I did use a younger picture of myself, the painting evolved in a whole new way, much more Iconic, and the expression, I like to think, both intelligent, joyful, and Ironic.   In other words, not without a great sense of humor about all of it.

Go figure.


This month has brought quite a few meltdowns, internally, for me,  A lot of endings, a lot of internal work, revelation, change.  Hecate seems to have been working with me indeed, and we're not out of the underground yet.  This is become my own "Winter of Listening", and I sink into the dark and quiet of November with deep gratitude.

But, and I think this is why I write this entry in this journal, I realize that it's important to listen to what the painting has been saying as well.  The beauty of art making is that the Conversation is not always visible at first, but it is always there.  And the painting, even as I enter a truly incubating time, is an Invocation for the future!  Even as I go underground in November, I see that I have painted a hope for the seeds of my spring.    And I say this without modesty, but gladly!

May we all be incubating Everyday Goddesses and Everyday Gods.

Hecate (1997)