THE STORY OF THE WALKING PRAYERS – 01/19/2007
November 15, 2011
Walking PrayersThe mid 1990’s found me living on Guemes Island in the San Juan’s of Washington State. I was going through some big changes that were occurring in my life then. During that time I had opportunity t meet artist Sharles of Loveland, Colorado. We had exchanged some small works in sculpture and had them in one another’s studio.
Sometime in 1998 I was talking with Sharles and he spoke to me about a spiritual visitation that he had with a Native American being whose spirit came to visit with him in his studio. The guide told Sharles not about himself in particular but asked instead about me and the sculpture that was with Sharles of a wolf and raven. He told Sharles that I had left off my work with woodland spirits and that there was yet more for me to do.
With that information I seriously took upon myself the need to make walks into the woods and visit the places that I had been neglecting both in the physical as well as the spiritual planes. These walks became meditations. I recognized the essence of what I was doing and before long a new aspect of me came into focus. I was very specifically a woodcarver at that time and in the woods I began to see images of woodland nymphs. These were seen in the crotch wood of trees that had been fallen by winter winds. These were often young trees that had been growing upward into the sun, their branches reaching out and up and their leaves stretching to see the light.
What had happened was that these trees now were inverted by me the artist. I took the trunks and inverted them so that they became standing nymphs, stripped of their bark down to smooth virgin like smooth wood that when revealed one saw the perfect images of female virginal shapes and sometimes hermaphydite images metamorphosising in these forms. I then would sculpt very little to reveal the female form of hips and breasts and then up into wings that were unfolding like a birthing nymph unfolding her wings for the first time. These would then be placed in groups together or as two or three dancing with each other.
Back to Articles
Leave a Reply