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C. R. W. Nevinson, A Bursting Shell, 1915
from ‘Salutation’
“And see the confluence of our dreams
That clashed together in our night,
One river born of many streams
Roll in one blaze of blinding light.”
George William Russell, 1917
On our recent visit to London, Steve and I saw quite a bit of artwork. Sculpture at the Royal Academy, Turner and the Masters at the Tate Britain, the shortlisted nominees for this year’s Turner prize and an installation by Miroslaw Balka at the Tate Modern.
The Anish Kapoor sculpture in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of the Arts was terrific to photograph. An arrangement of 76 shiny spheres bubbles up to the level of the surrounding Palladian buildings.
Anish Kapoor – ‘Tall Tree and the Eye’
My favourite piece of art was in a show we stumbled across in Spitalfields. The Future Can Wait featured the work of over 30 artists in a derelict, industrial space on the top floor and roof top of Brick Lane’s Old Truman Brewery.
Not only was the setting fabulous, but I fell in love with a sculpture called Family Portrait by Marilene Oliver.
Family Portrait
The piece was made from a series of sculptures of the artist’s family made from MRI scans. The scans where printed onto acrylic and stacked in correct order give the illusion of a ghostly figure, which appears and disappears depending on your view point.
This is Oliver’s artist’s statement from her website:
“The virtual world created by the computer is one that provides no place for the physical body. As communications technology and the use of the Internet is becoming an integral part of our lives, the absence of the physical in the virtual space is destined to provoke changes in the physical body and in our relationship to it in the real world. My work centres around this relationship, seeking to explore and create ways of intimately representing the physical body.
My relationship with the body is nostalgic and romantic, based on an anxiety that the body is becoming redundant. New technologies, especially communications and medical imaging alienate us from the bodies that we have. They promote a decentralisation of the self – they allow us to project ourselves into different spaces and offer us new views of our bodies that belittle being contained in a physical body.”
Annie Kevans – Oils
Angela Bartram – Performance Writing
Self Portrait
Chocolate covered cat
Rooftop detail – as tweaked in Photoshop
View to the west
Steve and I are just back from London for a long weekend of visiting family, art and taking public transport. This poster caught my eye on the Jubilee line out to Waterloo Train Station. Tongue in cheek, I said that Tube workers should remind us to chill out and stop and smell the daisies when the going gets slow on the Underground. Well, this is exactly the intention of a little booklet produced by artist Jeremy Deller called ‘What is the city but the people?‘ Drivers and platform staff are encouraged to use quotes in their daily communication with customers. I like it. Who knows? Maybe the next time you’re stuck in a stationary carriage due to signalling problems, seething with despair, you’ll be comforted by some driver-philosopher quoting Goethe or Gandhi.
When I was seeding and juicing the pomegranates for our dinner party last weekend, I told Steve the story of Persephone and Demeter. There are many versions of this ancient myth, but here are the main elements . . . .
The earth mother, Demeter, had a beautiful daughter called Persephone who was playing out in the meadow one day. Persephone came upon one particularly lovely bloom, a narcissus, and reached out her fingers to cup its lovely face. Suddenly the ground began to shake and a giant zigzag ripped across the land. Up from deep within the earth charged Hades, the God of the Underworld. He stood tall and mighty in a black chariot driven by four horses the colour of ghosts.
Hades seized Persephone into his chariot, her veils and sandals flying. Down, down down into the earth he reined his horses. Persephone’s screams grew more and more faint as the rift in the earth healed over as though nothing had ever happened.
When Demeter discovered that her daughter was missing, she was distraught. She neglected her duties in her grief and all that grew began to die. She who had made everything grow in perpetuity, cursed all the fertile fields of the world, screaming in her grief, “Die! die! die!” Because of Demeter’s curse, no child could be born, no wheat could rise for bread, no flowers for feasts, no boughs for the dead. Everything lay withered and sucked at parched earth or dry breasts. She searched everywhere on earth for her daughter but when she could not find her she appealed to Helios, the God of the Sun, who could see everything. Helios told Demeter of Persephone’s abduction by Hades.
Demeter confronted her husband Zeus, the King of the Gods. Zeus saw the crops dying and knew that he needed to take action so that Demeter could return to her duties. He agreed to negotiate with Hades for the return of Persephone.
Meanwhile, in the underworld, with Persephone’s great capacity for love, she came to know Hades not just as her abductor and saw that the actions he had taken were motivated by love for her. She came to understand and love Hades and accepted from him a pomegranate, eating six of the seeds and thus binding her to Hades in marriage. Through this marriage she also took the title, and accepted the responsibilities, of Queen of the Underworld.
When Hades explained to Zeus that Persephone had become his wife, through the symbolic eating of the pomegranate seeds, Zeus ordered a compromise, declaring that Persephone should spend six months of each year in the Underworld with Hades and the remaining six months should be spent with her mother, Demeter, assisting each with their respective duties during the time she was with them. Her annual return to the earth in spring was marked by the flowering of the meadows and the sudden growth of the new grain. Her return to the underworld in winter, conversely, saw the dying down of plants and the halting of growth.
This is a multi-layered story.
It gives us an explanation for the seasons as Persephone’s return to her mother is reflected in the spring when Demeter tends to her responsibilities and things begin to grow again. The fertility of the land continues to grow into summer but when Persephone returns to Hades, Demeter again begins to mourn and neglects her duties so things begin to die in the autumn and winter months. In this way, Persephone is the goddess of life, death and rebirth.
The Greek goddess Persephone represents both the youthful, innocent, and joyous maiden aspect of a woman as well as the more womanly self who, innocence lost and family attachments loosened, can begin to consciously make decisions for herself. As Queen of the Underworld, Persephone assists those who are having difficulty transitioning from the land of the living to the land of the dead. She often gained their confidences and through their confessions and her powers of insight and empathy, she became the keeper of much secret knowledge.
The Eleusian Mysteries were an Athenian religious festival held in honor of Demeter. The mysteries existed from Mycenaean times 
(circa 1600-1200 BCE), thought to have been established in the 1500s BCE and held annually for two thousand years. The Roman emperor Theodosius closed the sanctuary in CE 392, and finally it was abandoned when Alaric, king of the Goths, invaded Greece in CE 396. This brought Christianity to the region, and all cult worship was forbidden. Our sources of information regarding the Eleusinian Mysteries include the ruins of the sanctuary there; numerous statues, bas reliefs, and pottery; and reports from ancient writers.
The true nature of the Mysteries remains shrouded in uncertainty because the participants did, with remarkable consistency, honour their pledge not to reveal what took place in the Telesterion, or inner sanctum of the Temple of Demeter. The successful candidate in the Eleusinian mysteries would have been purified, initiated, and ultimately had a change of consciousness in which a perception of the divine was achieved – the realisation that death is part of the cycle of life and is always followed by rebirth.
The Persephone myth can be helpful in explaining a modern woman’s psychological need to leave her mother and the topside world in order to deepen and mature as a human being, to get to know her hidden depths and the shadowy contents of her psyche. Several of the post Jungian authors I read in the early 1990’s when I was a graduate Counselling Psychology student – Maureen Murdock, Claudia Pinkola Estes, Linda Leonard Shierse, Kim Chernin offer women a road map to follow or at least an open door to walk through in order to discover a way into finding wholeness and meaning in a patriarchal society. At the time, I did what deep work and exploration I was capable of; but feel that I am now able to delve even deeper and feel ready to get back into the deep work of discovering who I am now, where I’ve come from and finding meaning in my life.
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Proserpine
Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
Unto this wall, – one instant and no more
Admitted at my distant palace-door
Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey
That chills me: and afar how far away,
The nights that shall become the days that were.
Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign:
And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
O, Whose sounds mine inner sense in fain to bring,
Continually together murmuring) —
‘Woe me for thee, unhappy Proserpine’.
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— D. G. Rossetti
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The oil painting and chalk drawing of Proserpine, or Persephone, were made by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, using Jane Morris as his model. You can find further information on each work of art by clicking on each image. While writing this post, I came across a couple of very in depth resources for the original Persephone myths - Theoi Greek Mythology and The Endicott Studio and Journal of Mythic Arts for an essay by Kathie Carlson based on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
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Seeds of knowledge
Being at the Festival of Quilts a few weeks ago gave me a great opportunity to see some fantastic fibre art and art quilts, share a big part of my life with Steve, spend time with a new friend and see some familiar faces. It also touched off a maelstrom of thoughts and a myriad of feelings. I’m not sure if the whole quilt show/competition/teaching/lecturing/writing a book thing is for me. When I see people I know who are publishing books and winning prizes, I feel envious and slightly frustrated. Not because I wish it were me, but because they’ve found a niche, reached a goal that makes them happy. If I went after those things it would be to try and find recognition of my artwork, the purpose and meaning of it and a sense of belonging outside, like how I used to search for home outside of myself or the way some people covet and acquire material things, but still feel empty inside.
However, the good thing about knowing what I don’t want to pursue is that I am left with a void of quiet, stillness, intimacy, soul, essence and knowing. Here is some of what I know-
- I’m able to make the work which makes me happy and is meaningful to me – the Little Gems I made, I had been imagining for a couple of years. I put how I feel about things and how I see the world into what I make. It’s deep and people who see my work can have a deep response. That satisfies me.
- I love to make things that people can wear or meditate on (or both!), with words hidden on the inside, private and intimate.
- I love to make commissioned work for people and use my communication skills to connect with and discover what a person would like to have expressed in a piece of my artwork.
- I love to show my work in places where there is space for contemplation, which invite a sacred and soul experience.
- With teaching, there are people who are far better teachers than I, who can explain the steps and lead people through creating a project. I love to work with people in a way that combines my counselling skills with spirituality and art-making. Not necessarily Art Therapy, but deep, healing work via creativity.
So I do know which way to go, but I’ll be making my own map. It is always scary to find my own way, I worry about getting lost! It’s wonderful to have found home inside finally and to be making a home together with Steve. He understands about what I want to do with my artwork and I have the feeling that he will do anything he can to encourage and support me. I’m also getting gleamings and glimmerings of recognition from real-time friends and from cyber-friends in the wider eCommunity which are invaluable.
In the process of setting up my new studio, I’ve sorted through a bunch of stuff. I’ve weeded out a lot, but have found and set aside some seeds of ideas that I’ve had in the past couple of years. In early 2007, I completed a foundation course called ‘Art in Mental Health’ taught by Karen Huckvale and Malcolm Learmonth of InsiderArt. I decided not to go on and become trained as an Art Therapist, but the course helped me to clarify what my art making means for me and to reflect upon my creative journey. Here is the paper I wrote at the end of my course. It was good to re-discover and re-read it. Artful Engagement reminds me of what it’s all about for me and helps me to chart my course.
Am I creating for approval or the edgy contrast of anti-fame
