"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.