The Henry Luce Center for the Arts Residency 2009

(rough scetch - "Hands Altar")

I feel very grateful indeed to share that I have been privileged to receive a fellowship for next fall at the Henry Luce Center for the Arts at the Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. I'm so delighted with the prospect of having this wonderful opportunity to work there.

(very rough sketch - potential exhibit with "icons")

What I would like to engage the student community with there is a dialog in art process about interconnectivity and interdependance, within the continuing metaphor of "Spider Woman's Hands". What I show here are some very rudamentary sketches of how such a piece might evolve into an altar/exhibit. I want very much to do a large circle of participant hands, embedded in an ornate circular frame that consists of individual tiles, representing symbolic qualities of each individual who has contributed to forming the whole.

"Ancestral Hands - the Midwife" (clay & mixed media)

Above is a recent sculptural sketch I made, using cast hands of Lori, a midwife in Pittsburgh I met. I decided to call this piece "Ancestral Hands - the Midwife", recognizing the nameless midwives who have brought each new generation forward into the world, their hands and stories buried in the earth, emerging here with all the power of the gesture Lori made, the gesture of opening a portal into life for those whose time has come to be born.