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BOXES beyond borders

Tag: Birth

The Mummified Stone Heart

The central focus is a very special stone heart found on the Pacific coast at the equator. It has an uncommon green color. a heart with many scars. Once it was split, but love was able to hold it together and unify what had been separated.

Sorrow leaves wounds; joy brings peace.
This heart has found its peace.
Its wounds have healed.
The purpose of life was fulfilled; the eternal cycle of birth to life and death to a new life.
This heart has been embalmed; first if has been cleaned from all perishables.
The nucleus remained, one with the nature.
For women all over the world and over all times it might be a symbol for love;
isn’t the woman love’s keeper?
Love is immortal.
Faith and hope in the victory of love might be the symbol of humankind in the next millennium.

NOTE: This embalmed heart has been wrapped with golden ribbons, placed on a plate of slate from the Andes, and bedded in a stone sarcophagus.  The feather of a white swan symbolizes the purity of the heart.  As grave goods, there are two sealed papyrus rolls perpetuating the heart’s qualities. This project contains symbols from four different continents (America, Asia, Europe, Africa).

Break Water

Borders are changing lines on our world’s map that demarcate culture, land, time, history, ethnicity.  These are intellectual separations, but the older physical lines of division are also lines of connection- the oceans that separate us, join us.  Water is the vehicle for life- our food, our bodies, our planet.  Women share the experience of our body’s potential to transmit new life.  Our female bodies are both the source of our common oppression and transcendence. Break Water recalls the moment that proceeds birth.  The image is simultaneously bound and released, evoking change, possibility, destruction, hope.  I have included materials from previous works; a Xerox transfer image of a rope sculpture I made across a rotten East River pier in New York City, and two eggs which I collected in Brazil during a women’s collaborative show.  These are symbolic “births” of new ideas and images that women artists are collectively making to Break Water and change the marks that divide us.

Love

My aim was to transform the cold sterile box, by covering it and filling it with love.

On the outside: What could be richer and warmer than a mothers love for her new baby?

On the inside: What could be lighter and brighter than the spiritual love awakened at time of birth?

Alpha-Omega

My work shows our life’s journey from birth to death. These events are the bond that links all human beings. In between we encounter life’s challenges, both good and bad. The torso represents our beginning, the copper wire warrior figure shows our battle with life’s forces, and the lino block suggests our passage through time in the unknown. The jagged edges on the mirror glass show our testing times, where the smooth line of the circle represents life’s calmer waters. In traditional Celtic Art this holds the promise of eternity. For this reason I have included the circles and spiral symbols.

 

Face

Soon after the birth of my first child, I became aware of a sense that on a grander scale, all children were my children. Universal.

I am now a grandmother for the first time. Mostly, I am happy. Sometimes I feel sad, maybe a bit jealous because I no longer carry the egg that becomes the baby. Look at my little grandson in utero. He is perfect, just like the one perfect living cell, the egg. What gift this is that we may, “…bring forth those who bring forth.”

Ripened Fruit

“This world is a tree to which we cling–
we, the half-ripe fruit upon it.
The immature fruit clings tight to the branch
because, not yet ripe, it’s unfit for the palace.
When fruits become ripe, sweet, and juicy,
then, biting their lips, they loosen their hold.
When the mouth has been sweetened by felicity,
the kingdom of the world loses its appeal.
To be tightly attached to the world is immaturity;
as long as you’re an embryo,
blood-sipping is your interest.”

– Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi

A fascination with seeds, seed pods, fruit of both tree and vine accompanied my own struggle with fertility. What appeared to be fallow in my life gradually evolved into a period of regeneration and rebirth. At present, these familiar forms reflect the renewal of my work and symbolize the opaque and marvelous mystery of the human life.

This box is lovingly dedicated to Mary Interlandi: May 20, 1983 – February 10, 2003

Leaving Home

from the time my soft head crowned
through the red hole
and my mother’s spent muscles squeezed me
out of the watery place,
i began leaving home.
the empty tunnel that led me
from my first home
closed up and healed.
as i grew, i sloughed off years
like discarded snakeskin.
she saved the skins.
she wears them around memory’s neck,
to mark time to the cadence of
an ancient song
her mother’s mother’s mother once sang.

Parir Me Quiero

My work is completely visceral. Each work or piece that I create is born from an experience or event that has marked my life. For me it holds the meaning of a ritual of celebration, offering, thankfulness or prayer. In this sense I believe that it is profoundly religious. It is my way of struggling with the world, of transforming myself into a “Cleansed One.*”

*Shamanic rite to remove the physical or spiritual evil from one’s person.