New Works.......Elemental Touch, The River, and Shaman Masks

Looks like it was a good idea to take my own advice (in the previous Interview post) , having been avoiding the studio for months and feeling the Holiday Blues as the days are short and dark.  I went into the studio, forced myself to work, and low and behold, FLOW has kicked back in and I am full of ideas once more.  

I started casting hands back in 2007 when I had an Alden B. Dow Fellowship at Northwood University in Michigan, and with ceramic artist Kathy Space we created a community arts project based on  the legend of the Spider Woman that I called "Spider Woman's Hands" which was shown at the Midland Arts Center.  Each participant made an Icon that was composed of a cast of their hand or hands, something significant to them as a personal symbol, and the entire exhibit of "Icons" was united by a "thread" that was held in each hand and extended to the next.  At last the Thread went right out the door, to represent our connection to all others and all life.   The Creative Spirit Center in Midland Michigan went on to repeat the Project, with Kathy Space and Space Studio. In 2009 I was Resident Artist at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C., and continued casting hands and pursuing "Spider Woman's Hands" with the community there with a sculpture called "Weavers".

                                 

I've been creating sculptures with casts of peoples hands ever since. Many of them seem to be rooted, another metaphor that repeats for me.   Here's an article I wrote back in 2009 about hands, and the "Hand and Eye" which fascinates me.  I guess  I would say that hands are as individual as faces, they age like the rings of a tree, and are full of the stories of what those hands have created and touched.  We touch the world, we "handle" the world, we create and caress and are active participants with World with our hands.  Hands go beyond the abstractions of the mind, abstractions that often remove us from the sensuous and the actual experience of being alive.   And hands can also represent the active and creative force in nature and in the cosmos - the "Hand of the Divine".                                

This is for a friend who is recently divorced, after a long and somewhat abusive marriage.  The butterflies represent the transformation she is now making in her life, the new life she is creating for herself.

Four Shaman Masks: 
 The Oracle (East), The Healer (West) The Maker (South)
 "Mask for the Crossing of Dimensions" (Center)

This  Series began with finding a drawing for the mask below, with the title, in a very old sketchbook, and feeling like, after some 20 years, it was time to make the mask.   Then the other masks followed, and I began to realize that they were related to the elements.  The last mask for North I have not made yet.  They need story, and I wish the right people would show up who can do just that, who will "activate" them. 

Surely, they must have been made for someone..................

"Mask for the Crossing of Dimensions" (2020)

Interview with Shoutout Arizona

 A recent short interview with SHOUT OUT ARIZONA - pleased they gave me the opportunity!

                                             https://shoutoutarizona.com/meet-lauren-raine-artist/

LOCAL STORIES

Meet Lauren Raine: Artist

November 30, 2020 

Why did you pursue a creative career?

I don’t think I had any real choice in the question of why I became an artist. Ever since I was a child I just made art, and I saw no reason to give it up when I became (in theory) an adult. A reporter asked Picasso, at 90, what he considered his greatest work. His response? “The next one!”

Being an artist was my “real job”, and I supported it in whatever ways I could. I could say quite a few things about what I think creativity is, but ultimately I suggest that some people have an innate passion for self-expression in the arts, and will never really find fulfillment unless they follow that path. Which often, but not always, means making sacrifices of time or income, as well as having to look “outside the social/cultural box” to find creative integrity. It’s nice if one is fortunate enough to make money along the way, but that cannot be the definition of success. 

The writer Ursula Leguin wrote that our world needs what she called “realists of a larger reality”. “the name of the beautiful reward”, she said, “is not profit. Its name is freedom.” I believe it’s vital for artists to remember that we are myth makers, “pollinators of the imagination”. Throughout history, artists of all kinds have possessed the imaginal tools to invent and re-invent the myths that were the cultural underpinnings for their time. That is the career, the profession.

From that perspective, one might ask: “what are the new stories arising that can help us to evolve into a wiser, sustainable world? What injustices need to be addressed, what visions call for expression?” And further, how can they be brought fully alive in ways that have vitality and impact? I am here suggesting that artists consider viewing themselves as engaged in a sacred profession.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?

Too many questions to answer at once! But I suppose they all weave together into a tapestry. I can’t say what part of my work I’m most proud of, because it all reflects my story, just different ways of saying it. From the perspective now of being in my 70’s, I see that it is the same essential vision, story. I am rather proud of that – to discover that there was always something there that I kept trying to speak of. 

Art is a conversation, after all – collectively, and personally. I seem to have jumped around a lot, from sculpture to masks and ritual theatre to painting to…………….whatever seems to be the best medium of expression at the time. Different “languages”. I guess I could say that my art-making is my spiritual practice, whether it is done with others (as in theatre and ritual) or alone in my studio.

Certainly one of my most rewarding projects was the 20 year “Masks of the Goddess Project” which I concluded in 2019 with a show and performances at Arise Gallery in San Francisco. It began in 1998 when I went to Bali to study temple mask traditions. I was fortunate to produce collaborative masks with Balinese mask makers while there. Inspired by their sacred mask traditions I created a Collection of 35 masks based upon female deities and mythologies from around the world, which I dedicated as “Temple Masks” devoted to the multi-cultural Goddess. As the masks were used by dancers, storytellers, ritualists, communities and individuals, I found myself in a grand conversation, and the masks themselves gained energy, story, and creativity from those who used them. They travelled around the U.S. and even to the U.K. for 20 years, including the Parliament of World Religions, and include an archive and book about the many performances and reflections of participants in the Project.

Currently I’m working on a series of mosaic/sculptures I call “Our Lady of the Shards”, which are loosely inspired by Catholic Icons. They celebrate and remember those that have been forgotten, buried, and broken, now surfacing again to a world that needs them. Titles include “The Memory Keeper”, “The Weaver”, and “Shrine for the Forgotten Midwives”.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?

Well, I would suggest Crave Coffee Shop, and Fronimo’s Greek Restaurant! My favorite places to hang out. And of course, the Botanical Garden, and a hike through Sabino Canyon.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Having worked collectively with others in community art projects, too many to name! Ok, just a few: the writer Ursula Leguin, the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, and the The Henry Luce Center for the Arts and Religion

Website: www.laurenraine.com
Other: Blog: www.threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com 

Project: www.masksofthegoddess.com 

Articles: https://independent.academia.edu/laurenraine

Our Lady of the Waters

The Monsoons have come at last, 3 blessed days of the Thunder Beings rushing in, the Katchinas dancing in the skies, and then the streets and the arroyos run with the blessing of water.  I remembered NUMINA - OUR CHANGING EARTH, the 2013 play by Ann Waters and her community in Willits, California, which I was privileged to create masks for.   Photos are courtesy Jerri Jo Idarius.

Lady of the Desert Spring

Our lady of the Arroyos, 

Come to us,

Come to us, 

O come to us.

Nuestra Señora de las Aguas  

Mother of the cottonwoods, 

the Palos Verdes

Snake and mallow

ocotillo and saguaro

night-blooming Cereus

night-roaming  coyote 

red tail hawk and la paloma

two-legged, four-legged, 

and those who fly

Hear our prayers 

O desert spring

Hear our prayers 

for those who suffer thirst, 

for the parched earth. 

Spread your mantle of green and turquoise, 

your bright artery of life, 

upon this empty riverbed,

upon this ancient aquifer, 

down the arroyos

of our dreams. 

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"

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)