Mistress of Animals

 

Potnia Theron of Pandemics, 2021, hand-stitched cotton thread on dish towel remnant, 7.5" x 5" 

 

“We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it."

- Albert Schweitzer 

This piece contemporizes the myth of Potnia Theron (Mistress of Animals) in the context of not only the possible zoonotic connection to the Covid-19 pandemic, but to our treatment and exploitation of animals in general. This motif is widespread in ancient art from the Mediterranean world and the ancient Near East showing a central human, or human-like, female figure who grasps two animals, one to each side. It's loosely based on an image of a Greek vase painting of a winged Artemis Potnia Theron. I exchanged the traditional Panther and Stag with a Pangolin and Mink, (stitched in red for blood), with a bat incorporated into the dress.

The Sacrifice Of Gaza Tapestry

The Sacrifice Of Gaza Tapestry, 2020, hand-stitched cotton thread on dishtowel, 15.5'' x 25''

                                             

The Sacrifice Of Gaza Tapestry is stitched in its entirety in my mosaic style, and each medium-sized square shape has an average of twelve stitches. My three-dimensional mosaic piece The Sacrifice of Gaza (2009), is the direct progenitor of this tapestry. With an obvious reference to War Rugs, the background portrays fighter jets, bombs, surveillance cameras, guns, bullets, and flash grenades. The 'Sacrifice' of the title refers to a world that has turned its back on Gaza, and specifically to Western complicity. In that way, the bombs and the other machines of war represent me, dropped in my name while the mainstream media, by its omission, tells me it doesn’t matter. The world’s power system remains silent and complicit while Israel bombs Gaza anytime it feels like it, including in the summer of 2020, with constant bombardment during a world pandemic. I think of 2014 when the explosive power that Israel fired on Gaza by land, sea, and air far surpassed one of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan in August 1945. Over 550 children were killed during that summer of massacre. 

And there's the Great March of Return, which began on March 30, 2018. The demands were simple: An end to the now 12-year siege on Gaza, and the ability for refugees, which make up more than 70% of Gaza’s population, to be allowed to return to their homes. Over the course of one year, scores of Gazans, mostly young men, were shot and killed, or severely injured, by Israeli snipers stationed along Gaza’s eastern border with Israel. On just one day, May 14, 2018, more than 1,300 protesters were shot by the Israeli army. Sixty people were killed. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has placed the death toll as of March 29, 2019 at 266, including 50 children, three medics, and two journalists. Doctors Without Borders called it “unacceptable and inhuman” violence by the Israeli army against Palestinian protesters. This is what United Nations Special Rapporteur Michael Link wrote about Gaza: “There is no comparable situation in the world...where a substantial population has endured such a permanent lockdown, largely unable to travel or trade, and controlled by an occupying power in breach of its solemn international human rights and humanitarian obligations.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/04/sacrificing-gaza-the-great-march-of-zionist-hypocrisy/

 

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. 

Duck and Rabbit

Musavir's Pink-Headed Duck,
hand-stitched cotton thread on machine stitched dish towel remnant, 2018  9"x8"

Musavir's Pink-Headed Duck is based on a watercolor painting (c.1780) by Indian painter Musavir Bhawani Das that I came across when I was researching animals for the Vanishing Kingdom. Although the pink-headed duck was once found in parts of the Gangetic plains of India, Bangladesh and in the swamps of Myanmar, it was feared extinct since the 1950s. Numerous searches have failed to provide any proof of continued existence but it has been suggested that it may exist in the inaccessible swamp regions of northern Myanmar and some sight reports from that region have led to its status being declared as critically endangered rather than extinct. 

Riverine Rabbit (Vanishing Kingdom), 2018,
 hand-stitched cotton thread on machine stitched dish towel remnant, 9"x8"

I wasn't able to fit a riverine rabbit on the original map, so I stitched this separate portrait, Riverine Rabbit (Vanishing Kingdom). The riverine rabbit, also known as the bushman rabbit or bushman hare, is one of the most endangered mammals in the world, with only around 500 living adults, and 1500 overall. This rabbit has an extremely limited distribution area, found only in the central and southern regions of the Karoo Desert of South Africa's Northern Cape Province.

I consider these two small stitchwork pieces to be bridge pieces between my old and new work. They both relate to the Vanishing Kingdom map, but I stitched them on dish towel remnants, and I'll be creating pieces on this particular type of dish towels for some of my next body of work. When I first saw one of the towels, which are machine stitched in a grid design, I knew that I wouldn't be using them in the kitchen! I was immediately drawn to the idea of combining my 'mosaic style' stitchwork onto their surface, thinking of the pre-stitched threads as the 'grout'. I like that I can compose images using the boundaries of a grid, especially since I'm continuing my exploration of translating thread into a reflection of traditional mosaics. They are companion pieces both in subject, size and medium, and are part of a group that I’m calling the 'dish towel tapestries'.

Tyche And Her Wheel

"Tyche And Her Wheel" 2018

"The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"  from Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603 

I stitched Tyche And Her Wheel in a modified mosaic style, using lines as well as square shapes. I was originally going to title this piece Fortuna And Her Wheel, but I changed it to the lesser known Greek version of the goddess. I also created my own idea of the wheel: it contains both the color scheme and images of vessels from ancient Greece, with depictions of a cornucopia, a hammer, a house, a bomb, a crutch, and a dollar sign. The image of Tyche is based on a figure in a French painting from 1605 by Thomas Artus.

Quoting E.S. Whittlesey from Symbols and Legends in Western Art, the goddess is shown with "a wheel as an emblem of chance, the turning of the year, the juggler of fortune... on some she heaped gifts from a horn of plenty, others she deprived of all they had; her overwhelming aspect was her uncertainty."

Although this piece is mainly influenced by Western mythology, its theme also relates to the wheel of Samsara from Eastern philosophy. In Buddhism, saṃsāra is the suffering-laden cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end. It is often depicted as a circle divided like a pie into six realms.

I added other elements that represent both the impermanence and transcendence of mundane human experience: the goddess stands in front of the Tree of Life, holding an hour glass and preparing to spin her wheel, on which a bennu bird -an ancient Egyptian deity linked with the sun, creation, and rebirth - perches. This bird may have been the inspiration for the iconic phoenix that rises from the ashes, symbolizing resurrection and immortality.

The Vanishing Kingdom

"The Vanishing Kingdom"  15" x 24"  2018

                       

“It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all freshwater mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion.” -  Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History



This map is about the human-caused sixth extinction that is happening right now on the planet. I included animals that are already extinct and those that are threatened. I created it in its entirety in what I’m calling the ‘mosaic style’ by stitching squares, rectangles, and triangles that approximate the shapes of mosaic tiles. I envisioned this piece as a future relic portraying some of the animals that used to live on the planet.

I titled it the Vanishing Kingdom because visually it reminded me of a painting I knew from my childhood called the Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks. The placement of the four sea stars on the sides is a nod to the formal symmetry of ancient mosaics, and the letters N S E W on the lower left to indicate direction are surrounding a thermometer that represents the heating planet.

I fashioned the design in stages, using the iron transfer method for the general outline of the continents, then drawing all of the figures directly onto the fabric with a disappearing ink pen, and filling in the land and water around them. It was difficult to choose which animals to include because I had to consider the aesthetics of the overall composition; I began with five and then made decisions about which ones to add from a relatively small list. I based my choices on species diversity and endangered status as well as on color, form and the animal’s geographic location on the map.
   
Out of all of the animals that I chose for this piece I’ve only seen dragonflies and sea stars in their natural environment, so some, like the rhinoceros, have assumed an almost mythological status for me. The unfathomable loss of this extinction event begs the question: how has the majority of the human species become so disconnected from the natural world? The ecologist Paul Ehrlich states that “in pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches”.

The thirty-four animals in The Vanishing Kingdom, listed in alphabetical order:

Adelie Penguin, Barbour’s Seahorse, Black Footed Ferret, Black Rhinoceros, Blue Racer Snake, Dragonfly, Dall’s Porpoise, Elkhorn Coral, Euphrates Jerboa, Fin Whale, Giant Armadillo, Glaucous Macaw, Great Auk, Gunlack’s Hawk, Hammerhead Shark, Kawekaweau Gecko, Krill, Laysan Duck, Leatherback Turtle, Malaysian Snail, Monk Seal, Narwhal, Numbat, Panamanian Golden Frog, Pangolin, Polar Bear, Pyrenean Ibex, Quagga, Red Breasted Goose, Sea Star, Siberian Crane, South China Tiger, Tecopa Pupfish, Walrus


Here’s a link to The National Geographic’s Photo Ark website to see some of the astonishing and immeasurable beauty of the biodiversity on the planet, and to connect with the #SaveTogether campaign:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/photo-ark/