THE HAND OF THE SPIDERWOMAN IN WINSLOW

Pulling off the road in Winslow, Arizona I entered a gas station converted into an “Indian Arts” gallery, although quite a few of the items were from Mexico. My attention was immediately drawn to a beautiful scribed silver necklace in the case - it showed a Navajo woman, with her signature hair bun, weaving at a standup loom, and behind her was a great spider web - Spiderwoman. When the proprietor offered it to me at half the price marked, I had to buy it. Putting it on, I felt my Blessing Way had, perhaps, been renewed. I don’t have a means to show the necklace here without my camera, but the Navajo artist’s name is Keith Brown.

Many of the native American artists here are incredible, making mythic silver cut or turquoise jewelry, or incised and painted pots, or paintings of blue spirit horses running beneath vast skies with blessed thunderclouds forming beneath red, red cliffs. But those living in impoverished Winslow, or on the reservation, are rarely represented in affluent galleries like Scottsdale or Tubac.

The energy streaming out of this magical necklace not only inspired me to buy it, but inspired me to see if I could learn more about the hand that created it. The owner of the store was, however, not interested in native mythology. He was far more intent on, unfortunately, on saving my soul (I wonder if saving souls is a little like  heavenly merit badges........do they keep count?) He suckered me into listening to a long story from the Bible (why do these people always memorize the page?) before I realized it was time to leave with my new Talisman. If he can wear a cross, by golly, I can wear Spiderwoman.

What a “religion”3.

I heard one thing in his ramble that was, if he only had the means to tolerate my notion of the Divine, important to me. He said that through faith, we can be healed. As we conceive, as we think, so it is. Thought Woman weaves, and my own place in the divine, in Gaia, of Spiderwoman, of the spirit that animates the dream and the art - is a stream, the “river beneath the river of the world” 1 My journey is about faith as well, faith in the journey itself.

Weaver, Weaver , weave a thread
Whole and strong into your Web
We are dark and we are light,
We are born of earth and light

Chant from the Spiral Dance

I remember I was crying when I drove through Sedona today, driving with a bone deep loneliness. Remembering the magical mind we had in the 80’s when I and artist friends came there on our visionary excursions, remembering the 80’s, remembering friends that are gone, so damn many, remembering what Sedona used to be like before it became so commercial and gentrified and formulated, before they built a tennis resort on a “vortex“, a sacred place of ancient earth energy, Boynton Canyon, remembering when there were medicine wheels on the path into the canyon, instead of so many "keep out" signs. Wondering, as always, how we can have a culture with such technology, and yet such blind ignorance about the obvious.

The Goddess communicates in mysterious ways, and I left the Indian Arts Gallery to find a motel in Winslow, Arizona, with my talismen, my Blessing, around my neck, clanking down a dusty street with a glorious sunset before me.

Another thread……….

The proprietor of the Lodge Inn (whose door, I noticed, says proudly “For the REST of your life”) is a young, very blond woman with a very brown old dog keeping her company, and a cheery, California demeanor. When I showed her my new necklace, telling her how excited I was about this work, whatever story I can glean about the artist, and my own journey to create “THREADS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN “ she got right to work on my behalf.

I think Grandmother Spider woman is with her as well.

I drove down the street to the first liquor store I could find, and purchased a Budweiser. While getting into my car, another car pulled up, and a friendly woman about my age got out. I noticed she had a lovely silver Indian style necklace on, and a tiered skirt. I remember thinking, “if she can dress like that, so can I. The gym pants are getting old.”

She asked me if I knew where the La Posada motel was, she said she was supposed to meet someone there, and walked into the store with its grumpy proprietor to ask directions. I had a good feeling, that brief moment, of meeting a kindred spirit in an unlikely place. I might have asked her and her companion if they would like to share the Budweiser, if I wasn't so shy these days. Do we still live in a dimension where there is “world enough and time” for such spontaneity?

I was barely moved into my room when the phone rang. "I have some news!" the blond proprietor said. "You must go visit the gallery in a famous hotel here. It's called "La Posada", and it was designed by a famous woman architect whose name was Mary Colter. There's an art gallery there now, and the woman who runs it has some work by the artist who made your necklace, Keith Brown."

"And” she added, “you have to see the hotel! This woman was way before her time."

And so she was. I wonder what "La Posada" means? I'll find out tomorrow.

Public Architecture and Design - Creating Community

An amazing architect, Mary Colter, died in 1958 at age of 88. A contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright……………Colter used Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, and Mexican motifs. There's La Posada Hotel in Winslow, where rooms are named for old time movie stars, including the Clark Gable Sleeping Quarters and the Carole Lombard Room. .....

At the start of the 20thcentury, the Santa Fe Railroad began bringing tourists out West to enjoy the glories of the Grand Canyon. Once there, tourists needed places to stay, to eat, to rest, and shop. Mary Colter was a female architect at a time when women were unknown to the profession, and she had the audacity to try and build structures along the rim of one of nature's greatest spectacles. Using local stones, and Native American themes and builders, Colter created buildings that stand today as the first examples of what would become known as "National Park Service Rustic." In the 1920s, as a rail head and a crossroad, Winslow was a major Arizona town. The Santa Fe Railroad and the Fred Harvey Company (which operated restaurants and hotels for the railroad) gave architect Mary Colter the assignment to build a hotel for tourists who came West to see the Grand Canyon and visit neighboring Indian reservations. La Posada, which opened in 1930, was Colter's masterpiece. 2











La Posada, Winslow, Arizona

Another Thread……….

I’m off to the Aldon Dow Creativity Center, Michigan’s former architect laureate. A student and colleague of Frank Lloyd Wright as well. I like it a lot that all of these people were, in essence, creators of sacred places.

1 Clarissa Pinkola Estes, WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES

2 I can’t help noting that the word Religion, as we’re on the subject of links in the great Web, comes from the Greek, Religios, and means “linking back”. The same root word, in fact, from which “link” is derived.

3 From the NPR website: http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/architecture/0011.colter.html

Threads of the Spider Woman - a personal and artistic journey

"It is through the poetry of myth, mask and metaphor Spiderwoman comes alive. The rock surface of an ancient petroglyph site is merely a veil between the observer and the other transcendental realms; it becomes a portal through which to enter the world of Spider Woman. As others have written before me:

"She is with me now as I tell you these stories."

Carol Patterson-Rudolph, Cultural Anthropologist

 

It's my privilege to have been awarded a fellowship at the Alden Dow Creativity Center, at Northwood University in Midland, Michigan, to develop "Threads of the Spiderwoman" - a Cross-Disciplinary Community Arts Project exploring the legacy of the Spiderwoman, past, present and future. I'm also very grateful to the Puffin Foundation for the opportunity they have given me to further production of this as yet unmanifest work......so I'm doubly delighted at the opportunity to weave this tapestry of masks, storytelling, and community into a whole. I'll also be attending their annual Creativity Conference , held at Northwood University July 12th through 15th. Alden Dow was one of the first architects to receive a fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, and was Michigan's architect laureate.

Although I find it an intimidating prospect, I intend this journal, on Spiderwoman's great global Web otherwise known as the Internet - to be a record of my artistic and spiritual pilgrimage as I travel down the threads She may cast my way as I pursue my quest. And, since the Telling is never really alone, I'm most glad and privileged to include the insights, stories, art and observations of any others who may care to join in this weaving. Ah ho. And......so may it be.

Grandmother Spiderwoman is also called "Thought Woman" by the Pueblo people of the Southwest. Spiderwoman is a Creatrix deity among the Navajo, the Lakota, the Zuni, Hopi, and Pueblo peoples......and it's said that She is so small, she can sit on one's shoulder and never be seen. And yet, and yet, She inspires us with her wisdom, helps us to truly see the Connections, by whispering in our ears. And yet, and yet.........She is, after all, everywhere. So how do I find my way back, or forward as the case may be, to that deep experience of "connection"? How can I weave not only a community arts project, but my own understanding, my own experience of harmony?

The Web I want to speak of  is ancient, is ecology, is the evolving global society.  It's a very old, primal paradigm that is also contemporary, weaving far into the future.   Spider Woman speaks to me, and to others I have met, even though not all of us are of Native American heritage or blood.  In Jungian terms, She holds the great weaver's archetype of Unity of all life and form, a myth that I believe is profound and extends beyond any particular culture.  And yet, truly I thank the Pueblo and Navajo (Dine) and other Native Peoples of this American continent for teaching me of Her.

 Her threads spiral out from a perfect center, extending into all planetary endeavors, a symetry of ultimate interdependency. I cannot help but feel the Internet, the strand upon which we meet at this moment, is yet another of Her latest appearances.....and I find that a hopeful thought.  

Spiderwoman's “Web” is what quantum physicists call “Entanglement Theory” - increasing evidence that everything , from stars to subatomic particles, is ultimately interdependent, timeless, one. Perhaps scientists are now telling what Native American storytellers long ago told - what we think and what we do affects everyone and everything. We are all, as Lakota traditions speak, Relations.

Perhaps one way to begin is to share an excerpt from "Spiderwoman Speaks",  performed at "Restoring the Balance", a community ritual in Tucson, Arizona in 2004. We concluded our ritual theatre event with Spiderwoman extending a Web for all participants present to tie or hold, thus connecting with each other by literally "weaving" the audience into a web.

Walk into the desert and sit beneath a cholla.

Be silent. Notice the shapes of things,

The shapes of bald mountains, a hawk against the sky.

The shape of shadows, the shape of the sky,

the shape of your own shadows.

There are stories, here,

stories woven into the land,

in the roots of things.
Roots, and stories,

running underground,

running through the dark.
Stories that wrap around old bones,

and pottery shards,

stories of those who are gone,

and those who are yet to come.

And cracks in the land like a spider web,

full of light.

Once, you could see the Web

just as plain as day.

Song lines, ley lines, threads, connections,

the pattern.  Each shining thread connected

to each shining, light woven strand.

You don't need to climb a mountain

to get the big picture. All of its snaking rivers
and twining roots are inside of you.

All those threads........

that come right out of your hands

and right out of your hearts.

All those threads that just go on forever

down into the Earth, and into each other,

and into all your stories,

and into everyone you'll ever know,

and into all those who came before you,
and all those who will come after you.