The Crane

Cranes may be the oldest bird on earth. There is fossil evidence that they have existed more than 60 million years ago. There is a legend that the crane’s legs grow before its wings do, making for a bird with strong ties to the earth.  They are, symbolically, creative creatures, being particularly famous for their extravagant dancing and the sandhill crane in particular, is known for it's singing, producing a range of vocalizations, from a sing loud warning call to the synchronized calls of a breeding pair and a low, soft call to maintain contact while foraging. Male and female birds incubate eggs and parent together and find nourishment according to what they find available in the environment in which they find themselves.  

This illumination this called "The Crane."  It has been maybe 9 months from conception to completion, which was just this last weekend.  The crane depicted here is not in it's original ancient form but has been augmented by a new infusion into the reality of Earth.

There are 6 seed rays encountering the Earth. Each ray is led by a hand.

There is an internal calligraphy to each of the 6 hands - the Hebrew word YESH -"there is" - spelled yud shin.  Here is an example of the word YESH made into a cufflink: 

If you notice, the hands at the helm of the 6 rays don't quite match the YESH above.  It is a 4-branched shin along with the yud that forms the hands. The name of the 4 branched shin is Ha Ot - "the letter". 

The 13th-century mystical text, the Sefer HaTemunah speaks of a single letter of unknown pronunciation (such as the four-branched shin on one side of the head tefillin box) which is missing from the current alphabet. The distorted nature of the world is related to the absence of this letter.  Its eventual restoration will bring reparation to the world.

The theme of "six" is recurring.  The Earth herself is composed of a six-fold geometry, an expression of "as above so below".  Behind the cutwork is a piece of fabric with a watery photo of the earth taken from space.  Water is another recurring theme - the seminal droplets of the rays, the Earth, the crane.

As I mentioned in the beginning, despite the simple elements of this illumination, it took an exceptionally long time to come to fruition.  It wasn't until silver was added to all 3 elements that it came alive. That was somewhere around 2:30pm February 16 MST.  May it signal the triggering of a new order and release of energies required to see us into a new era.

Sanctuary

It's been a year since my last post.  I submerged myself in my garden this year as a means of getting through the demoralizing news cycle.  Being winter I took refuge again in my studio and was provided with a most wonderful assignment, which I describe here.

Judith has recently designed, built and moved into her new home in the Baca. She hails from New York but has been looking for somewhere that would resonate for her as a true home.

She has loved my work for sometime and asked me to create a ceremonial homecoming piece for her that celebrates her home as a sacred space.

Judith has been coming to a group that meets at my studio on Friday afternoons to do Hebrew chant. She is not Jewish, nor for that matter are any of the other participants outside of myself, but she is a singer and loves the sound and mystery of the chants. She’s even teaching herself the Hebrew alphabet. Consequently, she wanted a Hebrew word included in her piece that meant “Sanctuary.” That word transliterates as mishkan. Mishkan (in Hebrew) appears in the central cutwork backed by turquoise mirror.

We talked about other elements she equates with a personal sacred home space to develop a highly personalized symbolic self-portrait. Those symbolic elements included a Sri Yantra, something verdant (gardener that she is), transformative animal totems (the peacocks and dragonfly) and a chicory flower, which she particularly loved in her New York garden.

Despite the quantity of disparate elements and the size limitation of 18”x18” with an arched roof, the design flowed together easily, the patina that developed was fabulous, flaming brought life to the sri yantra as did the small drill points of light.

Somehow the chicory and dragonfly danced together and was brought into resonance with the rest by means of some iridescent enamel. I am sooooooo pleased and she is too.

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 Asiah.  It 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.

Love Tokens

The more I considered the Yizkor candle settings I was creating the more I began to focus on life.  To be honest, I wasn't getting much pleasure out of focusing on death, grief and the initial moments of being torn apart.

There needs to be incorporated, not initially perhaps but down the line, a sweetness of remembrance that evokes the stories of connection - the living part of a relationship that doesn't cease when one side of the bond steps over the boundary of physical existence.

When my father died, even decades later, people would find out that I was his daughter spontaneously tell me their most beloved stories about the life he shared with them.  I searched out his desk after he died and found a whole page of sayings that he had assembled like "An atheist is a man with no invisible means of support." Of course I've updated that one to be somewhat more inclusive but continue to delight in having one in my back pocket.

I have my mother's recipe for Passover popovers, the seeds from a Cinderella pumpkin that my beloved buddy Yoanna brought back to me from a roadside farm stand in New Mexico, the silk robe of my dear friend and mentor Jacob Goldberg, z"l , falling apart after all these years.  Legacies. Stories. Love tokens.

A woman named Wendy Rosen, whose husband died four years ago, told me recently that she's come to the conclusion that what really matters after someone has passed can easily fit into a small box.  I was bewildered at first, but the more I thought of it the more joy it gave me. I started to make a list of the sorts of things of real significance I could fit into a small box.  Here are some of the things I came up with, though each person I have loved would have chachkis included that would be particular to themselves:

• tickets from a ball game or Broadway musical which we attended together
• a snippet of fabric from a favorite dress or old tee shirt
• a favorite recipe
• some idea or thought written on a paper napkin 
• a word or phrase from a magical moment that would bring it all back
• a dried flower from a garden; a seed
• stories written on a sheet of paper and folded small from those who were compatriots

"one rubber band, a hand full of sand and even a rusty nail" are song lyrics from Bruce Kates about the stuff of stories that he packed up in his valise.

I'd love to hear what you'd add to this list and the story that goes with it.

As you can tell from the top image, I have redesigned the Yizkor candle settings to include a box - a Living Memory Yizkor box.  I changed out the base as well and am making it from aromatic cedar, which in many cultures is identified with the Tree of Life.  With the help of a 1/2" square of plywood wrapped in copper foil it now serves as the lid for the memory box.  I also updated two of the copper backplates to include the word "L'Chayim" - "to Life."

I've finally gotten these as well as the Tikkun Olam settings up on my Etsy store: Moresca   Since they work so beautifully on their own, I'm also offering just the lids of the boxes as candle settings. 

I've changed the base of Tikkun settings over to aromatic cedar as well: 

Love,

Shahna

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.

Journey through the Space between Time

Following The Great Transition blog entry came directives for a new illumination. I was to look for a maze in the form of a Vesica Pisces – the () intersection of two circles. In my search an additional maze turned up that was also to be used. That second form is called a Baltic Wheel. Here are what each looks like:

Vesica Pisces

Baltic Wheel

As you can see, the Baltic Wheel functions here as cross-section through the center of the entry spirals of the Vesica maze –  an entry and exit point.

The arrangement indicated was the Vesica maze in the center and a Baltic Wheel on either side. The left side wheel was to have the entry point facing up, the right side wheel's entry point was to face down.

Two figures needed to be added to this arrangement, both in fetal position. The expiring figure is over-ripe: 

the counter figure, not yet individuated, but moving towards birth: 

I was also given the arched framework that was to hold this coded arrangement, creating large areas of empty space.

Early stage of Matrix after etching

As you can see from this image of the final version, there are two additional elements that have been added.  The story of the light lines ascending and descending from the Baltic Wheels comes in the continuation below.

Matrix - Journey through the Space between Time

On Thanksgiving I had two artist friends come over for a potluck. One noticed Matrix when she walked in and walked over to it. As if compelled, she proceeded to give an all inclusive de-constructive critique of one element after another of piece as it was, though she had a hard time articulating what exactly didn't work. The other artist then walked over to it and began a giddy proclamation: “Where's the pregnant woman? Where's the teenager? Where's the old (I can't remember if it was man or woman)…?” Perhaps one would call this re-constructive criticism? It was all so curious coming from these two who heretofore have expressed nothing but love & support my work. I was all the more amazed since I had not solicited any input. Despite my astonished amusement, I understood from the spontaneous, well-intentioned abuse, that there was likely something missing in the work's symbolic code that kept it from being intelligible, that is to say, resonant with what is known within the human cellular experience. So that night I brought Matrix into my bedroom in hopes of receiving some additional instructions.

I had a dream.

My dream Nov 26^th, Thanksgiving night

I was wandering the streets seeing if I could find somebody who could tell me what I would find if I were to go through the maze and come out the other end. I saw a library and went in. The librarian was a leanish man with glasses who sat me down at a table and wanted to engage with relish in a debate about the validity or invalidity of belief in reincarnation. I felt annoyed with this guy who was on some intellectual trip and left to go back outside in search of someone who could show me what it was like to come through and out of the maze. I then came upon an old woman whom I seemed to know. She was pretty no-nonsense. She told me to follow her and she would show me what I was looking for. We came to a field and I remember us rolling on what felt like a soft grass. I kept my eyes closed. We kept rolling and rolling until I felt the feeling of “arrival”. I opened my eyes and found myself facing a wall in a kind of anteroom with two openings – one behind me from which I had just come and one to the left which was apparently an entrance to another place (an exit from the maze). My first impression was that the space seemed dark – not dark dark, but a room which had no windows and no particular light source, though I could see just fine. There was light coming from the entrance behind me – bright sunlight, as it were. The exit seemed to be to an internal place that didn't have it's own source of light, but did have some form of reflected light that was less intense. The shape of the room was like this:

The form of this anteroom is the shape of the Hebrew letter Hei lying on it's side and in mirrored form.

Hei is the number 5, the number of potential Souls within the human experience.

Hei is the Breath, the root of the Verb of Being. 

I turned back to find the old woman who was ready to move on. I pulled out a calendar to see when we could meet again. The calendar page was blank but was full of small empty squares, except for one square that contained the number “5” about two or three columns from the left in and several rows down. The moment I looked at that 5 I knew it was the day she was going to die.

The only other part of the dream that sticks with me is that I looked down at her left knee, which was a kind of a colorless transparent white. Though I saw no bruising, I knew it had suffered some injury, probably from all that rolling. I remember wondering what I should do about it, if I should be concerned about her injury. I was also thinking that I should thank her for showing me the way. Neither seemed appropriate at the time.

I have pondered the meaning of “knee”. I woke up feeling the word to be significant. Upon waking I couldn't think of anything that might signify. After some consideration I transliterated “knee” into Hebrew - Nun Yud – equivalent to the number 60 in gematria. Sixty is the number where things begin to transmute or take a quantum leap from plane to plane. Sleep is 1/60 of death; a dream is 1/60 of prophecy... 60 is also associated with the Priestly Blessing and the transcendent light of Havaya.

I awoke shortly after the dream and looked at Matrix sitting on the floor by the bookshelf in my bedroom, wondering what alterations I needed to make in order to incorporate the dream teachings. I saw where a single line on each side could create the number 5 symbolic language of the anteroom.   

Ultimately, the entire figure takes on this double 5 formation if viewed from a depth dimension where the space between the junction of the 5's is the saturation space of the Vesica Pisces:

Matrix - Journey through the Space between Time
Illuminated