Remembering "Rites of Passage" Gallery

The Morrigan prepares for Battle!

Found these great old photos of myself invoking Fire at the Gallery I had in Berkeley, California. Being a double Leo, I've always had a thing for fire.  And a lot of great photos of other people.   What a great group of people I knew there.....thanks to all for the memories!  They say "if you build it they will come" and it was so very true - create the space for magic to happen, and it will.  Make the Circle sacred, and all the more so.  ***

Evelie Posche

 

Flynt Garner

The God and the Goddess for Beltane

 

The famous Snake Dance

 

Arjuna Blessing the Space with Tuva singing

 

Serene Zloof dancing with Kali and with Fire

 

Blessing of the Priestesses

Ann Waters as Sophia holding the Mirror of Self

***I've often thought of opening a gallery again, here in Tucson, especially since Tucson's "art district" is diminishing to just about nothing, along with most American cities, thanks to gentrification, "real estate" investment, and a relatively hostile society that tends to think of the arts as unimportant, if not suspect, and if they should be around at all they should color coordinate with the sofa, or sound good on a Hallmark card.  Alas, I can't afford to do it any longer.

I have many times  ranted about the importance of low rent districts, and cultural creatives.  There would not have been Modernism and Post-Modernism if there hadn't been cheap warehouse in Soho.  There would not have been the Visionary Arts Movement, the Summer of Love, and the Beat Poets movement if there hadn't been cheap rent in Haight Ashbury.  There would not have been a genre of poetry, art, and music that has profoundly impacted American culture  if there hadn't been cheap rent and coffee houses in the Village.  There probably would not have been Impressionism if their hadn't been The Left Banke.  These were places where creative people could come, create and share ideas, show their work, perform, speak, and they could still eat.  Without cheap rent...........would there have been a Rothko, or a Seurat, or Bob Dylan, or Alan Ginsburg, or Pete Seeger, or..................?


The fact is, all of this is changing in our urban centers.  The arts are being de-centralized, and even more trivialized (I like to call it "Cultural Soul Loss").............because there are so few spaces where people can live, work, or show.  It's no secret that innovative arts (innovators in general) usually don't "sell".  And most non-commercial  galleries generally don't make money................well, I see I'm ranting again.  I wrote an article about this when the Muse Community Arts Center (Requiem for the Muse)     was destroyed 10 years ago, to become condos.

Old Photos

 Griffith Park, 1928

Girl and Horse, 1928

by Margaret Atwood

You are younger than I am, you are
Someone I never knew,
you stand under a tree,
your face half-shadowed,
Holding the horse by its bridle.

Why do you smile? Can’t you
See the apple blossoms falling around
You, snow, sun, snow,
listen, the tree dries
and is being burnt, the wind

Is bending your body,
your face ripples like water
Where did you go?

But no, you stand there
exactly the same,
you can’t hear me,

forty years ago you were caught by light
And fixed in that secret place
where we live, where we believe
nothing can change, grow older.

(On the other side
of the picture, the instant
is over, the shadow
of the tree has moved.

You wave,

then turn and ride
out of sight through the vanished
orchard, still smiling
as though you do not notice)

old photos,

escaping a tin box:

stories with wings

 butterflies, or white moths

fluttering at the glass

lighter than air, these memories

quietly,
through 

an open window

(2011)

Everyday Poetry: Ancestors

Florence's Hands

I am not at Brushwood this year, celebrating the ritual cycles of Sirius Rising as I have in previous years, but they are on my mind. I've been having fun looking at old photographs I've inherited over the years.

Back in, I believe, 2003 Frank Barney and I dowsed the site that became the "Ancestor Mound" at Brushwood Folklore Center in Western New York.  Since then ashes and memorials have been left and held there, I am proud to say, and it is my hope that when my time comes my ashes also will be there, to return to the land and memory.

Here are are a few of my own contributions to the "Ancestor Mound" I might make, offering gratitude to

those who made my life possible 

through the threads of their own lives. One of these days, I'm going to put their stories down.......or at least, my imaginings and intuitions of their stories.

Here is my maternal Grandmother Helen, who died before I was born. How do you look at an old photo of a young life (in the height of fashion for her day) full of the dreams and fears of being so young.....and realize as you look, that life is already over, the story spun and re spun, and somehow, I am a part of the continuum, I carry that story forward whether I realize, respect, or know it at all.....and in some way that I will never understand?

All I really know about Helen is that she was a twin, she grew up in Los Angeles, and had she been born in another situation or another time, would probably have been an artist. In all her photos, Helen always looks sad. I think, like the tight, uncomfortable garments she had to wear, she may have felt terribly constrained by her life, never free to fully express herself, never free to dance. Perhaps, in some way, I've lived what she could not.

How can we not feel tenderness, looking at old photos, wondering at these stories? Below is a photo of maternal great grandmother Flora, holding my own mother as an infant.  And now that woman is 94 years old.