Knowing page 1

Knowing page 1
I always knew

Knowing page 2

Knowing page 2
Resistance to commitment

Knowing page 3

Knowing page 3
BUT

Knowing page 4

Knowing page 4
I continued to save

Knowing page 5

Knowing page 5
content to deny myself luxuries

Knowing page 6

Knowing page 6
she implied

Knowing page 7

Knowing page 7
an insane depravation

Knowing page 8

Knowing page 8
Well, that day finally arrived

Knowing page 9

Knowing page 9
in an unpopular cafe

Knowing page 10

Knowing page 10
an abandoned brochure

Knowing page 11

Knowing page 11
KINESTHETICS, KUNDALINI AND THE KABBALA ON KNOSSOS

Knowing page 12

Knowing page 12
I had my very first vin-dit, a very personal shove

Knowing page 13

Knowing page 13
process must remain secret, weather's been great

Knowing page 14

Knowing page 14
these three things may be revealed

Knowing page 15

Knowing page 15
rather than uncoiling spiritual energy up

Knowing page 16

Knowing page 16
I've been directed to master

Knowing page 17

Knowing page 17
unfurling

Knowing page 18

Knowing page 18
the curled kundalini

Kowing page 19

Kowing page 19
OUT

Knowing page 20

Knowing page 20
I have rediscovered horns, crescent moons, sacred Yonies

Knowing page 21

Knowing page 21
and the mystic in mathematics: 25,920

Knowing page 22

Knowing page 22
makes my heart beat faster

Knowing page 23

Knowing page 23
I lifted my skirts and I cowed the bull

Knowing page 24

Knowing page 24
I rode him

Knowing page 25

Knowing page 25
Life hasn't been the same

Knowing page 26

Knowing page 26
I can pursue my dream

Knowing, finale

Knowing, finale
I'd be content with a small herd

Monday, June 17, 2013

Art statement for 1001 Funny Things......

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.