Through Our Pain We Know Love

Through Our Pain We Know Love is an art therapy piece that deals with my tumultuous relationship with my mother.

The womb shape represents our shared Endometriosis. It is on fire in the way religious painting often portray burning hearts. Black wool has been felted over the red wool base to show pain and toxicity. Endo often manifests as purple balls and creamy masses and are represented in the piece. Small mirrors covered in wool represent the estimation that 1 in 10 women actually suffer from Endo but do not know it as it is a misunderstood and often under-diagnosed auto-immune disorder.

Barbed wire shows both the emotional and physical pain that my mother and I have felt over our relationship and Endometriosis. Black scars with red stitches cover the piece representing both scars of surgery and emotional scars. Eighteen nails sticking through the piece represent the pain of the eighteen years my mother and I lived together. The figure in the piece is actually two figures. The mother figure is below being split open as she gives birth to the daughter. The daughter is on top holding her empty womb open because I am childfree. The daughter figure cries tears over the toxicity and negativity in the relationship. The largest nail is driven through the figures representing the painful surgery many women, including my mother, have to try to cure Endometriosis.

The dimensions are 27″ H x 48″ W x 8″ D.

Green Man

Green Man is my interruption of the Pagan Green Man. The dimensions are 46″ H x 37″ W x 4″ D.

Thebes helped me with the eyes. The eyes had to be male so they are his eyes. We took the photos with his 8×10 camera. He developed the negatives and printed the photographs as cyanotypes.

The base is felted wool. I knit various leaves handsewed them onto the form. The mouth is needle felted. Bits of fleece are lighted felted between leaves.

The eye photographs are behind glass. This shows viewers their own reflection. Both the human eyes and reflection represent that humans are intrinsically a part of nature even when we think we have removed ourselves.

The Green Man was featured in the 2010 Beyond The Fringe show. It was also featured in the 2009 edition of Chokecherries.

An Arrangement Of Elements

An Arrangement Of Elements pays tribute to the five elements-Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit. A goddess is portrayed in each element.

For Earth a goddess is shown in the form of a flowering weeping willow:

For Air a goddess is shown in flight amongst the stars:

For Fire a fire goddess is shown blowing fireballs. This goddess was inspired by Goddess Pele.

For Water a fish goddess is shown swimming in the sea:

For Spirit a goddess is shown in the middle of a flower shape. She is at the center of creation.

The four elements around Spirit are show in moon shapes, an important symbol in the Pagan faith. Other Pagan symbols such as spirals and stars appear throughout the work.

For this piece I spun several of the yarns. Techniques used were needle felting, embroidery and hand sewing.

An Arrangement Of Elements was featured in the 2009 Beyond The Fringe art show.

The dimensions are 58″ H x 58″ W x 1/4″ D