Dream States...........

"Blooming Dream"

I can't help but enjoy my new work, which is, I suppose, relentlessly sentimental, or pretty, or all those things the art world absolutely hates and would never let me in for.  Well, one of the adantages of being of a certain age is.............I don't care!  How much fun to just make things that are beautiful.  Took long enough.

"White Butterfly Dream"

New Work for July.........

An onion,

All those layers.

just when you think you can name yourself,
you discover new layers,
you’re forming a new skin,

a new ring.

But there's a core.

And where does that core start?

"Sow" , clay mosaic (2016)

What's been so fun about being in the ceramic studio all summer (in spite of the hot kilns) is that I don't know what I'm doing.  I let the clay kind of tell me what to do, and it's such a great Conversation!  Plus, I've been able to re-connect joyfully with "Flow", meaning, I look at the piece (or lump of clay) and I see what it can become, a picture comes into my mind of where to go next.

It's also been very liberating to kind of disassociate myself from the internal critic and "art world".......I'm letting myself just make what I enjoy, and not worrying about whether it's "good" by anyone's standards.  

"Sow" (2016)

"Reliquary for a Lost Forest" (2016)

"Quan Yin"

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)

New Mosaic - "Our Lady of the Waters"

"Our Lady of the Waters" (2014)

 I've been experimenting with clay and my collection of Afghani fabric presses.  There is something so wonderful about putting these antique presses, all cut by hand, to use again - they have so much spirit or mana in them.  This piece is dedicated to WATER, which is so important here in the desert.  Without the blessings of the Lady of the Waters, there is no life.

Lady of the Desert Spring

Nuestra Senora de las Aguas,

Our lady of the Arroyo,

Come quietly to us,

Come to us, and hear our prayers,

For  those who suffer thirst,

Spread your mantle of green and turquoise

 Among the red, parched lands

Bright artery of life

Nuestra Señora de las Aguas

Mother of the cottonwoods, the Palos verdes,

Snake and mallow, coyote and child

Hear our prayers

O desert spring,

Our lady of the  waters.

Tile made from antique Afghani fabric press (2014)

The Song of the Dry River

Dry.  All you hear

 is the litany of traffic, a dusty haze obscuring the distance.

Nothing sounds now

where once water  sang

among the stones,

voices of the living

where once a river ran

a river, once, here

before  cattle came,

 the cars

the mines

living as if the waters

would always flow

to green the red and barren lands,

as if the breast would never run dry.

As if  there none yet unborn

Who must know  thirst.

Are there only stones

And pottery shards

Left to remember me?

I sing to their  ghosts now,

I sing

where once a river ran

(2002)

Songs of Ancient Midwives, Un-Named Madonna, and other Arisings

This piece is brand new (as of Christmas Eve, 2013).  I don't yet know what to title it:  "Our Lady of _____________?"  I think her face is sorrowful, and of course the image of old, broken, decorated tiles or potshards have always meant to me reclaiming and arising of that which has been lost, broken, buried in the ancient past.  There is a surprising sense of Arising in these Icons that  I've felt compelled to finish  these past few weeks.  The Arising of the life-giving Goddess, arising from the mythic body of the Earth, arising from the shadows in this time of need.  And now that I think about it, this recent holiday, buried beneath all the consumer frenzy, is about the Solstice, and the birth of the new Sun God, the Christ Child..............

When I searched the internet, was it so hard to find any (good)  poems about Birth, let alone Midwives.  Believe me, there are plenty of poems about Battle and the glories, or not so glorious, realities of War.  I think this is another indicator of our world's  patriarchal priorities (death is way more important, and interesting, than the bringing forth of life.  And even that becomes trivialized or co-opted.)  Perhaps this is part of what the sorrowful expression of this "Madonna" means, seeking to arise in the fragmented consciousness of humanity..........

Certainly, these works keep surfacing from the dusty depths of my own creativity, and some dreaming part of me wanted to bring them forth.  

 "Sings with the Voices of Ancient Midwives the Songs They Once Sang, Singing the New Life Into The World.........."

"Shrine for the Ancient Midwives"

 

I'm always making Shrines, Reliquaries, "Containers" for images or objects that are important to me in one way or another.  This is a universal human impulse, and such shrines provide us with a "memory station" to re-connect with what is large, meaningful, sacred in the midst of daily life.   Here's a few new ones:

"Bloom Where You Are Icon"

The "Reliquary for the Flight of a Phoenix" is something I make over and over.  It began on the Summer Solstice in 2003, when I was at an artists colony in Connecticut, I-Park.  That ecstatic summer I would walk in the woods and fields, and let the objects I found tell me stories, integrating them into story sculptures.  A bright yellow feather, perhaps from an Oriole, became a relic left over from the recent flight of a Phoenix, born again from the ash and, as one holds that magical feather in one's hand, somehow you participate in that glorious, distant flight.  It becomes your own flight as well. 

"Reliquary for the Flight of a Phoenix"

Here are a few from earlier times.  I've always loved the one below, which I guess shows various symbols of transformation, including the Phoenix and the Snake, and of course, the breaking away of masks that enclose the soul.  If that makes sense..................

 

Did I see you?

feel your smile

as you

fell?

People cross bridges

cars pass under them

or water

you waited

then jumped

(it must have happened

 quickly)

but what was it that rose in you

like a slow Phoenix

new wings

   outstetched?

....Felicia Miller

 

One of the "Persephone Icons",  and Persephone is always identified for me with the eternal process of life dying and being reborn.

One of the Spider Woman Shrines I made at Wesley..........to remind myself that we are all "weavers" with the actions of our minds and hands.  So may I align with the Great Weaver................