Rota Fortunae: Extant/Extinction

Rota Fortunae: Extant/Extinction, 2019,  hand-stitched cotton thread on linen, 9"x6" 

This is my last finished piece of 2019. The idea for it came to me in 2018 when I was researching the tarot for my piece 'The Queen of Wands Contemplates Saturn's Return' and I discovered The Wheel of Fortune (La Rove De Fortune) card from the Tarot De Marseilles deck, circa 16th century. On it are three fantastical and intriguing creatures that can represent luck or destiny, as well as the ever changing cycles we go through in life. The card has been modeled ever since the tarot's inception in the 15th century after the medieval concept of Rota Fortunae, the wheel of the goddess Fortuna. 

The theme of my version is the sixth extinction, and I stitched three different animal species and positioned them on the wheel according to their conservation status. On top is the Golden crowned kinglet, a bird that is thriving in population and also has a 'crown', reflecting the animal on the top of the Marseilles card. Going down on the left side is a critically endangered Red wolf, which is nearly extinct with fewer than 50 living in the wild. Heading back up on the right side of the wheel is an Island night lizard, which has made a dramatic comeback from its earlier endangered status. 

I made the spokes on the wheel into thermometers that surround a central earth to indicate the warming planet. The top of the piece has the words 'extant/ extinction' and I incorporated the card's number- Roman numeral X- into the word 'extinction'. I stitched these words in a similar color to the background so that you have to look carefully to see them. Many versions of the Wheel Of Fortune have a winged figure in each corner, and I placed wing-like shapes in this piece as part of the overall background design.

Fracking Paradise

'Fracking Paradise: Original Lies And The Temptation To Plunder', 2019, hand-stitched cotton thread on linen, 12'' x 16''

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction." -Rachel Carson 

My work, and this piece in particular, is very much informed by woven textiles, and I'm describing it as a needlework tapestry. While most of the figures and objects are rendered more or less naturalistically, I stitched the background with repeating stylized floral designs, and I filled in the land and sky with stitches that try to mimic weaving.

'Fracking Paradise: Original Lies And The Temptation To Plunder' is influenced by my maternal grandmother who understood the deep misogyny of the Adam and Eve myth and who read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring the year it was published. It's the culmination of my Fracking Weld County series, with visual ideas converging as a sort of contemplation on how we've gotten ourselves to the brink of creating an unlivable planet. The myth of Genesis is one of the stories that illustrates how we've become disconnected from both the natural world and our inner nature. The idea of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil points to duality and describes our separation from wholeness and the emergence of egoic identity stories that divide the world into parts to be conquered. The massive irony is that this narrative arose from the left-brained linear 'knowledge' of the patriarchal religious structure. It describes humanity's separation from the natural world by scapegoating the feminine, demonizing nature, and designating human sexuality ('man born of woman') as original sin. Without the dualistic view of the world, the tree and apples represent the abundance, generosity, and intelligence of nature. 

The central figures are taken from a 14th c Italian fresco by Bartoli di Fredi called 'The Creation of Eve'. I discovered the image in the book 'The Androgyne, Reconciliation of Male and Female' by Elemire Zola. Contrary to the title of the book, the idea that Eve is created from Adam's rib disempowers the feminine and reflects women's second class status as being merely adjunct human beings. I remember my grandmother asking, "if Eve came from Adam's rib, why aren't men missing one of their own ribs?".

Some of the images make compelling pairings of visual comparison and symbolic contrast. The first pairing of note is of the prehistoric goddess statue on the lower left (taken from the cover of The Chalice and the Blade, another book that my grandmother admired) and the oil rig carrying an exit sign on the far upper right. Another important pairing is of the serpent- which, rather than being the agent of deception from the Bible myth, here represents the universal Kundalini energy that is present in everything, connecting earth and cosmos- and the fracking pump, which represents the unsustainable and destructive extraction of fossil fuels, a form of energy that is inextricably linked to our current climate crisis. 

Other images include three critically endangered species: the Actinote zikani moth from the Amazon rain forest, a Brown mouse lemur, and a Pitcher plant. The lemur hangs on a fig tree near the sleeping (unconscious) Adam. Its leaves surround his head, foreshadowing the expulsion from paradise and the attendant shame that needs to be covered up. A plastic bottle lies on the ground, a surveillance camera points at Eve, and a small fighter jet hovers above the fracking equipment, close to a waxing crescent moon. The border is of a repeating ankh, bomb, and thermometer. 

Here are the words of Sandra Steingraber - biologist, poet, and environmental activist:

We are all musicians in a great human orchestra, and it is now time to play the Save The World Symphony. You are not required to play a solo, but you are required to know what instrument you hold and to play it as well as you can. You are required to find your place in the score. What we love we must protect. That's what love means. From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act. 

Fracking Weld County part 2

Fracking Farm, hand-stitched cotton thread on linen,  4"x6",  2019

Fracking Fields, hand-stitched cotton thread on linen,  5"x5",  2019

Fracking Elementary School, hand-stitched cotton thread on linen,  4.5"x6",  2019

"If fracking treated all people equally, that is, if every person in Colorado were threatened with anywhere from 10 to 50 fracked wells in their neighborhood, the oil and gas industry would be long gone." -Philip Doe 

Here's a sampling from the compendium of scientific, medical, and media findings demonstrating risks and harms of fracking:

• Over 90 percent of all original research studies published from 2016-2018 on the health impacts of fracking found a positive association with harm or potential harm. 
• People living within setback distances are potentially vulnerable to thermal injury during a well blowout, and they are also susceptible to exposures of benzene and hydrogen sulfide at levels above those known to cause health risks.
• In 29 out of 76 samples, toxin concentrations far exceeded federal health and safety standards, sometimes by several orders of magnitude. 
• Fracking fluid was found to contain arsenic, benzene, cadmium, formaldehyde, lead, and mercury. 
• Pollution near drilling and fracking operations is high enough in some Colorado communities to raise cancer risks, according to a 2018 study. 
• Data from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission showed that fracking-related chemical spills in Colorado exceed an average rate of one spill per day. Of the 495 chemical spills that occurred in that state over a one-year period of time, nearly a quarter impacted ground or surface water. 
• Water withdrawals for fracking can deplete water levels by 51% in nearby streams. Streams near drilling and fracking activity had significantly higher numbers of methane-metabolizing and methane-producing microorganisms. 
• Wastewater samples collected from 329 fracked oil wells found that virtually all—98 percent—contained benzene at levels that exceeded standards for permissible concentrations in drinking water.   

http://btc-usa.net/compendium-of-scientific-medical-and-media-findings-demonstrating-risks-and-harms-of-fracking/

Fracking Weld County part 1

Fracking Neighborhood, hand-stitched cotton thread on linen,  5"x5",  2019

Fracking Playground, hand-stitched cotton thread on linen,  5"x 7.5",  2019

Fracking Highschool, hand-stitched cotton thread on linen,  5"x 7.25",  2019

“If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money.”     – Professor Guy McPherson, School of Natural Resources, University of Arizona

These pieces are the first three in a series of six. This work is inspired by contemporary Afghan war rugs, with their vivid pictorial scenes and border decorations interspersed with images of tanks, fighter jets, Kalashnikov rifles, military helicopters, and other depictions of war. I created these small stitchwork pieces by referencing photographs of actual fracking sites in Weld County, Colorado, portraying the fracking rigs, tanks, and other drilling paraphernalia within the landscape. Utilizing similar visual motifs and styles of the war rugs, they include small repeating images- mainly around the borders- that I associate with the fracking industry: dollar signs, water drops, flames, and thermometers. I played around with different kinds of stitching, and each one has a slightly different style.

I'm calling the series Fracking Weld County, which refers to the county in Colorado where I grew up. The vast majority of fracking in the state is concentrated in this area, called the Niobrara shale formation. It currently has more than 25,000 active wells in this area alone, with many more permits pending. Many of the drilling sites are within neighborhoods and are very close to schools and playgrounds, and every time I go to my hometown of Greeley to visit my dad I'm astonished to see what the extraction industry is doing to this area and the ugliness that it brings. Using new technologies applied to horizontal fracking, the raw greed of the gas and oil industry, with the full complicity of the local government, has overlooked the health and safety of its citizens and of the earth itself in favor of profit. Fracking is extremely toxic, contaminating both the air and water. It also directly contributes to climate change by releasing methane. I think that true wealth is a healthy environment and an authentic connection to the beauty and intelligence of nature.

Miniature Fracking Blanket

Miniature Fracking Blanket, 2019 hand-stitched cotton thread on linen, 6" x 6"

"We are letting the extractive energy industries turn the world inside out." - Josh Fox

Although Miniature Fracking Blanket is a precursor to my work-in-progress series about fracking in Weld County, Colorado, it is mainly a stand-alone piece directly inspired by a woven Navajo blanket that was in my mother's family and that was recently sold (shown below). The story about who in the family purchased it - her father or grandfather - and in what year, got lost when she died. Her notes describe it as a Chief Blanket (third phase) 64”x 55”.

I thought about how the blanket ended up in my family. In doing some research I discovered a book titled Swept Under the Rug: a Hidden History of Navajo Weaving, by Kathy M’Closkey which explains the history of Navaho textiles in the context of colonization and economic exploitation. It includes an analysis of trader archives revealing that nearly all Navajo textiles were wholesaled by weight until the 1960s. M'Closkey explains how the Navaho artist’s weaving is "marginalized when the work is treated as a collectible craft and culture is split from commodity."

Miniature Fracking Blanket is a small piece, 6” x 6”, stitched in the mosaic style on a hoop. I wanted to create something in homage to the weaving’s beauty as textile art while at the same time acknowledging its context in the dominant culture. I replaced the central image in the blanket with a fracking/drilling rig to reference what is 'sacred' in a capitalist system that exploits the earth's resources for money. I chose this image in particular because the area that my mother's family is from, and where I grew up, is currently being subjected to extreme gas and oil extraction. 

I found this paragraph on a webpage of the Art Institute Chicago:

The Navajo believe that the deity Spider woman taught women how to weave and continues to work through today's artists by directing the growth and beauty of each textile they make. Finished blankets are thought to have life forces of their own, radiating a sense of vitality and harmony essential to the Navajo philosophy of hozho in which every individual strives to live in balance with the world.

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/157115/chief-blanket-third-phase

The Queen Of Wands Contemplates Saturn's Return

The Queen Of Wands Contemplates Saturn's Return, 2019,
 hand-stitched cotton thread on machine-stitched
dish towel remnant, 15.5" x 12.5"

This piece is another of my 'dish towel tapestries', using the mosaic style combined with outline stitching. The idea for it had been brewing in my imagination for a while, but I couldn’t start it until the work for my solo show was finished. During the time I was working on the show I had a three card tarot reading which included the Queen of Wands. I don’t know much about tarot interpretations but I was immediately intrigued by the images on the card and I decided to create my own personalized version of it. The overall composition of The Queen Of Wands Contemplates Saturn's Return is influenced by classical paintings and mosaics, especially the central figure of the queen. I included the traditional symbols of the card: sunflower, black cat, wand, lions - and I added my own: pug, flicker, Saturn.

In the reading, I was told that the Queen Of Wands embodies creativity and living an unconventional life. Here she represents 'the self' - myself - and aspects of the higher self. Her crown is consciousness, its yellow reflected in the yellow of the large sunflower to her left which represents the soul. The stone pug, out of which the sunflower rises, replaces a stone lion in the original version and symbolizes my past and its seemingly concrete life story. The black cat is an obvious archetype of the shadow, or subconscious, and was the first thing that struck me about the card.  Both the wand, a branch with green leaves, and the bird perched on it, symbolize the earth and being grounded and inherently connected to it. I added the flicker in particular because I've often found symbolic meaning in my encounters with them. The planet Saturn represents our human relationship to the cosmos and, personally, its second astrological return. I stitched the two lions as part of the background, almost like clouds, to portray them as ethereal thought forms and emotions. They surround the queen as she takes a break from holding up her wand in one hand, and sunflower in the other, to reflect on her life in a moment of time.