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

 

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. 

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. 

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.

Dancer

"Dancer" 2015

"The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves."  -Terry Tempest Williams

I made "Dancer" using both fill and line stitch on a design that was transferred onto the fabric by the carbon paper method. The central figure is directly influenced by the image, shown below, from a painted fresco mural in the Quseir Amra castle in Jordan (early 8th century).

In the mural the female figure is topless and she holds up a bowl. I added a full dress for design reasons and changed the bowl into a walrus. The background is a modified Islamic geometric pattern.

The "Dancer" In this piece represents the Great Mother archetype, rescuing a drowning walrus. I used the infinity symbol on the border, which mirrors the shape of the figure and the belt design, and refers to the divine mystery that surrounds and underlies the dream of the world.

Link to World Heritage Conservation about Quseir Amra

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/327 

Link to information about the Pacific Walrus endangered status

http://www.endangered.org/animal/pacific-walrus/

Trees Are Poems

"Trees Are Poems" 2014

"Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky" - Kahlil Gibran

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.

- Greek Proverb

This piece is hand-stitched on fabric, and is relatively large at 24"x16". It's the first time I used carbon paper to transfer the design directly onto the fabric from the template. I got the main image by combining two photographs from the book "Portraits of the Insane" (subtitled 'The Case of Dr Diamond'). The book contains photographs of asylum patients from mid-nineteenth century Britain. One of the photographs was captioned "Acute Melancholia", and I chose it for both image and subject. The mosaic pattern of the dress is my design.

My original intention was to use only line stitch, but I ended up doing a type of fill stitch in the figure's face and hands and in the Palestinian sunbird that rests on her lap. The figure is surrounded by the outlines of olive leaves and olives, with repeating birdcages as the border. On reflection I like that the leaves and olives are rendered only in outline, making them seem less solid, like ghosts.

The subject of 'Trees Are Poems' is a response to my deep sadness about the desecration of Palestinian olive trees since 1967, both officially by the state of Israel and by its illegal settlers. It is estimated that between 800,000 and 1,000,000 trees have been uprooted, burned, and cut down. Thousands are destroyed each year; in October 2014 hundreds of trees were burned down by illegal settlers near Jerusalem that are believed to be some of the worlds oldest, trees from a lineage that are mentioned in the Old Testament. 

Besides being an integral part of the Palestinian economy, the olive tree is deeply connected to Palestinian culture, heritage and identity. Their destruction is a huge part of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine and has been compared to the destruction of the buffalo in the genocide of Native Americans. This ongoing devastation is also a tragedy for the entire world: these trees belonged to the planet, a heritage that is lost to of all of us. 

'Trees Are Poems' is not a portrait of any particular person, and I'm not trying to represent a Palestinian woman. I intended the figure to personify an Archetypal Feminine, mourning the loss of nature and the suffering imposed on a whole culture. But of course she also symbolizes an aspect of myself, coming from my own feelings of grief about this indefensible destruction.

Update: On January 1, 2015 Jewish settlers uprooted 5,000 olive tree saplings near Ramallah on Palestinian land. They also broke the roots so they can't be replanted. The saplings had been planted in mid-December in honor of Palestinian official Zaid Abu Ein, who died after being beaten by an Israeli Occupation soldier during a demonstration to support tree planting and against land confiscation.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/heritage-uprooted/7126 

http://www.zaytoun.org/

Under Siege

"Under Siege" 2014

I titled this piece "Under Siege" because with the exception of one subspecies of African white rhinoceros, all five rhinoceros species in the world are in danger of being hunted by poachers for their horns, and three of the species are listed as critically endangered. In keeping with the theme of the title I overlaid the image of the rhino with a design I took from Palestinian embroidery. The background is a modified Islamic geometric pattern with rhino horns for the border. 

This is the first piece I've stitched on fabric rather than paper. To get the design on the fabric I used a transfer pencil to trace from a xerox collage. It was then ironed (in reverse) onto the fabric, with the border added later. Because the process is new for me, with such a complicated design and relatively large size -13"x17"- it was a challenge, and it took me a lot longer to make than I was expecting!

Below are the images I referenced including the xerox collage. The Palestinian embroidery design is from the book "Embroidery from Palestine" by Shelagh Weir.

Mandrake and Amulet Sampler

These are hand-stitched with cotton thread on rice paper.

"Mandrake" 2013

With "Mandrake" I took some images from an alchemy book and combined them (along with leaves from a different source). I'm fascinated by medieval illustrations; their quality of drawing and color is both decorative and masterful. 

"Amulet Sampler" 2013

"Amulet Sampler" was inspired by Afghan war rugs. Many of these rugs are brightly
colored and beautifully decorative, yet the images in them are made up of tanks and guns and rockets, reflecting life in a context of war and occupation. I find these rugs to be deeply political and intriguing, with their visually joyful compositions created from objects of death and destruction.

This piece refers to the human burden on the natural world, with the weight of an ancient amulet (scarab), on one side, and a modern amulet (grenade), on the other.