New Masks - 2012

Skadi - "Ice"

The Lady of Avalon

Oya

Pachamama

Trickster

Working with Masks

THE  TRANSFORMATIVE  MASK

Working with Masks and  Myth

Every mask is the beginning of a story.  Every mask invites a dance, because each mask is inhabited by a being waiting to reveal itself, whether a universally recognizable archetype, or an eccentric,  very personal inner persona that can communicate in surprising ways.  Masks can heal by speaking with a voice that we can't.   In traditional cultures, such as Bali, sacred masks were viewed as a means for the divine - the gods, goddesses, ancestors and animal powers - to bless the living through ritual theatre.

Making a mask is a process, but it's only part of the process - those who will use the mask complete the journey.  And because the "spirits of the masks" come from the Mythic Realm, there is really no end to the journey at all.  Just a circle of new telling.

Casts of class members, Kripalu Institute, 2008

I've evolved several classes I use to teach others to make and use masks, which are:

"REVEALING THE MYTHIC SELF" (The Art of the Mask)

A Class open to interested participants of any age.

"THE MASKS OF THE GODDESS"  (Discovering the Goddess Within)

This Workshop is for women who wish to explore archetypes of the Divine Feminine through mask making, mythology, storytelling and ritual.  Generally, an immersion workshop  best within a 4 day format,  or as an ongoing class. 

In both, we learn to sculpt a theatrical mask from our faces, explore personally significant stories and symbols, and learn approaches to storytelling with masks, with discussion about community performance and ritual theatre.

"Our work was not to re-enact the ancient goddess myths, but to take those myths to their next level of evolutionary unfolding. Artists are the myth makers."

 Katherine Josten,  Founder,  THE GLOBAL ART PROJECT

I've found it's best to "invite the spirit of the mask" by beginning with a non-denominational Shrine.  Participants  bring objects that are personally  sacred and meaningful.  Our "Invocation" is  a guided shamanic journey.

After we've created a Circle to work in, we "get plastered" in pairs as we take casts of our faces with plaster impregnated bandages. These will become masks, or, going a step further, will be cast into plaster positives on which more durable leather masks can be modelled.

 

Preparing casting materials

Making casts of  faces

"Meditative Muses"

Removing dry mask

Now construction of the mask begins over the plaster positive of participant's face - material here being used is leather, which affords a flexible, life-size mask.

CONSTRUCTION of masks can come from a sketchbook,  or entirely intuitive, often including found objects.   And as the masks form, the next phase begins - what is the Story of the mask, and how might that story be told, moved, performed?
 

What might this mask have to say?   Is this the beginning of a personal "Pantheon"? Perhaps more than one character has arrived to become a saga? What happens when you put the mask?

What might it sound like? Sometimes, with masks off but nearby as "silent observers", participants  may do some stream of consciousness writing,  allowing the mask to express itself in words.  The class can begin to  explore ways to work with surfacing personae........and it begins with "welcome!"

"Heart Healing" (Illana Stein)

"Kali" Liz Sanders

   With many thanks to Nancy Solomon for the use of her photographs.

The Masks of the Goddess 1999-2008

"Bridgit" (Linda Johnson) - Irish Goddess of Inspiration and Healing.  Photo is courtesy Thomas Lux.

 I've always been fascinated with masks in traditional societies,  where they are viewed as    “vessels for the archetypal powers”.  With a mask, the Gods and Goddesses, the Animal Powers, can visit for a while, tell their stories, give their blessings, heal or even give prophecy, and they are considered powerful magical tools.  In Bali, for example, special "Temple Masks" are kept in the Temple, and carefully treated with holy water before and after each sacred performance.

In 1999, after going to Bali myself to study mask arts, I created 30 masks of multi-cultural Goddesses, derived from mythologies around the world. Inspired by Balinese sacred masks, I wanted to offer my own collection as contemporary "Temple Masks", devoted to celebrating, exploring, telling and performing some of the great universal myths of the   Divine Feminine. 

"Sophia" (Valerie James)

Masks have so much transformative power.  The Masks of the Goddesses were created to  re-tell and re-new these important universal stories, as well as empowering the women who "invoke" a Goddess to explore each archetypal presence within herself. What does the story of Sedna, ocean mother of the Inuit,  have to teach us about balance and ecology?  What is the "Mirror of Sophia", goddess of wisdom?  How is the "Descent of Inanna" a potent story of psychological death and rebirth?  

I, and colleagues Macha NightMare, Diane Darling, Mana Youngbear, Serene Zloof, Lilla Luoma, and others,  produced community performances and taught workshops with the collection, making  The Masks of the Goddess available nationally.  The result was that they traveled throughout the U.S.  In 2008 the collection was retired, and sold through a Benefit auction.

"The masks of the goddess workshop was a pivotal event in my life. I have been feeling the Goddesses waking up ever since.....they were there, definitely there."

Lorraine Hogan, Kripalu Institute (2007)

 

"Our group's work was not to just tell the ancient myths, but to re-invent them for today.  Artists are the myth makers."

Katherine Josten, The Global Art Project (2004)

"What the audience saw when a dancer looked through the eyes of the mask was the Goddess herself, ancient and yet  contemporary,  looking across time, across the miles."


Diane Darling, Director, Playwright, 2001

"Spider Woman" (Morgana Canady) weaving.  Photo courtesy Annie Beam.

"Myth comes alive as it enters the cauldron of evolution, itself drawing energy from the storytellers who shape it."


  Elizabeth Fuller,  The Independent Eye , 2002

"The Virgin of Guadalupe" (Valerie James).  Photo courtesy Ileya Stewart.

Comments about  The Goddesses, by participants in the Project  (2000 - 2005):

"Kali is so much about contemporary life.  The demons of insatiable greed are devouring our planet again. We need to call upon the spirit of Kali, because those who await the future are being denied their birthright. Kali is the catalyst for saying "No more".  It's time to embrace the sword of Kali and cut away the delusions that are destroying our world.........Drissana Devananda

"Pele to me is about the great elemental builders of our planet. Long before people walked upon any lands, the Creatrix of Kilauea brought forth islands from the Earth's hot, molten core, slowly cooling through the ages.  Human beings are recent arrivals, and the fires of Pele burn through  the eons,  stirring up the Pacific, and shaping our very atmosphere."......... Karina McAbee

"Corn Mother's story is about the wealth that comes from the hard work of forgiveness.  How can we be fed, feed each other, how can we create peace, if we cannot learn the lessons of forgiveness?  That is the beginning place we will need in order to evolve into a Rainbow Nation. To me, the Rainbow as actually a circle.  Half the rainbow disappears into the ground, into an underworld realm, where it exists beneath the Earth, dark and hidden, but at the foundation never the less.  Like the Corn Mother."......... Christy Salo

"Lilith rules the liminal landscape between the subconscious and the conscious mind, and can help make that information conscious and usable in your life.  Lilith is the bridge, and "What you believe" is just a shell that keeps you imprisoned.   Lilith is about breaking the shell, because sometimes you have to fall apart to be put back together, that's the only way to be re-integrated."......... David Jeffers

"I remember lighting a candle to symbolize my commitment to my journey through the despair I felt at menopause.  That's Hecate to me.  She will not help you to avoid a thing, but She will bear a light for you on the path, which is really the path to mature empowerment."........Damira Norris

 "Persephone's myth is about moving into a new state of being.  All the soul riches, the knowledge, the art, everything was running down the drain into Hades and it stayed there.  It stopped circulating.  This was the myth of the descent of Inanna as well; everything went down to Ereshkigal, the keeper of the Underworld, and got stuck there in the universal unconscious which could be said of our collective predicament today.  We can see that they are pathfinders to the unconscious.  That's a very important myth for our time." ........Elizabeth Fuller

"Selu" (Kathy Huhtaluta)

The collection appeared at:

The University of Creation Spirituality,   the Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors,  the University of Syracuse Matrilineage Festival, the Health and Harmony Festival, Nations Hall Theatre at the Muse Community Arts Center,  the New College of California,  Sebastopol Community Center, the Masks Symposium at Southern Illinois University,  and the Spiral Dance (1999, and 2006) in San Francisco, and other venues.

At "The Spiral Dance" (2006) Courtesy the San Francisco Chronicle

Thank you to all those who brought the stories, from Aphrodite to the Virgin of Guadaloupe, to many  audiences with the masks.  With special thanks to Macha NightMare,  Mana Youngbear, and Abbie Willowroot, for their collaboration and encouragement.  And to:

Serene Zloof, Annie Bridgit Weller, Diane Darling, Barbara Jaspersen, Starhawk,  Shelly McHugh "Valley High", David Jeffers & Benad Hasche, Monika Mann, Kelly Nelson, Flynt Garner, Silk, Duncan Cook, Celestine Star, Evelie Posche, Lilla Luoma, Will Clipman, Jeff Grienke, Isobel Amourous, Kathy Huataluhta, Ileya Stewart, Morgana Canady, Valerie James, Quynn Elizabeth, Katherine Josten, Erica Swadley, Grey Eagle, Ann Huggins, Celestine Star, Kala, Eleni, Alan Moore, Drissana Devananda, Elizabeth Fuller, Conrad Bishop, Ann Beam, Paloma Hill, Jim Hewes, Arjuna & Tuva Space, Jo Odessa & Buka Creati, Deborah Scott Gren, Mary Kay Landon,  Sabina Magliocco, Farida Fox, Tara Webster, Willow Kelly, Dawn Marlowe, Juan Pablo Guiterrez, Kala Levin, Amadae, Vibra Willow,  Amy Luna Manderino,  James Lovette-Black, Amie Miller,  July Lewis, Stacy Kalkowski, Lee Hendrickson, Adrienne Hirt, Barbara BBC,  Freya Anderson, Morgaine Harris, Laura Janesdaughter, Tansy Brooks, Willow Kelly, Damira Norris, Maria Wahlstrom, Fontain and FONTAIN'S MUSE, Kendra, Copper Persephone, Eleni Livitsanos, Jamra, Cypress, Cris Ferreira,  Christy Salo, Melusina Gomez, Maritza Schaefer, Journey, Nada Khodlova, Stessa, Angela Blessing, Rachel Morgain, Catlin & Reggie Williams, Ingrid Aspomatis, Annie and Phil, Carlin Diamond, Alan & Audrey Smith, Lea Bender, THE VEIL, Sammi Alijagic, Paul Fisher, Toker Johnston, Linda Johnston, Motherbear Scott,  Ashley Wallace, Melissa Penn, Laura Dubois, Dorit Bat Shalom, Jeanne Koelle, Karina McAbee, Navaab Munirith, Charlie Adams, Sharon Kihara, Nettie, Corinne Levy, Judy Foster, Dina, Amanda Allison, Wendy Cornelius,  Kendra Stone, Bombshell Betty, Heaven, Ariel, Shanel, Carrie Adams, Kim Arnold, Nadirah Adeye, Thallia Bird, April Taylor, Donna Peck, Dailey Little, Rhonda, Marisa Scirocco, Jonette Ford, Lyndzee Dava, Ayelen Liberona, Carolyn Lucento, Pythia and the Temple of the Goddess …………and many more.

And thanks again to Thomas Lux, Peter Hughes, Ann Beam, and Ileya Stewart for the generous use of their photographs.

Mana Youngbear as "White Tara" (photo courtesy Ileya Stewart)

The Hidden Sea

 

"The Hidden Sea" (2010)

Time does funny things in the desert.....sometimes it reveals an entire ocean, it's frozen tide pools and fossilized sea creatures, below, ebbing for a moment, it's currents waxing within the imagination.   I am always impressed by the notion that I walk on the bed of an ancient ocean, the dreams of our ancestors, just beneath our feet, silently touching our lives.

"Ancestral Midwives" (2005)

Spider Woman's Hands - second edition published!

"What might we see, how might we live if we saw with a webbed vision?  The world seen through a web of relationships - as delicate as spider’s silk, yet strong enough to hang a bridge on."

Catherine Keller, "From a Broken Web" (1989)

I finally finished my second edition  of my limited edition  book  SPIDER WOMAN'S HANDS - Weaving a Webbed Vision.     

In indigenous cultures, cultures with oral traditions, stories don't end after two hours in a theater, or when we turn off the electronic box. Even today, when we talk about “spinning a good tale“, like the hands of Spider Woman, we’re participating in something that keeps spinning and evolving, generation into generation, from the waking world to the dreamtime, back into the past, and forward into the stories of those who are yet to come. In various native arts, a spider and womb motif is ubiquitous: because Spider was the first weaver, bringing order and form, balance and symmetry to primal, formless chaos from within herself. From her essence she spun the strands that became the first stories that became the world.  

The Navajo ( Dine`) revere Spider Woman (Na'ashje'ii sdfzq'q) for teaching them how to weave. To this day, an infant Navajo girl will have a bit of spider web rubbed into the palms of her hands so she will become a good weaver. Wool rugs often have “Spider Woman's Cross” woven into the pattern, representing balance, the gestalt of the four directions. Navajo weavers also often leave a flaw in the work - because the only perfect web is that of Grandmother Spider Woman. 

" The new myth coming into being through the triple influence of quantum physics, depth psychology and ecology suggests that we are participants in a great cosmic web of life, each one of us indissolubly connected with all others through that invisible field. It is the most insidious of illusions to think that we can achieve a position of dominance in relation to nature, life or each other. In our essence, we are one."

Anne Baring

"May we all rub a bit of spider web into the palms of our hands".

 

"Weavers" at Wesley Theological, 2009

“What might we see, how might we act, if we saw with a webbed vision?"

Catherine Keller, "From a Broken Web"

"What is the new mythology to be, the mythology
of this unified earth as of one harmonious being?"

Joseph Campbell

"Weaver's" is installed in the staircase entryway at Wesley. As I worked, the "story" of this progression of hands became clearer to me. It is dedicated to the ongoing collaboration of the community of the Luce Center - for me, it is also a new “telling” of the Spider Woman, the weaver deity found throughout Native American mythology.

"It’s said that all stories
originate in the mind
of Spider Woman."

The "Hand and Eye" is the hand of the Divine, from which all inspirations come. Because it's also about the evolution of the arts center at Wesley, the first pair of hands belong to Cathy Kapikian, who retired this year after founding the program more than 25 years ago.


"The Seed Planter" seemed a fitting progression because all inceptions need visionary collaborators, people who find the means to "ground it into the soil."  Tiles are based on stories told me by those who volunteered their hands. Mr.Tortorici told me that his family came from a village famous for growing olives, and so I made an olive branch. Ms. Oden, who is the Dean, told me she missed the wild storms of her Great Plains homeland, and so I inscribed a storm on her panel.

Dr. Hopkins is an archaeologist who has spent years in the holy lands, so his panel has pottery shards. Mr. Soulen is a banjo player and a bee keeper, which is why I put a flower on the neck of his instrument. The harmonies of music, and honey, sweeten the mix.

Doug Purnell is a painter, providing the hands of the artist. Olaf, who is from Iceland (thus, the "Cod Shield") makes her art from fabric. And Amy Gray brought the Gardener's graceful hands, offering the "flowering" of an idea.

Finally, I included the hands of Colleen Nelson, who has been a community activist all of her life.

Next to last, those of Deborah Sokolove, the new Director of the Luce Center. Deborah says of her Iconic artwork that they are "prayers made visible", and so I titled her panel (she made her own tiles) the "Iconographer".






I grew up with a Native American painting, that belonged to my father, of horses running across a desert. One of the horses was turquoise blue. When I assembled my panels, I found I had an "extra hand" from the cast of a child. I remembered that painting, and how the artist used the blue horse to show the presence of Spirit. So the last panel is for those who are not yet born.

"The new myth coming into being through the triple influence of quantum physics, depth psychology and the ecological movement suggests that we are participants in a great cosmic web of life, each one of us indissolubly connected with all others through that invisible field. It is the most insidious of illusions to think that we can achieve a position of dominance in relation to nature, life or each other. In our essence, we are one."

Anne BaringTo view my:   BIO

New Work 2009

PRAYERS FOR THE DYING
These works are dedicated to my brother, Glenn.

I needed to do these pieces as "prayers". They speak better to me than words. I had these wonderful casts of hands, and also tiles imprinted with words and letters..........words, syllables, sentences are what we create the stories of our lives with. Before the words, the feelings, the belonging, the response, the one who experiences. Perhaps dying is shattering those "vessels" of words and ideas and constructs that have created the personae we have come to inhabit. Terra cotta pottery shards imprinted with words seemed like a perfect medium. Perhaps, leaving the words and vessels behind, at last, we fly.

Returning 2009

"Form is empty, emptiness is form.
Likewise, sensation, discrimination,
conditioning, and awareness are empty.
In this way, Shariputra, all things are emptiness;
they are without defining characteristics;
they are not born, they do not cease"

THE HEART SUTRA

The Heart Sutra

Somewhere within the "hoop" of who we are, within the space between the child and the old man the beginning place and the ending place.........in the center is the heart. I think above all that is where our "soul making" has gone on.

Holy Mother Take My Hand (2009)

Reliquary

This Reliquary has two potent symbols of transformation - a feather left behind from the flight of a Phoenix, and the skin of a snake.

Dream Weaver 2009

.

.Of life's Spring
may we drink deep
and awake to dream
and die to sleep

and dreaming
weave another form
a shining thread
of life reborn

~~Starhawk
"The Weaver Song" from the Spiral Dance