Hyacinthus Chooses The Monster

Hyacinthus Mesmerized, 2023, 14.5” x 11.5”

hand-stitched embroidery and punch needle with dmc thread.

“If we train young people to read insult, hostility, and prejudice into every interaction, they may increasingly see the world as hostile to them and fail to thrive in it.”. -- Helen Pluckrose 

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity -- and Why This Harms Everybody. 

Hyacinthus Mesmerized is inspired by an Ancient Greek vase painting from the 5th century B.C. depicting the youth Hyacinthus with a Swan. The ancient Greeks asked questions about the nature of truth and what it means to be a good person, but this 21st-century Hyacinthus has much more to contend with. Here, he represents the youth who thinks he must sacrifice himself (his Self) for what he sees as a higher calling. Images within point to the pressures of identity and conformity, portrayed by a monster threatening to consume him, and surveillance cameras always watching how he performs. On each side of him is a partial pyramid representing the "hierarchy of oppression", halved to symbolize Hyacinthus' split psyche, which is cut off from the real beauty and truth of the world/Universe. The Swan symbolizes the profound mystery and elegance of his being  - his soul - here subjugated into his unconscious shadow. 

Ophelia and Narcissus

Ophelia And Narcissus, 2022, cotton embroidery floss on fabric, 10.5"x 14.5"

"The most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome." -

 George Orwell 

This tapestry brings together two iconic water scenes and characters: Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Narcissus from Greek mythology. Ophelia floats by, surrounded by discarded masks, as Narcissus checks out his latest selfie, with a book on Postmodernism on his lap. Two surveillance cameras point down at him, and he is oblivious not only to the presence of Ophelia, but also to the fact that he's being watched back by Big Tech/social media, the idea of "surveilled conformism".* A Linx creature, a stand-in for Echo, represents the abiding intelligence of nature, embodying the truth, beauty, and mystery outside of the constraints of human egoic identity stories. Supporting players include a field of Narcissus flowers, deer, muses, a full moon, Cyprus trees, and a night sky. l created this piece by combining hand stitching and punch needle techniques for the first time.

I interpreted the stories through a contemporary lens to examine some of the tensions and conflicts between ideology and reality happening in our current times. Here Narcissus represents a belief system informed by postmodernism and social constructionism, and in particular by gender ideology. Ophelia represents the biological reality of an adult human female impacted by that dead-end ideology, and the erasure of women as a sex category. The blood drops on her dress have a double meaning: both of her violent demise, and of the blood of menstruation, which is only specific to women, but in 2022 still needs to be said! 

* https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/everything-is-broken

 

Habeous Wokus Corpus

Habeous Wokus Corpus, 2022, hand-stitched embroidery floss on vintage linen tablecloth, 15"x11"

 

"You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” --Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This piece is about language in the service of a 'progressive' ideology that divides humanity into identity groups vying for power, and which attempts to erase both the unique individual and the universal human. I stitched words, taken from the new Left's ideological lexicon, onto a mummy form with a gaslight on its head and a trap at its feet. I imagine that the words are spiraling down into the trap form, symbolizing how a Postmodern redefinition of language and meaning, disconnected from reality, contracts the world and eventually becomes a conceptual dead-end. The background represents the openness (swirling energy) and mystery (treasure chest), outside of those limiting beliefs. 

Fragility Trap

Venus Fragility Trap, 2022, hand-stitched DMC floss on dishtowel remnant, 15" x 6.5"

 

"It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.” 

― Franz Kafka, The Trial 

The idea for 'Venus Fragility Trap' came to me when I was stitching my small 'Head of Venus' (5"x4", second photo). I had seen aerial photographs of mass graves in South America because of the Covid pandemic, and I was struck by both the visual beauty of the pattern of the caskets and the incredible, deep sadness of it. I stitched tears down the face of Venus: even Beauty grieves for the world. Those tears, however, prompted an association with a current neo-racist discourse about *white tears*, especially ''white women's tears''. It struck me how pernicious it is to take an entire group of unique individuals, define them as a monolithic identity, and weaponize a human emotion against them. 

I created it using stitched words mainly referenced from the novel The Trial by Franz Kafka and the nonfiction book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. It examines a dehumanizing ideology that uses logical fallacies and circular 'Kafka Traps' in language to perpetuate itself. This piece confronts these limiting concepts with a contrasting beauty/Beauty which represents both individual beingness (I Am That I Am) and a universal human story (mythological Venus). I placed the stitched language symbolically- the sentences from The Trial are on the upper part of the background and act as satirical observation, while those placed among the coffins on the lower part are taken from White Fragility, and contain the notion of a deadening and dead-end belief system. The repeating phrases (different iterations of *whiteness*: white fragility, white tears, white ignorance, etc.) that I stitched on the figure become only a superficial imposition rather than an obscuration of something essential. My original intention was that the meaning of the language should be immediately discernable. Instead, the words are part of the design itself, making this piece less like a cudgel and more like an invitation.

Sphinx Tapestry (Addendum)

 

Sphinx Tapestry (Addendum), 2021, hand-stitched cotton thread embroidery floss on linen, 25" x 16"

 "Functional mythology has been replaced by inadequate ideology." - Jordan Peterson

This is another piece that contemporizes an ancient Greek myth. The sphinx is made up of bomb shapes, and the wing is made up of thermometers. I stitched the background using water drop shapes, and it contains four symbols that surround the figure. Two of them denote a sense of urgency (the hourglass and the bell), and two of them point to our lowest and highest potential as humans (the saw and the circle). The saw refers to this quote from the Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich: "In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches." It's placed low under the Sphinx figure, in contrast to the circle at the top. The circle here is more complex and has layered meanings. On a mundane level, it represents the sun that's warming the planet. On a profound level, it symbolizes our transcendent wholeness, the one consciousness that we are all a part of. The idea of universality is embedded in this piece and is the antithesis of the current divisive mind virus that's been infecting much of Western culture. 

A story about the Sphinx by the 8th Cent B.C. writer Hesiod is told in the book Symbols And Legends In Western Art by E.S. Whittlesey: (The Sphinx) frequented a high rock near Thebes and waylaid travelers with the riddle, "What walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?" The answer is "Man"-in infancy, prime of life, and old age. Those who failed to give the correct answer were hurled to their deaths from the rock. I imagine us now collectively on a precipice with a riddle in front of us. The 'Addendum' of the title points to the idea that we need new questions: what does it mean to be human, and who are we really? The Sphinx sits on a coffin decorated with stylized hemlock. A passage about Socrates is on the opposite page in the same book: (he) was allegedly condemned to death for corrupting the youth and for impiety. The latter charge was for his belief in the immortality of the soul. Although I didn't know what he was killed for when I chose hemlock as a symbol, the story connects beautifully to my addendum question. Socrates spoke 'truth in the face of danger', an idea known as 'parrhesia' in Greek. It seems like a necessary, even urgent, imperative for our times. 

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.

Eris/Discordia

Eris/Discordia, 2021, 14.5" x 14.5", hand-stitched cotton thread on machine stitched dish towel remnant.

"The most we can do is to dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress"  

- Carl Jung 

With this piece, I'm contemporizing the Greek myth of the goddess Eris (Roman name Discordia). Inspired by contemporary Afghan War Rugs, the figure is referenced from an ancient Greek black-figure kylix ceramic painting. This Eris has no nationality or ethnicity or race or religion, and I see her as one of the personifications of humanity's collective shadow. She is, however, the goddess who calls in war and thus represents the asymmetry of overwhelming military might and state terrorism. Her hair becomes a blast ball, her tattooed arms hold an assault rifle, her wings have images of fighter jets, and the hem of her dress is decorated with dollar signs. She's surrounded by bombs, helicopters, grenades, bullets, blood drops, and tanks. 

Here's a description of her from the website The Theoi Project, a site exploring Greek mythology and the gods in classical literature and art: "[Eris] delights in the tumult of war, increasing the moaning of men. She is insatiable in her desire for bloodshed, and after all the other gods have withdrawn from the battle-field, she still remains rejoicing over the havoc that has been made." She was the mother of the Kakodaimones (Cacodaemons), evil spirits which plagued mankind.

It's interesting that these qualities were connected to a Goddess. Usually, I think of the Feminine as being associated with nurture, compassion, and relationship, even though soldiers in many contemporary societies are also women. I came across a book called Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, by Charlene Spretnak, and learned a lot about the origins of classical mythology. Spretnak writes that "...for thousands of years before the classical myths took form and were written down by Hesiod and Homer in the seventh century B.C., a rich oral tradition of myth making had existed. Strains of the earlier traditions are evident in the later myths, which reflect the cultural amalgamation of three waves of barbarian invaders. These invaders brought with them a patriarchal social order and their thunderbolt God, Zeus." This idea seems very apt when thinking about Eris, even in a contemporary context. Perhaps the power of a true Feminine archetype is rising again, and war and war mongers will no longer be worshiped or valued in a world in dire need of healing. 

Camel Pull-Toy Tapestry

Camel Pull-Toy Tapestry, 2020, hand-stitched cotton thread on monk cloth, 13"x12".

 

"Ain't gonna study war no more" - lyrics from an American gospel song

Camel Pull-Toy Tapestry is stitched in my faux weaving style and is directly influenced by War Rugs and by my continuing interest in woven textiles. It's based on my Camel Pull-Toy sculpture, which I created in 2005 in reaction to US warmongering in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those wars got me interested in Islamic art and culture as I observed the ubiquitous propaganda and demonization of Islam in the US during that time. Like the original version, this piece refers to themes of US Imperialism and hegemony-along with its allies - in the region of Southwest Asia. The tapestry's two - dimensional format enabled me to expand the narrative by filling in the background with fighter jets and bombs. 

I chose the dromedary camel as a shorthand signifier that makes an immediate connection to a specific geographic location, and not as any definition or judgment of a culture. The camel in the context of a child's pull-toy has political connotations that refer to Islamophobia and Western domination, pointing to its manipulator and to the hubris and terror of Empire's military might. 

Girl In The Plasma Fields

 

Girl In The Plasma Fields, 2020,
hand-stitched cotton thread on vintage linen table cloth remnant,
25'' x 16''

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion”—Rumi 

Girl In The Plasma Fields started as a portrait of my teenage niece, referenced from a black and white photograph of her face. She hated the photo, but I thought it was beautiful, and that she looked very classical. I think the piece has an overall quality of antiquity about it. I stitched it by interlocking circle shapes together in what I call my modified chain stitch. I began it in mid-March, coincidentally around the same time that Seattle and Spain - where my niece lives -were each beginning their lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic. When I worked on this piece I felt a synergy with her - even though we live so far apart - especially when I was stitching the face. She went through a long period of fear, when she would barely leave her room, and it was around the time that I started working on the background that she ventured back out into the world. It felt significant and synchronistic. 

This piece is about perception rather than transformation, about seeing ourselves as we are beyond our physical bodies. In addition to being a specific portrait, it's also a depiction of the luminous and unchanging presence underlying every person's particular story, and of the exquisitely tuned frequency of unified consciousness-the plasma fields - which create the manifest world. The images of the pinecone, the shell, and the Spanish moon moth act as both personal signifiers and mystical symbols. I associate the pinecone with the Fibonacci sequence that my niece learned about in school, and which is found consistently in nature. Here it also represents the sacred symbol of the esoteric third eye, or seat of the soul. I stitched it in purple threads to allude to the Violet Flame of the I Am presence. The shell denotes place and proximity to the sea, but it also has a liminal quality, representing an in-between state like that of existence during the quarantine. It contains the mystery and power of spiraling infinity, and I created it in colors that are very close to the rest of the background, as if newly formed out of the swirling energy surrounding it. I chose the wings of the Spanish moon moth, placed on the figure like a piece of clothing, to signify personal identity, while at the same time acting as a metaphor for the transience of the physical body and for the multidimensional reality of our human existence. 

Outrageous Fortune

Outrageous Fortune, 2020,

hand-stitched cotton thread on linen, 

4.5"x4.5"

"Our true nature is divine and eternal. Our true purpose of life is to awaken and realize that permanent divinity that is within us.” 

― Amit Ray 

Outrageous Fortune is stitched in its entirety in what I think of as a modified chain stitch, and is inspired by the Sphinx creature on the top of the Wheel of Fortune tarot card. These figures are usually portrayed in the Egyptian version but this one is based on a Greek stone statue from the 6th century B.C. I added a crown on its head to represent divinity and a sword above it to symbolize the cutting away of delusions to discover who we actually are. I believe that this discovery is ultimately the greatest fortune of all. 

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 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.

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'.

Palestine Flip Map

I See Palestine Apart-Hide (This) Map, hand-stitched cotton thread, linen, 2018  21" x 16"

"Memory adds to the unrelieved intensity of Palestinian exile. Palestine is central to the cultures of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism...there is no forgetting it, no way of overlooking it."  -- Edward Said, from After The Last Sky: Palestinian Lives 

I created this map as an outsider and especially as an American whose government is directly complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine; I don't claim to speak for Palestinians or to portray the Palestinian experience. As I've learned about Palestine and the false Zionist narrative that allows its Apartheid project to continue unabated, I've found that I can't look away. I refuse to not see Palestine or to dehumanize Palestinians. I refuse to be willfully ignorant about its erasure or complacent about the myth that it never existed. 

As Palestinian writer Nada Elia states, "the Zionist logic would also deny that Native Americans existed, because they did not have nation states recognisable to Europeans." 
In 1948, almost 80 percent of the Palestinian people had become refugees, an estimated 750,000 people expelled from their homes, their towns and villages, and hundreds were massacred. This is what is known as the Nakba, or catastrophe. 

My map depicts, on the right side, Palestine both before and after the Nakba, filled with images that I stitched in the 'mosaic style'. They include ancient mosaics and architecture, an olive tree, Jaffa oranges, fishing boats, a roundabout in Ramallah, the sculpture of a horse that stands in front of the Jenin Freedom Theater--that has been raided by Israeli soldiers numerous times--and the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. I also represent the three major religions in the area of Jerusalem, and I did my best to be geographically correct with the placement of particular images that I chose. 

The map on the left side is not a real place but represents an ideology which is based on supremacism and separation, enforced by the machines of war that maintain Apartheid and colonization. Its shape is Palestine flipped backward to symbolize Zionism as devolution, and I stitched within it objects that include automatic weapons, a drone, fighter jets, bombs, a tank, a surveillance camera, the Apartheid wall, a helicopter, and a bulldozer.

The two map shapes together reminded me of a butterfly, and it came to represent the unseen collective soul that underlies the activities of human life. The right wing of the butterfly is outlined by olive leaves, the left by bullets, depicting things of the world that are either soul nurturing or soul killing.

I based the line design that fills the background on the Palestinian scarf called a keffiyeh, and it represents two things at once: the veil of forgetfulness that allows humans to be separated from their higher selves and to forget the oneness that connects us all, and the oneness itself, the unified whole where all of our lives are intertwined. I framed this piece with the keys that stand for the right of Palestinian refugees to return. The title has a dual meaning - I see Palestine apart -- hide (Apartheid) and hide this map (this map should be censored because it doesn't fit the mainstream narrative).

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-10-18/how-israel-seeks-to-erase-the-regions-history/

https://mondoweiss.net/2016/02/palestine-and-the-anxiety-of-existence/

https://972mag.com/before-zionism-the-shared-life-of-jews-and-palestinians/118408/

  

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/

Mela Insana

"Mela Insana" 2016

A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken. — Terry Tempest Williams

With the exception of the tornado and a few line work details, I created this piece in its entirety by stitching small squares, and variations of the square, to evoke mosaic tile art. I consider "Mela Insana" to be a natural evolution of my some of my earlier thread pieces that utilize the square as a design element as well as my glass tile mosaic sculptures. 

I originally titled this piece "Aubergine" in reference to the dark color of the tornado and in the figure's dress, but because this piece is based on Raphael's painting "Elisabetta Gonzaga", 1504-06, I thought the Italian word for eggplant would be more appropriate. I discovered the name "Mela Insana", ("bad apple") which was folk-etymologized* from the Italian melanzana. I liked this play on the word and how it relates to the visual metaphor of the tornado. As an aside, Raphael also designed mosaics, most notably his ‘Creation of the World' in the dome of the Chigi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, executed around 1516.

The landscape on the left side represents the past and its relatively untouched natural world. The right side represents an unknown future, with a tornado that symbolizes constricted energy containing the potential for both great destruction and expansive awareness. 

* http://languagehat.com/the-multifarious-aubergine/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_of_the_World_(Raphael)

Woman with Scarab / Grace

"Woman with Scarab" 2016

"Grace" 2016

I have immortal longings in me.  —Shakespeare

“Woman With Scarab” and “Grace” were each hand stitched on a hoop frame. Because they are a smaller size than my usual work, I brought these pieces with me to work on when I traveled. With both of them, I’m interested in playing with contrasting and harmonizing patterns and colors and I chose the images and designs more for visual reasons than for any particular symbolic meaning. Although the Egyptian scarab and the Islamic motifs evoke distinct cultures, here they represent “Culture” in a general way, just as the portraits, taken out of context, no longer represent a specific person. 

The figure in “Woman With Scarab” references the painting “Portrait of a Young Woman” by Antonio Pollaiolo, 1475. She is stitched with small squares that mimic mosaic tiles and is juxtaposed on top of a geometric pattern. I created the design of the dress using an Islamic floral pattern and added a large scarab to her hair. 

The figure in “Grace” comes from a photograph of an unnamed woman in the book “Portraits of the Insane, the Case of Dr. Diamond”, who I used as my model. I find that there is an incongruent and transcendent joy and grace that emanates from her, and I wanted to capture some of it in my stitching. I worked on this piece when I visited my dying mother, and that changed the way that I came to interpret its meaning. The background is an imperfectly copied Islamic geometric design that I think perfectly symbolizes the pulsing energy of the universe. I added the chicken because I liked the way it related to the pattern of the dress, but I later thought: the chicken is going home to roost.

Demiurge With Map Egg

"Demiurge With Map Egg"  2016

“In the Mysteries, the Universal Egg was likened to an egg which the Cosmic Goose had laid in space.” 

— Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

“What the Greeks and Gnostics called the ‘Demiurge’ is a Universal Intelligence that fashions our world. One way to understand the Demiurge is to think of it as the World Soul.” — Tom Montalk 

In many ways “Demiurge With Map Egg” is an introduction piece for my future series of stitched maps. 

I refer to the egg form as a ‘map egg’ because each of the six delineated sections of the egg contain images that correspond to a separate map that will be in the new series. The egg works both as a specific metaphor - within it are the embryos of finished work - and as a more general symbol of Universal Egg, described in the book ‘The Secret Teachings of All Ages’: “in whose transparent depths creation exists…the perfect image of all terrestrial activity.”

The swing-set depicted in the central section also works on two levels. It will be one of the images in a map entitled ‘Memory Map’ and it refers to an actual swing-set from my childhood that evokes strong memories and associations. As a simple visual icon the swing-set, with its two side by side swings, also represents the duality of the manifest world: an individual ego identity and the named and defined world surrounding it.

In researching the Cosmic Egg, I came across the idea of the demiurge. Plato described it as a subordinate deity who fashions the sensible world in the light of eternal ideas. To the Gnostics, the demiurge is the immortal mortal, responsible for our physical existence (and the suffering we must go through in connection with it) by fabricating the world. Both of these definitions worked well with my intention for the figure in the piece to be a larger than life mythological character who’s inextricably linked with the egg form.

The figure and map egg are overlaid on a design that was influenced from Egyptian iconography. This background symbolizes the unified energy field on which the created world plays out.