Memory Map

"Memory Map" 2017

The child I was is just one breath away from me. - Sheniz Janmohamed, Firesmoke

The concept for this piece began in a class on art and intuition that I took years ago when I lived in Taos. In one of the exercises, we drew the floor plan of a childhood home from memory. I chose to draw the house that I lived in from ages 2-12, and this allowed strong visual images to arise from that time as a child. Memory Map is the result of a long incubating idea for a finished piece.

I stitched the floor plan on two-thirds of the piece starting on the right side, filling the rooms with objects and images. Some of these I created in simple line while others are much more detailed, referencing both photographs and my own recollections.

The general design of the left third of the piece is created from a photograph of me and my sister on either side of our two cousins, posing under a tree in the backyard. To this I added pets, the iris, and my bicycle. The varied colors of the leaves represent the changing seasons and the passage of time.

A white fence extends from the backyard into the center section floor plan and signifies the malleability of memory and a child’s deep connection to imagination, nature, and outside play. The swing set, framing the bedroom, acts as a symbolic representation of my sister and me. A print of Renoir’s painting "A Girl With A Watering Can" hung in our room, and my detailed reproduction of it became a central image by default and not necessarily because of its importance. To me, it depicts an idealized world of order and childhood innocence, thus both intersecting and contrasting with the real life represented around it. The framed mushrooms above it portray the first and only needlework project that I made from a kit when I was around 8 and that was displayed in my parents’ bedroom for years.

Preview

                                                     

I am currently working on many projects at once. In addition to creating new thread on fabric pieces, I'm also reworking earlier paper pulp sculptures that I made - with the exception of one - when I lived in New Mexico. This photograph shows them in varying stages of completion.

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.

A Thousand Tears

 "Anput Dreams There Is No Afterlife" 2015 

                                       

"Maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us" - Mary Oliver

"There is no death, only a change of worlds"- Chief Seattle

I have been drawn to the jackal sculptures associated with the Egyptian god Anubis for a long time. Anubis is the Egyptian god of the afterlife, often depicted as guiding individuals across the threshold from the world at their bodily death. Anput is its female version. I had been thinking about making a sculpture of this jackal, but I had no personal context for it. This fabric piece "Anput Dreams There Is No Afterlife" arose from my experience of my mother's illness and death, and it ended up being very much about her life too. The 'Anput' of the title represents an aspect of my mother's higher self, dreaming that the manifest world is all there is.

I took an often reproduced image of the Anubis animal sitting on a funerary tomb and slightly altered it. I stitched tiny tear shapes on it that represent the suffering my mother underwent, a thousand tears of pain, fear, sadness, and anger. On the tomb underneath the figure I stitched small images that I associate with my mother's life. These images, an obvious allusion to the visual language of Hieroglyphics, are simple pictorial representations of objects, plants, animals and people. 

While these depictions have varying degrees of specificity, and many are simple and mundane, none of them are arbitrary. They are more or less read chronologically from left to right, beginning with her early life and ending with her illness and death. A few of the images on the far right also signify transcendence: butterfly, spiral, blossom and heron. The collar around the neck and the cuff on the front leg are stitched with knives that represent anger and resistance. The jackal is chained to the tomb, weighted down to the right by all the things of the world and by the fear of death. In the background I stitched yellow threads of concentric circles that symbolize both the light of eternal consciousness and the passage way to the other side. The border is made of spirals that represent the path leading from materialism and ego to cosmic awareness.

This piece is being shown at ArtXchange Gallery through September 26th, 2015.      www.artxchange.org

  

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/

Ode To Golden

"Ode To Golden"  2014

 For we are the ocean and the waves, the darkness and the light -  Tony Parsons                                                 

In "Ode to Golden", I took an image of a Panamanian golden frog and overlaid it with an Islamic geometric design, using fill stitch.This frog is critically endangered primarily by a fungal skin disease; pollution and habitat loss are also factors. With line stitch I surrounded the frog with a floral pattern covered with circles that represent both its eggs and the disease that threatens it. 

To learn more-   http://amphibianrescue.org/tag/project-golden-frog/

  

In a broad sense the Islamic motif on the frog represents our human impact on and interdependence with the natural world. Specifically these two very disparate ideas- "Islamic Culture" and "Golden Frog" -have both been assailed in their own way.

Besides the frog, the "Golden" in the title refers to the Golden Rule and the idea of golden threads. The Golden Rule calls for compassionate empathy of the "other". 'Golden threads' is a concept I gleaned from Gaia theory that refers to the soul energy that connects all beings on our one living planet. I like this metaphor because I stitched this piece with actual golden colored threads.

It is in the spirit of the Golden Rule and the golden threads that I dedicate this piece to the people of Gaza, especially to the children. They are undergoing unimaginable suffering as the Israeli Occupation Force continues it's third, and by far most devastating, bombing of the Gaza Strip in six years. As I write this, an estimated 2,069 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, including 553 children. Over 10,500 people have been injured, including 3,106 children. 1800 children have been made orphans.

I have barely touched on this tragedy. To learn more please go to http://savegazaproject.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.

In Memory of the Passenger Pigeon

"The last known specimens were seen in most states of the eastern United States, in the 1890's, and the passenger pigeon died out in the wild in Ohio about 1900. The last survivor of the species that had once numbered 5 billion died in captivity in 1914."

--from  'A Green History of the World' by Clive Ponting

                                            

"Once There Were" 2014

"Once There Were" is my contribution to the story of the extinction of the passenger pigeon. It is an astounding story: that humans caused the extinction of a species that numbered in the billions in only about fifty years.

The bird in the piece is filled in with thread, while the colored rice paper cut outs- in the shapes of acorns, hatchets, oak leaves and rifles- are outlined with chain stitch. I also stitched the words "once there were five billion now there are none". This design surrounds the pigeon in a repeating oval pattern and includes small stitched birds and tear shapes. It tells a brief visual story and evokes for me the description of flocks that would fill the sky for hours. The border is comprised of the sun, moon, a partial representation of the tree of life, and stars in the corners. These are ancient symbols I added to refer to the abiding beauty that surrounds us, less transient than so many things from the natural world that human beings impact.

  

Zoomorphics in paper, wood, fabric and thread

Zoomorphic: having or representing animal forms or gods of animal form.

These mythological human-animal images are found across civilizations and cultures. Here is some of my work that depicts human-animal hybrids. Two of the earlier posts have a human-fish hybrid (Mosaic Work and Paper and Thread).

"Green Tara Sphinx" 2011

The original Greek sphinx has malevolent connotations. With "Green Tara Sphinx" I

created my own hybrid of a sphinx and a Buddhist Goddess. This piece does not reference any particular myth, but rather is open to interpretation. I like what Green Tara represents: she is a Bodhisatva of compassion and action, a protector who comes to our aid to relieve us of physical, emotional and spiritual suffering.

This one of the first sculptures I made using hand stitched images on paper, then applied as mosaic: the design on the animal body is of a scarab and on the wings, a bird.

"Kinnari" 2012

I made this piece for a show entitled "Reclamation" featuring art that re-imagined paintings, sculptures and found objects which have been discarded. I found some wooden objects from a thrift store which I recombined to make this half human half bird. I decided to call it "Kinnari" which is the name for the female version of the half-human half-bird creature from Southeast Asian Hindu mythology. A Kinnari is renowned for her dance, song and poetry, in contrast to the more odious Harpy from Western mythology. The specific meaning is less is important to me than the form itself, and I like that the title connects it to an expanded interpretation which is very different from the Greek version.

The stitched mosaic surface design on the upper body is a bird and on the lower body a primitive female form.

"Chiron" 2013

I titled this piece "Chiron"as both a reference to the Greek myth and to the planet, including its  astrological meaning. Chiron in the Greek myth was a teacher, considered to be intelligent and kind. In astrology, Chiron is symbolized as the "wounded healer". It represents our deepest work to heal our spiritual wounds and our return to greater wholeness, consciousness and love.

I used fabric rather than rice paper and thread applied on the surface and not stitched.

"Al-Buraq Pull Toy" 2013

Al-Buraq is a creature from Persian iconography that has the head of a human and

the body of a horse. I made this as a "pull-toy" with political connotations referring to Iranian culture, Islamophobia, and Western domination.

The surface is rice paper overlaid with hand cut paper and stitched and wrapped thread on paper.