Encouraged by Virginia Woolf - Our Ode to Midlife

Meditations on Venus from All Things Are Always Changing

Mrs. Dalloway, written by Virginia Woolf in 1925, suggested some of our own experience in the world. Midlife brings a new consciousness of simultaneous past and future.

She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything, at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very , very dangerous to live even one day.

We shared Clarissa's feelings about the way the world looked at a middle-aged matron:

That she held herself well was true; and had nice hands and feet; and dressed well, considering that she spent little. But often now this body she wore...this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing--nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more sense of having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.

Meditation (Metamorphosis)

Our outburst in 2003 was not so genteel:

thinning hair

the bush is bare

now the heart is bleedy

the body; needy.

What does it take to be saved?

still quivering sex

begins to mascerate

dissipate

disappoint

disappear

What does it take to be saved?

numberless trifling matters

breeding extraordinary matters too numberless for keeping score.

Pelvic floor? out the door.

No more sloffing of the womb,

changed alignments of the moon

on the wane

different stain.

Night’s hot waves flaccid,

rolling over

dimpled stone

thinning bone

What does it take to be saved?

very cold, very strange

sliding down the slippery slope

no hope

for repair.

despair.

what makes this fair?

shed a breast

lose a womb

amble toward the tomb

is this what it is to be saved?

Portraits - like marble

Portraits from All Things Are Always Changing

In 2005 we had a job making a professional portrait of a good friend who had encouraged us over the last 20 years. We photographed her in natural light, her skin was like marble.

After considering the changes written on our bodies in Vessels, this image of our marble-skinned mentor inspired us to think about the experiences etched into our minds; our memories and our judgement. Society may dismiss the aging body, but we are reminded by our mothers, aunts and teachers that wisdom grows beneath the wrinkles.

We began to photograph the changing and complimentary relationship between body and mind over time, Iris Murdoch suggested our approach "...one surrenders power in one form, and grasps it in another."

We took more portraits of older women friends, to honor their accomplishments, to venerate them for having endured and to make manifest the beauty of their wisdom.

Portraits from All Things Are Always Changing

Meditations on Venus - Update

Venus is a representation of social values and an ideal which transcends reality. Venus fulfills a need. Consider our little girls and our social values....plastic! it's fantastic!

Vessels - Separation and Perfection

Vessels from All Things Are Always Changing

Roberto Calasso in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony discusses control of the nude in terms of separation:

"As the Greeks see it, elegance arises from excavation, from the cavity.....The epidermis of the Greek statue is so sharply separated from all that surrounds it because it is carved out of the air, whereas Mesopotamian or Egyptian statues seem to have grown up from the ground."

This complimented our idea of evoking Greek sculpture in order to separate the body from any recognizable context and emphasize it's metaphorical function of "vessel."

Lynda Nead states this Greek approach another way:

"The female nude can almost be seen as a metaphor for these processes of separation and ordering, for the formation of self and the spaces of the other. If the female body is defined as lacking containment and issuing filth and pollution from it's faltering outlines and broken surfaces, then the classical forms of art perform a kind of magical regulation of the female body, containing it and momentarily repairing the orifices and tears. This can, however, only be a fleeting success; the margins are dangerous and will need to be subjected to the discipline of art again...and again.

Our Vessels have been contained, but their disproportion challenges.

Meditations on Venus-and her peers

It is thought that Venus was born 31,000 – 40,000 years ago at the beginning of the Aurignacian era. What were they thinking then? Was the depiction of oversized breast, exentuated buttocks and genetalia a deliberate exaggeration of the sexual features? Are these proportions unrealistic or wishful thinking? Do these figures resemble your grandmother or pornography?

Catalhoyuk Goddess

Cucuteni Venus, Drăguşeni, 4050-3900 B.C

Cycladic Venus, 2800 to 2300 B.C.

Venus Dolni Vestonice Gravettian Czech

Malta Venus

Venus from Mesopotamia late 5th c. B.C.E.

Venus of Hohle Fels,.ca. 36,000 years B.P E.

Venus of Willendorf

Divinations - Cosmic/Comic Systems

Divinations - All Things Are Always Changing

"I see the past, present and future existing all at once"

--William Blake

Theorize on the beginnings of abstract thought....

When the brain enters the symbolic work of a notational system, it has broken off the thing from the thing notated. Then the symbol can have a life independent from the phenomena it represents: an eclipse can be calculated without the eclipse moment, the full moon predicted years before the event. (p. 187)

from Sacred Numbers and the Origins of Civilization by Richard Heath

Pythagoras, ca. 570 to ca. 490 B.C.E.

R. Buckminister Fuller, 2004

It seems the British, perhaps intoxicated by the energy emanating from their sacred stone monuments, are great proponents of numerical systems to that refer to qualitive and archetype life forces. The usual suspects appear: John Bennett/Laws of Synchronicity, Psychologist C. G. Jung, Pythagoras, M. C. Escher, Buckminister Fuller, base twelve number series and of course, Glastonbury and so many more. These systems of the laws of the universe operate out of time; events come together in a meaningful way that has no causal explanation; coincidence; synchronicity.

For Example [referring to Robert K. G. Temple, Oracles of the Dead, Rochester, Vt Destiny Books, 2005] "In his investigations of oracular connections to hexagon shape and other derivitives of root three, Robert Temple has found the hexagon in most surfaces, especially those in which there are energy transformations such as melting or freezing. The skin of the body is a set of flattened hexagon shapes, and cells in general use six-fold tubes as intercellular valves through their membranes. Earth's atmosphere often forms hexagonal convection cells, which are echoes of those created on the solar surface. (p. 141)

from Sacred Numbers and the Origins of Civilization by Richard Heath

While these quests are entertaining and provocative, we do not care to explain or control. Our work is about reflection, resonance and channeling the energy.

Divinations - The Desire

"But the runes that I rehearse understand the universe"

--Emerson, Poems. Woodnotes

Divinations from All Things Are Always Changing

13th century text based on Greek observations

Fibonacci Sequence

What we present in our configurations of Divinations section is the compelling human desire for Holy Revelation. Humans carry a metaphysical desire to understand ultimate power...the holy word. Sacred images don't just refer to, they ARE what they stand for.

Divinations from All Things Are Always Changing

Astronomy and sacred number symbols were developed from man's constant star gazing and recording of astronomical phenomena. Celestial knowledge was knowledge of a power beyond the self. The star symbol is found on more relics and in more ancient sites than any other design, followed by spirals and chevrons.

Divinations from All Things Are Always Changing

Runic glyphs or runes are used for divination and spelling out a magical language of sacred truth. In this context, runes are symbols of magical energy. The word is thought to have evolved from the german RAUNEN, "to cut or carve." Raunen may also have meant "to whisper secrets," rune is the noun for secret.