Charcoal for mystery and depth, Knowth Ireland

Interior of Knowth passage grave co. Meath Ireland.
Basin Stone now found at the Newgrange visitor centre.

Again, I found this in a drafts folder so I am publishing it now. My earlier posts were about using inspiration and creating volume with charcoal. One of the most inspirational times in my life have been discovering the ancient archaeology of Ireland. I have heard it said that once the neolithic gets into your blood it never leaves. There is something about visitng these sites that is so moving. I guess it is a reverence for the work of the ancestors now preserved in stone. Obviously there is a ceremonial usage to these sites and I have always been intrigued by veneration. The dead were as much apart of life in 3000bc as were the living. Large amounts of time were invested in creating these sites to honour the dead. It was a huge commitment of labour and it often took a full generation to complete a space. Knowth had two entrances oriented to the dawn and sunset of the Equinox. The basin stones held burnt bones . They were ancient crucibles for those gone to the Sky.
To create and emphasize the carved out nature of the shape I curved the charcoal lines toward the centre.
The smudgy black and white lends mystery to the picture. It is pitch dark in these subterranean places so you can imagine the fire light of the torches on the walls . Now much of the passage makes room only for crawling until the inner chamber is reached. The inner spaces of Knowth are not open to the public but there is still much to see outside. There are standing stones, small stone circles, and the impressive site of the huge green mound can never be forgotten.

Beach , Sun and Sea

I find myself remembering walking on beaches , in Florida, California, Mexico, and Ireland. I am yearning for the sun and
the sound of waves. We had a few nice days here. The yearning for the Summer months began. This photo is the floor of a sculpture called Shipwreck-Sunken Treasure.It is an environmental piece about the Sea and how the creatures in it create homes of almost anything floating down. It is about re-cycling our treasure and about loss and transformation. The sunken ribs of the ship( not shown) are interwoven with copper sea weed, and pieces of jewelry that were once treasured by me. The net is a beaded crochet square made by a friend who is a glass artist. It is a kind of reliquary or timeline of lost items. Some pieces I cast myself in silver and some are made with applied and fused enamel. There is a diary with it . A book about each item , where it came from and what it meant to me. Each one is sacrificed to the sea. It took me three years to complete it. Its most important resident is a hand made clay mer woman in the bow of the ship, resting on the floor you see here. She rises like a masthead. More about her later. The sea is calling.

This is one I wrote a while ago and I  found in Drafts, since then I have spent a weeks holiday in Lanzarote, Spain swimming in the sea and watching the waves make designs on a volcanic beach.

Summer is finally here

I saw my first wisteria flower blooming today. I have not written anything since March. it was a cold Spring and because the chemo therapy left me with a sensitivity to cold I just withdrew and huddled with my sketch book trying to do one free form sacred art mandala a day. I have always resisted symmetry because I like the freedom of not matching one side to the other. I have surprised myself with the result of taking one or two shapes like a crescent or a triangle and adding to them while flowing outward from the center. I am now finally back in my welding studio and have laid out a new wall sculpture with elements of a more geometric approach. It is called Origins and it will probably be the last in the series of work using the river fossils. Who knows really what will evolve later on in the season.The chi gong classes have started up again here at the Mill and there will be a Summer Solstice workshop and a Summer two day retreat on July 20th and 21st that will also have a sacred site tour on the last day. I won’t add a photo today because it takes so long to load them onto the post.