Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Call and Response

She, who sits in the gardens
Friends hearken to Your voice
Enable me to hear You
Song of Songs 8:13

Call and Response 
Acid-etched copper with ink oxides, mounted on mahogany
19"x21"

After coming out of the acid, it took some time to re-find and polish the intricate arabesque patterns.  I had no sense of how to proceed from there.  About a week later my hand picked up a sanguine ink pen which began outlining the forms around that very busy, verdant outer world of AsiahIt looked like the inside of the design wanted a color so I began with phithalo blue (don't you  just love the name of these colors?), which also moved into the next inner layer of Yetzirah. The flow was right but the color of the Asiah level was not right.  I remembered my heat gun and blasted the inks that were laid down to keep them in place, then overlaid the blue of Asiah with a verdant  leaf green. That was "it".  Here's how it started to look:


Wonderful.  I also began to see the emerging color relationship between the flow of worlds all embedded in the world of Atzilut, the copper spaciousness.

As you can see, the points of light encircling the center (the world of Briah) are outlined in sanguine, then Briah itself is saturated in sanguine, with the letters outlined in phithalo blue.
A bit hard to tell, you'll have to trust me on that.  I really was there.


After a good flaming came the piercing of the lights.  It all began to move.

A subtler reflective glow comes from brushing Everbrite sealant over all but the Atzilut expanse. 

There is much for me to learn and feel around this illumination.  The original Hebrew words can be unraveled in a myriad of ways.  I have placed it now above my kitchen table to feel more of its Call and Response.

As always, happy for any response of your own, either personally or in the comments of this blog.



Sunday, May 15, 2016

The Process of coming to light

Shams Enlightened  17.5 H x 33.3 W 

This is my most recent illumination. Its title is Shams Enlightened.

I have taken a few photographs at various stages of the process in order to provide a glimpse into what goes into the creation of a copperwork illumination.




Above you see a piece of copper sheet that I have cut approximately into form with an open throat shear.  The pattern has already been transferred onto the copper and the pattern scribed in using a sharp stylus. Asphaltum (liquid asphalt) has been applied to the areas that are to remain high - that is, not to be eaten down by the acid (I use ferric perchloride to do the deed).




Here the copper has been through the acid etching bath (around 4 hours) as well as the solvent bath to soften and remove the asphaltum (between 5-7 days).  I have also begun some polishing and even begun adding some blue to the tree to make the flowing geometries and calligraphy stand out.  You can also see a portion of the original pattern that I transferred on the far right towards the top. That pen looking object to the right of the copperwork is the stylus used to both scratch the pattern into the copper and to bring up thinner areas of the design, especially lettering, during polishing. For thicker areas, such as the petals, I use a fiberglass pen for polishing.





Here's a closer look to see the petals and internal sunflower geometry coming alive through polishing and the sepal natural patina amplified with a coating of shellac. There is also the polishing and outlining of the lettering.  You can see the right side of the image is still in its original condition from the acid and solvent baths.



In this image you can see the right side tree brought up with polishing and the amplifying effects of engraving over the lettering with a wriggler (with the black handle) seen in the picture.



Here the internal sunflower cutwork was accomplished with a scroll saw at its lowest speed setting with a very fine metal blade  and filed with needle files; the cutwork around the top perimeter of the trees was accomplished with a jeweler's saw.(If you check out the banner on my Facebook page you will see examples of those tools used in other illuminations, facebook.com/studiomoresca). Here you can also see the outlines of the sepals have been engraved to give them more definition and coloring has been added to the tree form on the right.  Framing is all that is left to do.  From inception to completion Shams Enflowered took ~ 3 months to come to light.





Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Enlettered Essence

"The Holy Essence of Blessing transformed itself into letters in order to take up residence within the underworlds"
Midrash Tanchuma, Naso 16

This latest illumination is about being as "enletterment". Life is encoded, as we know.  From the standpoint of Hebraic Mystical Tradition, the Hebrew letters themselves .are the matrix of mattering.  All aspects of Life are embedded with a resonant frequency, a song cycle.  

It was wonderful to find that the central spinning geometry precisely incorporated all 22 Hebrew letters beginning with Alef in the center.
work in progress

Two bees find there place to imbibe Divine nectar from the flowers.

I have the sense that the spheres on either side are the sefirot of cHesed and Gevura - "fluid benevolence" and "restraint,"  harmonizing the elements.

I thought of this at first as a threshold piece, something in a garden, maybe a library's garden.  The vertigris patina is so subtly lovely however, that I'd rather see it a bit more protected.  Still as threshold sema, perhaps, but at the covered entrance to a home or a library.  I even think it would make an exquisite crown to Hekhál or Aron Hakodesh (Torah Ark) within an intimate setting, or as a focus piece on a mantle or within a circumscribed sacred space.

The size is relatively small - 25" wide by 14" high by 1" deep.  Lighting from behind would amplify the swirling pattern of the glass plate behind the central geometry and the textured glass behind the two sefirot.

Acid-etched copperwork illumination with cutwork backed in textured glass. Letters are engraved.  Framed in cedar.



hebrew art for sale

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Creating Transitional Entrances

A Pattern Language, a book that addresses the human needs of public and private spaces, speaks to the need for transitional entrances as a space to leave behind one's exterior, streetwise self in order to enter a more interior, personal frame of mind. "If the transition is too abrupt there is no feeling of arrival, and the inside of the building fails to be an inner sanctum."

Creating a transitional entrance can be accomplished in many ways, by marking a path which connects the street to the entrance with "a change of light, a change of sound, a change of direction, a change of surface, a change of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view".


An approach that I have taken to mark transitional spaces is the Threshold Sema.  


Until this morning I was really at a loss as to what word to use to express what I had in mind. Emblem, motto, banner, focus, sign... it's all of those things.  I began exploring the etymology of each to see if I could find a word with the appropriately fitting nuance.   I was led to the word "semantic" (via "sign") which stems from the Greek semantikos "significant," likewise semainein "to show by sign, signify, point out, indicate by a sign," both deriving from sema "sign, mark, token; omen, portent; constellation..."   I have known the word sema from its Arabic meaning of "listening," the name for the ritual dance of the whirling dervishes.   Threshold Sema then.

 
The blog "Light is Planted at the Garden Gate" discusses the Threshold Sema created for the Art Song Garden.





Here is a version that I created for the portico of my studio:


JoAnne, a friend as well as a member of the Sri Aurobindo Learning Center here in Crestone, asked me to create one for the garden gate of the Mother's Garden at the Savitri House last autumn. Here is the result:



The Mother's Garden gate is overhung with trees and there is no light that would come through the back as there is in my garden, hense the rectangular banner form with no light revealing cutwork. 


The central flower symbol is the that of the Mother, Mirra Alfassa, closely associated with Sri Aurobindo. Here is a link to the meaning of the symbol: Mother's Symbol.  The Sanskrit on the left is Bhakti - Devotion. The symbolic language beneath it is a lotus with a flame. The Sanskrit on the right is Ishvara Pranidhana - surrender to the Divine unfolding. Centered within the Sanskrit calligraphy is a flower facing out, away from the Mother's symbol - listening, as it were, to another voice.


It came out so beautifully that they now want to create a more sturdy and beautiful gate for it to hang on, which I hope will happen in the Spring.  In the meantime, Ginny, who caretakes the house, created it into a mantle piece until then:




As with the Crestone End of Life Project, for which I create plaques with a symbol that represents a significant element of the life of a person past,  I love the thought of creating a symbolic language for the daily thresholds we transition while living.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

The Violets are Blueing in the Green


I woke up this morning with this little tune buzzing in my head from A.A. Milne.  I took it as a sign that the time had come to finally upload the photos I had taken of Art Song Garden as during its exquisite Spring blooming.

I was so excited by the return of the bees that I went crazy trying to capture the little critters at work. They don't exactly hold still while you're trying to catch them in the act.  It seem the bigger, slower ones were the most cooperative.

Bumble bee on crabapple blossoms:

Here's one working on the Black Currant bushes:


Here is my precocious squirt of a Centennial Apple tree that is all of 3 feet tall blooming with everything it's got:
 
 

Yes, Dorothy, Nectarines do grow in Crestone, CO - ask the black bear who broke through the fence in the middle of the night last year to get at the yet unripe fruit :


Here is one of the ever beautiful,  hardy and forgiving Caraganas (Siberian Pea Shrubs):



And glory of glories, beyond all hope,  one of the Etrog trees started from seed 4 years ago blossomed for the first time :


She and her mate have spent their lives indoors.  For the first time both are (courageously) living out of doors (for the season). 


Life is luscious!


Monday, March 10, 2014

The Dream Tree

When Anne was thirteen she had a dream that seated itself into her cellular memory so that, as a grown woman, she recognized the familiar setting when she moved into a new home some fifty years later.

She was on horseback, accompanied by a woman dressed in a long flowing garment.  It was coming upon daybreak as they approached the mountains.  There stood a tree ornamented with golden spheres. Within each sphere was a single letter in an unknown language.  She was in awe.


Fast forward several decades and there are the same mountains and the tree, only this majestic cedar, rare for up here where most of the junipers are small and shrubby,  has been had a dozen and more limbs amputated by the builder who favored a better view of the mountains from inside the house.  To Anne, these amputations feel like gaping wounds in need of suturing.  She remembers the dream.


So, with some tracing paper she had handy and some old stamping ink, not knowing what to expect when I arrived and unequipped with a crayon, I took rubbings patterns of the severed branches that were lowest and largest.  For the ones too high to reach except by extension ladder, I held up a tape measure and she wrote down the approximate diameter, to which a added a little leeway.  

She chose 12 locations visible from the house to place the "spheres." Combining her Jungian, astrological frames of reference as well as her familiarity with the Hebraic mystical tradition, we agreed upon creating constellation pieces, with a Hebrew letter (something she would not have recognized at 13) within each sphere representing each the 12 tribes, which in turn are associated with constellations.

The Yalkut Shemoni identifies them this way:
In the East - Yehuda (Aries), Issachar (Taurus), Zevulun (Gemini)
To the South - Reuven (Cancer), Shimon (Leo), Gad (Virgo)
In the West - Ephraim (Libra), Menashe (Scorpio), Binyamin (Sagittarius)
To the North - Dan (Capricorn), Asher (Aquarius), Naphtali (Pisces)

Within each sphere I placed a 12 pointed star.  Within each star went the initial of the tribe/constellation.  

I should add that, after they were all mounted in place, she felt a 13th location that called out to be covered.  For that one I will be making an empty star which will hold the intention of the whole.

For those scars facing the mountain (and some newly built house that I couldn't see), Anne wanted mirrors.  This has something to do with Feng Shui.  I happened to have just enough copper acrylic copper mirror to do the deed:


Pretty cool, huh? 




NEWS:  

My Studio Moresca Copperwork Illuminations website can now be found at: shahna-lax.artistwebsites.com

Please come for a visit!