|
|
|
|
|
Woody
This is pastel on paper. I did this my first year at Howard. It was kind of a down period. I was going for a look of serenity, tranquility, quietness. Purple skin seemed appropriate. |
Anger and Sadness
Pencil on paper. Again, I don't mean to depress anybody, but I really like the way this one came out. 1990 or '91. |
|
|
|
Reciprocity
Ink on paper. First or second year at Howard. At the time I was studying several old African cultures and religions, Egypt in particular. This piece has to do with the connectedness of life, of us and the rest of natural world. This was and is a prominent theme of many cultures and religions. You'll notice the ahnks, an African symbol of life. As I underdstand it, the loop of the ahnk represents female genitalia. the handle is a phallus/male genitalia. The symbol regognizes both the male and female role in the creation of life. |
The Source
Ink on paper. Again, this piece is similar in style and content to Reciprocity. With this piece I wanted to extend the idea of a culture that sees itself as connected to the environment to a more concrete set of values and actions. How should a society that claims these values dispose fo its waste? How should it harness or regulate its technology? Its consumption? Are we indeed isolated from the rest of nature or are we connected to and dependent it?
|
|
|
|
Ma-at
Pastel on paper. First year at Howard. Ma-at was the Egyptian goddess who represented truth and justice. She wore a feather as part of hear head-dress. As the day of judgement story goes, once you die, your heart is placed on a scale against this feather. The more bad things you have done in life, the heavier your heart is. If it tips the scale, it is fed to one of the alligator dieties and your soul goes to bad side of the tracks. If your heart is as light as the feather, you've led a pretty decent life and you become an honored ancestor. The feather is used because it represents the absence of weight, or pressure, or temptation to do the right thing when faced with a moral dilemma. The pure of heart are supposed to be able to do the right thing even with the weight of the world tells them not to. |
Life and Death
Pastel on paper. First or second year at Howard. There are many creation stories that view life and death as a never ending cycle. The idea for this picture came from a Joseph Campbell book I was reading at the time. One creation story had a bunch of gods who were, of course, immortal. They had grown bored with life and its static, unchanging nature. One day, driven mad by this static existence, one of the gods killed another god. This death began the cycle of life and death, of mortality, of finite existence. The gods, now mortal, found great beauty and joy in the now always changing natural world. The cycle is reflected in interconnectedness of all life, in the death of one animal or plant being responsible for the life of another. In this picture, the snake is drawing its own blood, sustaining its life with its own consumption and death.
|
|
|
|
Kaballa
As I understand it ,Kaballa is a philosophical tradition that arose in the region of ancient Egypt. It was practiced in the late days of the ancient Egyptian empire and the early days of the Hebrew culture. It survives as part of the Hebrew religious texts. It attempts to provide a model for the human soul/spirit that actually paralells the human society at large and the natural world. Each sphere represents an attribute of the human spirit, the character of a society/nation, or a force in nature. Each aspects needs to be developed in ordeer to provide balance in the natural and social world. The goal for the individual is to develope each attribute of his spirit/ soul so that he/she will be able to meet all of the challenges of life. The more developed person is closer to the ideal state of perfection, or godliness. In brief the bottom spere is the physical or gross world while the top is unformed substance that makes up the gross reality. the opposing spheres represent male and female, synthetic versus destructive/analytic ability, and harshness/discipline/rule enforcement versus idealism/goal setting/rule making. The male and female are down-to-earth symbols of the more abstract concepts represented. |
|
|
