Are the stories relevant?

I am back at work on 1001 Funny Things, I was working away today and thought about the issue of the relevancy of the stories. Elizabeth's stories encourage us through really provocative humour to explore ourselves to the very depths of our desires. Working sentence by sentence by sentence on the images I am becoming intimate with the meaning and let's call it the "scape" viewable from each created verbal image and idea.
Just to remind any followers of the blog we have based the stories and the images on the character of Baubo and her antecedents.

Knowing

Here is the story called Knowing, this is one of our collection. I am including one of my first sketches for this story.

KNOWING

I always knew that one day I would find myself somewhere else. My therapist assured me it was a resistance to commitment but I continued to save for that eagerly awaited moment, content to deny myself luxuries she implied were an insane depravation. Well, that day finally arrived when, on my fortieth birthday against all odds in an unpopular cafe on Main, an abandoned brochure attracted my attention over cappuccino: KINESTHETICS, KUNDALINI AND THE KABALA ON KNOSSOS FOR UNDER $300 A DAY and I had my very first vin-dit (a very personal shove in the direction of my zah-mah-ki-bo, remember Bokonon?).

The process must remain secret (though the weather’s been great) but these three things may be revealed: rather than uncoiling spiritual energy up the spinal channel to the radiant thousand petaled lotus, as per usual, I have been directed to master unfurling the curled kundalini OUT; I have rediscovered horns, crescent moons, sacred Yonies and the mystic in mathematics: 25,920 (2+5+9+2+0=18, 1+8=9, 9 3=3) makes my heart beat faster (43200 beats in twelve hours and 25920 60=432, 432,000: the number of years reckoned to the Kali Yuga, wow!); and this morning in the pale absinthe dawn of the new moon, I lifted my skirts and cowed the bull, my bare feet wound themselves in the curls at his loins and I rode him, the power in his shanks shifting between my thighs - well, let’s just say life hasn’t been the same since. And thanks to high interest no risk futures I can pursue my dream; I don’t know, I’d be content with a small herd, maybe 18, a few colourful skirts and a red petticoat.

She I, II, IIi

These acrylic paintings are "She" from the story Lunch. I would like to tell you more about their evolution, coming soon....

What inspires me about this work?

I wanted to begin to answer the question what inspires me about this work?
First, I love Elizabeth's stories and I am fascinated (as we both are) by the richness of the source material. Really one could work from this material for ever.

Elizabeth's stories are as poignant as they are funny and brilliantly composed (I promise, soon I will include more) and I kind of enjoy not so much illustrating them as reading rereading listening and responding to the qualities in them and allowing the imagery to draw itself. My hand just draws her stuff really effortlessly(almost).

The depth of the history of these original stories keeps me desiring to explore them in images until I find my own answers. They are for all of us, they teach and they express and they play with our imaginations and they heal.

But they also offer profound truths. The essence of all the stories has to do with the healing power of the feminine. To me (to us) this is a crucial component of this whole body of work. As we keep our dedication to its evolution and development as artists in the atmosphere of a troubled world in need of healing we have this in mind. More about this as we go. Comments desired.

Elizabeth and I have been collecting work for over 12 years we will continue to do so.

Also, (for me personally) the power of the skirt as icon, image, expression, my love of the skirt as an imaginative transformative garment has been part of my vocabulary as an artist and my iconography forever. It is simply always there.

15 years ago I created a show called My Mother's Skirts which was an exploration of the profound impact of remembered gestures of my mother in her skirts.

Here is one of the images from that show called The Skirt as a Barrier. These are mainly scratch drawings, a technique I basically modified for my own uses from silverpoint (an ancient for of drawing on gesso with silver).

The story of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon

Okay get comfortable, tonight I am going to tell you the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. This story (one of our favourites in the long lexicon of "raising the skirt" stories)refers to the "ana suromai" in a very charming way.

King Solomon invited the great and reportedly very beautiful Queen of Sheba to come and pay him a visit. She was on the road for seven years (so the story goes). In that long wait time King Solomon overheard things about her and became ever more anxious about meeting the great Queen. One thing that people said was that she was the devil and that the evidence of that was that she had goats legs. Although stunning to look at, seductive as well as brilliant she accomplished all this as a result of her devilish connections.

Solomon had to know the truth about the Queen before she got too close. He had a lot of time to plan and this is what the clever king did. He had constructed in his receiving room a long narrow pool. Solomon foresaw that Sheba would have to lift her skirts to cross the pool before she reached the throne to greet and pay homage to him (apparently no slouch himself). He tried out the pool trick on everyone, every single non suspecting female in the court at the time. Yup, they all raised their skirts to cross the pool as planned!!!! That accomplished, he fought a few wars, gave really really good advice and waited.

Finally the day came when Sheba and her extensive retinue arrived in Solomon's kingdom. She was impressive as she rode into town, as stunning as they said, skirt right down to the ground.

When she arrived at court and was led into the receiving room she was amused to find the lovely long pool but she felt delighted and relieved as well as the journey had been hot. So,helped by one of her attending ladies, (Solomon holding his breath) she raised her skirts to make the descent into the shallow pool.

Solomon nearly wept for joy.... the gorgeous Queen did not have goats' legs after all she simply had very hairy legs! Solomon welcomed her into his kingdom and (as we all know) into his heart and eventually into his bed (but not for a long, long time) and in the meantime, while patiently waiting he wrote her tons of love poems (check the Bible)and... and.... and.... the most charming aspect of this whole story he invented(just for her)a depilatory cream. Forget about the Songs of Solomon that is love!!!!!

the Story Lunch

The work for Lunch and the entire set of stories for 1001 Funny Things began approximately 10 years ago as research on the history and mythology of the skirt.

Writer Elizabeth Dancoes has done brief, original stories based on our research but in contemporary idiom.

Lunch is one of approximately 10 stories with images. The entire set of stories comes under the heading of 1001 Funny Things you can do with a Skirt.

The images and stories are based on the tradition of “Ana Suromai”. The origins of this ancient tradition are present in the myths of Baubo and Demeter. And the gesture itself “Ana Suromai”, literally to raise the skirt, extends forward into later Greek stories and into the stories of Pliny and Plutarch.

The gesture has resonance in more modern myths generated from the tales of the hidden things underneath a woman’s skirt. And even into this century with the ever-present image of Marilyn Monroe with her skirts billowing over a subway grate.

My work for this collaborative project includes drawings and embroideries as well as digital images that are made to resemble embroidery and traditional stitchery.

The project was originally presented in print form in postcard format with one of the images on the front and the entire story on the back. These were placed among marketing cards in racks around the city of Vancouver in the year 2000 with the full participation of the marketing company. They were free for the taking along with the other advertising cards and appeared anonymously.

The story in page form as it appears here was first exhibited in 2002 in a show called If Images Speak a Thousand Words.

Lunch

She slides into one of those invalid-blue discomfort chairs
under ‘Gate 21’ where her future lay refueling
a tiny brown paper lunch-bag perched in her diminutive lap.
I admire the distinctiveness with which she slips
from this unlikely sack a half dozen oysters
artfully arranged on seaweed and how
with the gusto of a gossip savoring overheard conversations
she slurps them into mollusk oblivion.

I pinch my inner arm.She presses her tongue along the corners of her mouth
and her skirts apparently without her assistance
appear to rise and crowd her thighs.

Certain that I am deceived by a trick of terminal light
I stare as from the worn and torn receptacle housing the gutted bivalves
a platter of tossed greens emerges coated with crumbled chèvre
and a tasteful sprinkling of fresh raspberries.

I determine I am witnessing the impossible

She pulls out a seven inch tower of Mocha Fantasy
when her flight is called nibbling off a small chunk
with unconcealed regret she replaces her fantastic post-repast indulgence
into its chimeric culinary bindle and as she takes her place
in the slow moving line a gust of air conditioned fate
holds her self-determined skirts poised like a hula-hoop
about her rolling derrière.

Now her plane is not my plane so I do not try to follow
my feet firmly planted on the ground. Later
I will be sure so sure
that I have been privy to some mystery
that I will begin buying tickets cheap ones,
at first, to nearby locations just to roam the terminal
hoping she will reappear later still
I will begin to fly farther and farther
spending more and more time in terminals around the globe

When I find her again I won’t hesitate
I’ll follow, find a way
to lay my head in her magnanimous skirts
and perhaps never return.

-Elizabeth Dancoes

About Lunch

A set of 23 machine embroideries illustrating the story called Lunch, one of the stories from the 1001 Funny Things you can do with a Skirt collection. The project is a collaboration between me and the writer Elizabeth Dancoes. This first piece was completed in 2002 and has since been exhibited in several venues in different ways including as an anonymous Street Card and at the Grace Barrand Design Center in London

Some things I would like to add to begin to fill you in about the meaning and imagery of this work.

The images and stories are based on the tradition of "Ana Suromai". The origin of this ancient and mysterious tradition are present in the myths of Baubo and Demeter and are there described in the Eleusinian Mysteries. The gesture itself,
literally " to raise the skirt", extends forward into later Greek stories and into the stories of Pliny and Plutarch. (Eventually I will tell you the skirt raising story of David and the Queen of Sheba).

The gesture has resonance in more modern myths generated from the tales of the hidden things beneath a woman's skirt. And even into this century with the ever present image of Marylin Monroe with her skirts billowing over a subway grate.

About the beginnings of 1001 Funny Things and the skirt references

The images that will be posted to this blog are all based on the theme of Baubo, the dynamic mythological figure associated with the ancient Greek stories of Demeter and Persephone. She is known to have made the great earth goddess Demeter laugh by dancing before her with her skirt raised.

The Defy Death images marked the start of the body of work. The work began as drawings and will become machine and hand embroideries as well as paintings, prints and interdisciplinary work.

This work and these stories continues to occupy a significant part of my art practice. I want to share it with you.

Today I was working on the drawings as embroideries. All these drawings are based on the original stories of my collaborator Elizabeth Dancoes.

1001 Funny Things postings

I am beginning a blog following the process of developing the work for 1001Funny Things you can do with a Skirt.