I drove up to Magdalena, Bear Mountain Gallery, early this morning to pick up the Mantis Cloth. Having gotten word from Michigan that it was still wanted there. Spent some time talking to Danielle, the owner about the people who bought the Crow Dreaming cloth....i'd thought they were from Santa Fe, but not. From L.A. How amazing to think of this, that somewhere in L.A. that Cloth hangs.
and i wanted to go home right away, i needed to stop at the lumberyard and bug them about finding me a window, but then
thought i should call my friend and see if she wanted to go to lunch. She didn't, was tired, but we thought i could get carry out. I did. So we sat and ate in her most beauty full home on the planet, i've put pics of it here somewhere before and then we sat out back, watching the birds come to her bubbling fountain bird bath. In the course of those couple hours, somehow an Amazement happened. She talked about how she is working through letting things go...material things....figuring out what to keep and what to let go and how to let go, mostly keeping things that are ....flat....can be packed in boxes. Her adult children live in Spain. Paintings, for instance. she has a lot of them. And she said...."OH! yes!....that piece you have at the gallery, the hand and the butterfly, would you trade it for the Crone you gave me? " I'd given it to her maybe 13 years ago? Could it BE that long??? The "doll" is cumbersome and fragile.
the bodies were made of natural fiber, always, even back then and before...because it felt right to the touch. and even back then, much of the fabric was recycled clothing. but a lot was also scraps of drapery or upholstery cloth, as this one. The faces, the masks, and hands were made from forming casting tape...cut into thin strips. The faces, the casting tape formed over a balloon to create the convex shape with the "fronds" draped over my fingers to create the sense of hair. I would sit and hold them until they dried enough to be set down. When completely dry, I would "paint" them with Acrylic modeling paste, diluted, to keep the fronds in their shape and then after that dried, would glob on thick paste to the face. Just globbed. This would dry in the Sun or in winter on the wood stove. Once it was completely hardened, i would begin carving them. There was always some crack that would call the first cut. I used my father's jack knife. I would slowly carve away the excess material as the face began to appear. I never knew what that face might look like until it appeared. Some were male. Some coyotes. Some birds. Most were women, some young, some old. I would never know. The faces, once carved were painted with very dilute oil paints. The eyes were seed beads. I made hundreds of them. Some like this, some seated figures and toward the end, figures with armatures. One was life size. Some were made from Alyssia's face, my granddaughter...when she was maybe 3 or 4. I would make the casting tape "mask" ON her face.
I'm going to "publish this" right now...need to go feed Goats and it might disappear. But i'll be back in a few minutes and continue.
i'm back.
I look at this one and wonder how different they would be with all i have learned about cloth...their bodies..., they would be so great now.
I quit making them in the last times with that person i was married to. So much became impossible. After his death, i went back to them but things were different. I no longer was ok with the isolated figure, i wanted Place. For a while i thought about making them "dioramas"...which would have been complex and really, impossible to ship. Had i lived in some other area, with the ability to transport them myself to galleries, maybe, but i didn't i lived always in the middle of some Nowhere. So i just quit. I didn't make anything for a while, but money....working more jobs. Cleaning more houses. No Making. I was adrift.
and then i saw Spirit Cloth. I FOUND Spirit Cloth. Cloth could be Everything. Cloth could be Anything.
her Sail
so here She is. In this same house as the Winter Bitch. There will be a lot of conversation. Quiet mutterings in the night. What will happen??????
that mark of Wind
as i mentioned the other day...the "dolls" were accompanied with words....like this...and maybe the Cloths should be too?????
and how these Marks that the Plants give are never ominous to me, but rather depictions of the
BODY
of the Earth, of this planet, this Being. Depictions of her BODY, a universe unto its own self....not rock and dirt, but a Universe of Being.
and at the end of the day...my own Stonehenge
