In September and October we took a two month road trip to the East Coast to visit our family. May her spirit enjoy a myriad heavenly bounties, joyful reunion with family members that have gone before her and an enduring peace in God's loving and compassionate embrace.
We are grateful that we were able to return to the Midwest in 2007 after many years overseas in order to spend these last three years with her and my siblings. My Mother's deteriorating health last Summer and her passing in August 2010 weighed heavily on us. While our art work has been an important and constant thread throughout this period, life's other sorrows and joys have frequently needed our undivided attention. It has been six months since my last posting and much has happened and changed in our lives. The shadow image is a pigment print on gel which is laminated onto clay using a gel medium. The symbols are barely visible when viewed straight on but become more apparent when viewing the work obliquely suggesting that an inner spiritual vision is needed to pierce the veils and see the true nature of the world around us. In this sense, the Names of God are embodied in His creation. This seemingly chaotic surface is intended to convey the complex surface appearance in nature that often conceals the hidden structure underlying nature.īehind the shadow image are indecipherable symbols impressed into clay that represent the hidden Creative Word which is both the animating force and underlying structure of the physical world. In this particular work, the left and right edges of the clay tablet have a complex texture made by impressing natural objects on wet clay. The significance of shadows for me will be discussed in more detail in a subsequent blog in relation to another work.
"Creative Word #4" also explores my interest in shadows as a metaphor. It merges my interest in carving, marking and manipulating clay with printing on acrylic gels to transfer on to 3D objects. A thin clay slab is manipulated, folded in on itself, fired, readied for surface treatments and ultimately hung directly on a wall. The clay tablet is more of a clay-wrap than a flat tablet. This interest in clay ceremonial artifacts evolved into the current Clay Tablet Series. Though the symbols and scripts may no longer be understood, their use convey a story of the connection between those people and the transcendent. I have used these symbols and marks to create ceremonial clay sculptural objects that could have been artifacts unearthed from some lost civilization. I use seemingly indecipherable symbols and marks that have a rather personal intuitive meaning or expression to represent the Creative Word. The artifacts of h uman history document the efforts of embodied souls using objects, images, symbols, language and action s to bring us closer to understanding and experiencing the transcendent. Second, whether t hrough successive Manifestations of God progressively revealing His Teachings across the ages, countless gifted souls sharing their experience of the transcendent, or the efforts of each person striving to make choices that express the divine in everyday life, our understanding of the Creative Word is being continuously transformed. First, that the Creative Word brought all of creation into being and remains the underlying animating force that sustains, renews and governs all that was, is or will ever be. As an artist, two aspects of the Creative Word of God have always intrigued me.
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