It came to me of its own accord, like many wonderful things in life that just show up. It was 1993 and I was living in Roma then. I was looking for a good book to read and a friend placed it in my hands. The evocative title stirred an emotion in me, and the resonance did not stop there. The book, written by the visionary scholar, Riane Eisler, led me through an intuitive process of discovery whereby I build up layers and scrape them away to discover what is there or what seeks to emerge. I now view my own work as similar to that of an archaeological digger. Analogous to archaeology, what’s buried beneath the surface when dug up will reveal something about history, but then going deeper into my own subconscious, I have discovered that what emerges are primordial forms inherent in the earth itself. I then create from the discovery of what surfaces.
The Chalice & The Blade has been a revolutionary work, reexamining and offering new interpretation of early history. “Eisler powerfully reconstructs the Goddess culture and the global shift to patriarch, drawing evidence from literature, art, sociology, archaeology, politics, and economics-and synthesizing prehistory, history, present, and future into an awesome and convincing view of the human condition.” She does this with compassion, passion and poetry, inviting you into a world which is not only factual, but where there is room for the creation of the future, essential to the evolution of humanity.
Through this journey I have come to know Riane personally; she is one of those precious jewels in my life, and I am pleased to say that she will be present at my exhibition, The Song of Memory, on September 26th, along with Angeles Arrien (please check back to read more about her at another time) at CIIS, The California Institute of Integral Studies, in San Francisco. Riane, Angeles and I will take part in a three-way dialogue regarding art, transformation, woman and the spiritual that weaves us all together. The exhibition is inspired by The Chalice & The Blade, and includes paintings that span a decade.
Please drop by if you are in San Francisco then.
Posted by Barbara at July 1, 2003 11:40 PM | TrackBack