Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Joanna Hearing Music - for Joanna Brouk

My friend the composer Joanna Brouk always said that she heard music before she wrote it down.  This painting is in honor of her.......I miss her very much.  She passed away in 2017.

Tuesday, January 12, 2021

"Our Lady of the Shards" - Mosaic Shrines (2018 - 2019)

                 

  The Series is  collectively called "Our Lady of the Shards" as they are meant to honor that which has been buried, lost or broken, and is now re-surfacing to the contemporary world to tell us the ancient stories that we need now.   Working in a pottery studio, I saw many beautiful broken pottery shards lying about, and I began to think of artists sometimes being "mythic archeologists", uncovering and resurrecting the lost and forgotten lives and wisdom of the past, piecing it together to find the shapes and reveal the mysteries.  Or it could be said that the Spirits of the past are rising from the broken shards, insistant on being heard and honored, because they are once again truly needed.

Shrine to the Ancient Midwives

"Our Lady of the Forgotten Midwives"  remembers the enduring love of Millenia of Ancestral Midwives, the women whose hands brought each generation into the world.   

The Memory Keeper II

"The Memory Keeper" was inspired by a song called "Water from Another Time", which speaks eloquently of the wisdom and gifts of the elderly, and of previous times, needed to nourish each new generation.    


Our Lady of the Desert Spring

Our Lady of the Desert Spring is a bas relief ceramic mosaic that is  a  personal Icon loosely inspired by traditional  Catholic Iconic imagery.  It is meant to be accompanied by a prayer or poem, in both English and Spanish, and is also designed to include a  mosaic "frame" or border as part of the presentation.  "Our Lady of the Desert Spring" also represents an invocation to the "Numina" or "spirit of place" of the desert. Water is the true life blood of the desert,  its most precious resource.  



Hecate




The Black Madonna

The Black Madonna reflects my personal sense that this widely archetypal image, a source of many pilgrimages to sacred places throughout Europe for thousands of years,  represents the Earth Mother, the dark rich soil that sustains us




The Bone Goddess




Old Masks




The Memory Keeper I



The Weaver



Shrine for the Forgotten Midwives



Our Lady of the Waters