In a 1988 interview with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell quoted the Hindu Upanishad: “In the beginning there was only the great self, reflected in the form of a person. Reflecting, it found nothing but itself, and its first word was, ‘This am I.’”
All cultures have sought to express and impart stories that communicate the inexplicable “This am I” — verbally transmitted through myth, legend, and fairytale, and performatively through ritual, dance, and ceremony. Sharing these elusive qualities, signification in art objects also depends on nuanced symbolism, metaphor, and allegory.
Stories from the Ancestors is an exhibit of artworks from By Hand gallery artists who are participating in this universal exploration of “This I Am”. Some of the included are:
- the lithographic Petroglyphs of Rudy Pozzatti who was enraptured by the early American Indian low relief stonewall carvings in Roswell, New Mexico;
- “Doing the Dance” woodcut prints by Dale Enochs that depict the 3000-year-old Día de los Muertos story of skeletons on their journey of nine challenges in search of their final destination–images that are intended to remind us of our mortality, the brevity of life and often the frivolity of our actions. Enochs’s world is populated by marching masses dependent on oil, power and energy and implements of war which are intertwined in the search and procurement of oil and the pollution of our oceans. The dancing smiling skeletons are a macabre reminder of our human frailty and folly and how our actions are affecting the world in which we live.;
- Sara Steffey McQueen’s acrylic on canvas, is a meditative inquiry into her ancestral past where she creates a personal language of symbols and glyphs designed to honor her own story;
- Sidney Bolam’s carves limestone personages that pay homage to the fool archetype that is at once threatening and comical;
- Bonnie Gordon-Lucas shows two 3-D Collage, watercolor, and bead original illustrations created for her children’s books. “Good Bye Green Bagel” depicts the punctum of the story: “Batchelder Street was lit with the eerie flashing lights of ambulances and police cars. The apartment door was wide open. Grandma sat in the living room, reading from her SIDDUR prayer book. Grandpa lay on the bedroom floor. Policemen and panicked paramedics were everywhere. I knew, from the lonely feeling in my heart, my Grandfather was dead.”;
- Dragons have populated lore across cultures from ancient to modern-day and have variously signified benevolent protective creatures to fiery creatures who provoke and warn of chaos. Susan Snyder depicts a friendly, almost puppy-like Italian variety on her ceramic platter, Michal Ann Carley references a cautionary bestiary from late French Renaissance illuminated manuscript marginalia in her steel “Fragile Beast”, and Marc Tschida shows a heraldic protective dragon in puzzle-pieced wood.
The exhibit is free and open to the public.
WHERE:
By Hand Gallery
812.334.3255
Hours: Monday – Saturday 10:00am – 5:30pm
By Hand Gallery, Inside Fountain Square Mall
101 W Kirkwood Ave, Suite 109
Bloomington, IN 47404
CONTACT:
Michal Ann Carley, Exhibit Curator, carleymichal@gmail.com, 920-418-1949
David Sloma, Gallery Coordinator at By Hand Gallery, <managerbyhand@gmail.com>