Eleanor Hannan - KNOWING

The Craft Council of BC’s gallery is a very small space, but Eleanor Hannan’s exhibition “Knowing” fills it to overflowing with image, metaphor and myth. This is not to say the work clutters the space, on the contrary, the embroidered works –no larger than a sheet of paper– travel around the walls in a shimmering line. Hannan has more than illustrated Elizabeth Dancoe’s short and witty story, she has built on it; the images are evocative and often cryptic. To describe the story even more briefly: a woman lives in a state of discontent; she is restless, searching. During a quiet moment, she perceives a fork in the road, so to speak. She follows it and the adventure transforms her.

Hannan works with a restricted palette of white, black, soft green, salty red threads and faint washes of paint. She literally draws with the sewing machine, outlining a fingernail or the pattern in the foam on a cappuccino. Her stitches swarm together to describe the density of shadows. The result is expressive, active, confident. The small images convey space, weight and ambiguous emotions that crowd together in as many layers as the stitches. At the outset, the central character seems utterly fatigued –she almost disappears in the gloom of the “unpopular cafe”; but then she dances gleefully at the foot of a strange, electric tornado or spreads her arms like a flying superhero. Not easy things to conjure with a single filament.

Central to the project is the performative act of raising the skirt –Ana Suromai in ancient Greek. The story nods to the myth of Demeter. While searching for her daughter she is given shelter in a home. Baubo, a female servant, is touched by Demeter’s sorrow and flips up her skirt to make the great goddess laugh. This gesture is also said to “cow bulls.” At first I imagined a rather hard-line feminist ending to the little tale, yet as the character progresses and develops, I am surprised. Indeed, she raises her skirt to a bull. The poor creature is bowled over, hooves in the air and, when he finally rights himself, she climbs on his back, her skirt skimming her thighs. In the next image, the bull’s head is on the figure wearing the skirt and the woman’s head is on the galloping beast. In it, I read that the act of exposing oneself (not in the sense of the pervert in the park) and becoming vulnerable leads to mutual understanding and momentum.

The exhibit includes a wealth of support material presented in an unobtrusive manner. Dancoes reads the story, sotto voce, in a recording. A small digital photo frame features text and images that present information on the extensive research done by both Hannan and Dancoes into the mythology and spiritualism permeating the work. A fat little book features “sketches” –hand embroidery in black thread on canvas squares where Hannan has explored imagery and text. Considering the time invested in each cloth page, the images certainly have the immediate, experimental feel of drawings.
The final sentence of the story spins off the wall in a slightly larger piece that sports a strange maroon shape. In reading the support material, I learn that the shape is the hoof-print from a real bull. It is not clear whether Hannan had to lift her skirts to tame him, but in the photo, he seems calm and obliging. Hand embroidered imagery and text circles the hoofprint; a woman’s figure in a red skirt strides into the distance. She has inventiveness, courage, and maturity as the letters swirl around her: “I don’t know, I’d be content with a small herd, maybe 18, a few colourful skirts and a red petticoat.”

The works are, of course, best seen ‘live’, but one can also visit:
www.1001funnythingswithaskirt.blogspot.com/

Knowing

KNOWING
The story

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.

Persephone

Anyway, Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. This whole story starts (about the skirts) because Persephone (in her loveliness and perfect innocence) was out picking myrtle...

about Still Waves, Defy Death (and the other figures with skirts raised facing into the page)

A friend recently asked me " How can raising your skirts still waves". Such a good question, the basic idea is that raising the skirts exposes the source of all life.

It is a symbolic gesture of course with ancient origins, but the essence of this whole story is the power in that recognition; the gesture exposes the source of all life. Now what is that about? Does that heal? is it simply an expression of creative power? is it useful in this world or does it merely confuse?

I wanted to include here a quote from one of our main sources " The Metamorphosis of Baubo" by Winifred Milius Lubell.

" I think it would be a sad mistake for us to lose sight of Baubo and her icon, the vulva, to relinquish her playful joking, to let her slide out of Western consciousness into scholarly obscurity or into the netherworld of demons and pornography. Her strangeness to modern eyes warns of the danger of her loss. But Baubo is a survivor. She has constantly refused to stay put in a single or confining role of womanhood. She is irreverent she is sacred. She represents those revered sexual and procreative feminine energies that merge to form the nurturers, the transformers and the balancers without whom civilization cannot survive. Baubo's arresting gesture of exposure holds the clue to understanding all the metamophoses of this complex and enigmantic figure."

Art Statement for show

The work for 1001 Funny Things began 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.

In total we have worked together on approximately 10 stories, three of these are forming the basis for this exhibit. They are Lunch, She Who Walks and Knowing.

The images and stories are based on the ancient, mysterious gesture known as “Ana Suromai”, literally “to raise the skirt”. The origins of this intriguing gesture come to light in the Demeter, Persephone story from Ancient Greece. The gesture haunts so much of subsequent mythology and story that it can hardly be ignored.

Ana Suromai (“to raise the skirt”) was an incitement to transformation. And while its spiritual implications were deep, it encouraged laughter as a conduit to renewal. It resonates in fables in the guise of mysterious things concealed beneath a woman’s skirt and continues into modern times with the ever-present and compelling image of Marilyn Monroe’s skirts billowing over a subway grate. As anyone who as ever work a skirt will tell you it is a spontaneous gesture.

My work for the series includes drawings, paintings and embroideries as well as digital images that are made to resemble embroidery and traditional stitchery.
For me this work reflects my intense emotional, expressive involvement in cloth, in sewing and stitching cloth, in interpreting cloth in paint and in pure, unadulterated, long hand stitching, the stitch as a teller of tales taking in and speaking with each breath, with each passing of thread through cloth.

Though the images reflect the humour and magic of Elizabeth’s stories, it was the sharing of our respective experiencing of the gesture of “Ana Suromai” that inevitably inspired the revelations that inform the visual notions that run through both text and image. We initially worked simultaneously on the evolution of one set of image and story then she wrote for my drawings, as we evolved Elizabeth wrote and I interpreted. Part of our desire for this exhibit it to share the methods and means of this ongoing, productive collaboration.

A few things you should know

A few things you should know before the show:

A long time ago Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was abducted by Hades while out picking Myrtle. Demeter , beside herself with grief, went searching for her. Demeter was goddess of the earth and when the earth goddess grieves things get serious; no water, no crops, no food, no wine....

Demeter wandered searching and she came to the home of the King and Queen of Eleusis where it was her intention to rest (in disguise).

Baubo, a servant in the household, felt deep compassion for Demeter and after having given her as a special drink made from barley danced for her wildly, raising her skirt, in a wild gesture where she raised her skirt, it was said that the gesture made Demeter laugh (uproariously) bringing her out of her grief and giving her hope. The gesture is called “Ana Suromai”- to raise the skirts- the gesture is the basis for these stories.

Note: the “1001 funny things” refers to the “too numerous to count” incidents, stories and myths throughout story telling history that have as there source and meaning this powerful gesture. Elizabeth and I (early on in our work on these stories) discovered the four on which this exhibit is based : Cow Bulls, Still Waves, Blind the Devil, Defy Death.

Elizabeth's Ana Suromai

Lifting Our Skirts
Background information

Setting: Greece
Time: lost in the mists BCE
Event: Demeter is raped by Zeus gives birth to Persephone.
Persephone is raped by Hades (with the support of Zeus) gives birth to Iaachus
The Eleusinian Mysteries follow
Involving the pivotal act of ana suromai – the lifting of the skirt

The mythic moment of ana suromai:

The Goddess is laden/troubled/despairing. Her daughter has been ravished/raped/ abducted and her rage has brought an end to productivity/fertility/invention. The world trembles at her vengeance. All fear catastrophe. They claim this very thing has happened before.

But by the wild fig tree/poor peasant hut/crossroads, a hearty serving maid/pregnant wife/ wild woman waits. She waits, her desire restrained/tucked/concealed, secret beneath her skirts. She waits and so is there when the Goddess passes.

The maid/wife/woman throws/falls/dances herself onto her back, her thighs spread and beckoning. She murmurs/whispers/laughs lewdly.

An intoxicating whiff of desire escapes the Goddess. She marvels as this bubble of life force erupts from the blight of her mourning. She wonders at the maid/wife/woman’s rashness: how can the mortal know it is good that looks her in the eye? The maid/wife/woman winks provocatively. Should it matter?

The Goddess finds her grief/despair/rage relieved infinitesimally, but it is enough. Possibility has reinvented itself in the distraction, whispers of negotiation and compromise have been impressed on her divine ear. She walks
in reverie, her passage marked by bounty, abundance escaping her skirts.

The Exhibit

In order to present this complex material so that it's comprehensible and can be enjoyed it will take this form : we have used as a start point four of the powers of a woman with her skirt raised (from ancient sources), they are Cow Bulls, Still Waves, Blind or melt the Devil, Defy Death the core of everything is Defy Death.

We have also used the two ideas of "ana suromai" (the raised skirt gesture) and the myths of what is under a woman's skirts (such as is represented in the Sheba story below {older post}).

Some of our main resources

Here is our basic resource list for the mythology from which we have built the stories and the imagery.

Winifred Lubel: The Metamorphosis of Baubo
Carl Keneryi: Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother And Daughter
Marina Warner: The Beast and The Blonde
Robert Graves: Greek Myths
Robert Graves: The White Goddess
Rian Eisler: The Chalice and the Blade
Nor Hall: The Moon and The Virgin: Reflections on the Archetypal Feminine

Bridge of Jests

I am working on this image called the Bridge of Jests. In many forms, this is a digital collage from an original drawing.

At the Eleusinian Mysteries the Bridge of Jests provided the transition point between regular life and the place of ritual for the participants. The participants arrived at Eleusis after a solemn procession of several days during which they left behind their daily concerns.
As the participants approached the place of ritual they had to cross a bridge on which was performed the ana suromia gesture. This had the purpose of provoking ribald laughter following the solemn walk, preparing the participants for the many and varied complementary transformational experiences of the Mysteries.

a dream; Baubo

This is from a dream I had about the extraordinary character Baubo.
If you are new to this blog read down to find out more about Baubo.

"She" from the story Lunch

You will see She as a large black thread on canvas hand embroidery at the show.

The story Voyeur

Here is another story by Elizabeth from our collection. It is based on the idea that one of the powers of a woman with her skirt raised was to frighten (or melt), (or blind) the devil. There were a few thoughts from ancient sources on the power of a woman with her skirt raised.
Here is a basic list: cow bulls, still waves, melt the devil,defy death.

We have focused on this collection of ideas for the work in the upcoming show.

VOYEUR

It was a dark and stormy you-know and I was stretched out over some very pricey construct of rose thorn, restless doves and froth of the sea, looking to reconstruct the pride in my adolescent swing, hips that nestled my butterfly perched on orange blossoms - ah, memory! - hoping it would drape like mirror’s sand, sway over my trembling wrinkled silk, my shaking mane and take in all the best men I have known. Preoccupied with such musings, I did not notice at my window the silencing wind rippling over a falcon’s shadow, erasing its skinny arrested moans. I did not notice ravening eyes transforming my rediscovered blossoms into a bread box bursting to be brunched. When, in a great torrent, little rain women crumbled the blood between the brick in the walls of my humble-but-currently-being-remodeled tenement, the surface made slick, my industrious contemplation was pierced with a cry and dastardly tumble of disquieting turbulence. Looking out, wondering what accident of nature worried my scaffold, sulfur burned at my nostrils and blue smoke rose to obscure the pattern melting into the freshly landscaped lawn. I considered contacting officers of the law, deeply, for a few moments, after which I returned to my so rudely interrupted reveries and chef d’oeuvre.

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 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.

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.

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.