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| Ocean Mask (2013) |
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| Mask of Chaos and Order (2012) |
I feel very honored that I'll be interviewed by Janie Rezner for her "Women's Voices" radio program on Monday, March 11 at 7 pm Pacific Time (8:00 my time). I'll be talking about masks, the new Numina collection, and the evolution of Ann Waters and Mana Youngbear's community performance "The Awakening".
You can listen in at 90.7 Philo, 91.5 Willits and Ukiah,
and 88.1 Fort Bragg. The interview can also be heard live at www.kzyx.org 7 pm Pacific Time. As with all of Janie's programs, the show will also be archived at www.radio4all.net under Janie Rezner, MA Programmer KZYX.
I find that I am often reticent to "promote" myself, so I often don't announce things
I'm doing on behalf of my work, such as interviews, articles published,
etc. I'm very proud of these masks, and absolutely delighted that they
are being animated and filled with story by these talented and dedicated people. So in thinking about this upcoming interview, I looked up another interview I did a few years back with Joel Le Blanc from New Zealand, Editor of
Wildberries Journal . Reading the interview again, I felt like sharing here (I've edited it a bit for brevity).
Now to not be too nervous on Monday!
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| The Medicine Basket Mask |
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Interview May 3, 2011, with Joel Le Blanc, WILD BERRIES JOURNAL OF MYTHIC ARTS:
Joel:
How has your art evolved over the span of your career?
You
know, I don't know how to answer that. Our art is about our lives, and
if we're fortunate enough to do great art, then we've touched something
universal, and our art is also, somehow, about many lives as well. Art
process is the residue of life, its record, exploration, archives,
memory, and sometimes, its future memory as well. So, looking at my
work, I see two things: I see something that has always been there,
something intrinsic to who I am., and 2., I see my maturation as a
human being, the art reflecting that growth.
How has
mythology and folklore influenced my art?
At this point, it seems to be pretty much everything! Whether working
with masks for individual customers, or pursuing "The Masks of the
Goddess" project, or my current interest in the native American
mythology of the Spider Woman,
mythic mind seems to be my
chief source of inspiration.
Mythology, and the archetypes that undermine and "over-view" any given
culture, are deep, rich, and alive, once one allows oneself to
'activate" them within your imagination. When you align yourself with
myth, you align yourself with the mythic continuum, or "symbolic
history", of the culture you live in. Since we are now becoming a world culture, this continuum has expanded to include all of human culture.
Joel:
Do you feel mythology and folklore is still relevant to people living in today's modern society?
The
great mythologist, Joseph Campbell, has been my personal muse and
mentor. I met the artist Alex Grey ("The Sacred Mirrors") in NYC years
ago. We were talking about the series of talks Campbell did with Bill
Moyers (The Power of Myth) in the '80's, and Alex commented that
Campbell was the "Avatar of artists". Myth and art are intimately
connected. I feel that myth is more important to todays evolving world
than it has ever been.
Mythology is one of the ways that human beings organize information - it
is intrinsic to consciousness, and to how human beings have transmitted
information from generation to generation. We think and comprehend and
communicate through story.
The poet, Muriel Rukeyser,
famously wrote that “the world is made of stories, not atoms”. Stories
are at the center of our human nature, and our creative intelligence
evolved from the tribal stories we told in our attempt to understand the
mystery of the world. Story, myth, is our essence.
Religions are also based on mythology, and for those who study the
evolution of mythology, one begins to see the evolution of culture
within the religious myths. They are threads that make the weave, and
weave into present time from very ancient roots.
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| "Scapegoat Mask" for TRAGOS by Antero Alli |
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So the question we have to ask is "how are
the old myths serving us?" Are they still useful, or not? And if not,
what kinds of new mythologies do we need? That's where artists come in.
I think, for example, of the recent film "Avatar" by James
Cameron........ how gorgeous a work of art and myth making, and how
entirely appropriate for our time.
Joel:
You often
refer to the "Spider Woman" of North American mythology, and you have
even titled one of your blogs after her. Who exactly is the Spider Woman
and how has she influenced your work?
The Spider
Woman creatrix myth is ubiquitous throughout the Americas, and remains a
profound metaphor to re-discover for our time. Grandmother Spider
Woman is revered by the Navajo, for example, as a great teacher, and to
this day midwives rub a bit of spider web into the palms of infant
girls, so they will "become good weavers." Pueblo peoples called
Spider Woman “Thought Woman” (Tse Che Nako), the goddess who spun the
world into being with what she imagined. I find the Spider Woman myth,
or archetype, utterly relevant to contemporary ecology, human community,
and contemporary science, including quantum physics, which now suggests
that we live in a “thought universe” wherein all things are
interconnected, entangled, and responsive.
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| Tse Che Nako Weaving the World into Being |
To the Hopi, as well as the Navajo,
weaving is a spiritual practice, an act that uncovers a pattern
already there. A good weaver aligns herself with Spider Woman, and
seeks to work with the deep patterns.
I suppose it would be hard, at this point, to say how Spider Woman has
influenced my work.........my 2007 community project, "Spider Woman's
Hands" sought to imply that our own hands are also the hands of Spider
Woman, weaving the world into being together with the "stories we tell
and dream".
Joel:
As a multi-media artist, do you have a current favorite form of artistic expression?
No,
not really...........I think we find different ways of expression for
the same idea. Because I've trained as a visual artist, that is what
I'm most comfortable with, how I think, in images.
Joel:
What place does blogging and the world wide web have in your career and art?
Well,
the Pueblo people of the Southwest believed that it was Spider Woman
who led the people, at the disastrous flood that signalled the end of
the 3rd World, up into the new world (the 4th age). It is now,
according to the Hopi (and Mayan) calendars, the end of the 4th World.
There are a few prophecies that, as in the past, Spider Woman will
return, perhaps, to lead us once again into a new world and a new age.
I kind of like to think of the the Internet as Her latest appearance.
Joel:
What are some of your upcoming and future projects?
My question now is: "How do we speak with the Earth?". I hope my journey
(to Glastonbury) reveals some answers.
Joel:
Now for an obvious question: do you have any advice to offer for budding artists and writers out there?
Nothing
"practical" in a world that values money to the loss of soul. Art
making, in whatever form, can be viewed as a spiritual practice that
can reveal you to yourself, and can be a form of prayer or invocation.
And artists are the myth makers and transmitters of cultural story......a very important task!
I think it's important that artists, young or old, value the
significance, personally and collectively, of our amazing worldwide
artistic legacy, and the evolution and contribution each artist makes to
that "Grand Conversation".
"The Awakening" is a dance theater event
in our newly revived Little Lake Grange Hall. We will experience the
story of our times and our changing Earth using the 'Masks of the
Numina', dance, poetry and music.
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