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Blog
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Transforming
For a long stretch of my preteen years I thought of being a zoologist. I would collect Wildlife Fact Files that my wonderful parents subscribed me to. I felt the dazzling power of both order and knowledge creep into my bones. Alas, the allure of chaos, artistic whimsy, and teenager laziness won out and I lost the scientific prowess of my youth. But this watercolour and ink sketch does give me some sense of street cred, that I never lost my ability to observe the natural world and record it, interpret it, and commune. This beautiful python caught my attention as I image searched for the perfect snake to draw. I knew I wanted a blood red circle behind it…red is such a potent colour that to me conjures life and death cycles, earthly power, and rites of passage mostly commonly found in women’s rituals. Snakes are symbols of magic…and transformation…once I had a dream that I was walking through crowds of loved ones and everyone had snakes dropping out of their clothing. It was a potent vision. For some cultures, dragons take the place of snake worship…yes I feel the truth in the umbrella family of snakes and dragons even if they are slightly different tones they feel like kin.
As we collectively move and shift, transformations can be triggering, uncomfortable, even painful. But they’re proof of growth. They’re an indication that we are part of nature, as the ever-shifting world around us is never static neither can we be.
Prompts: what part of the transformation cycles brings you the greatest joy? Do you pay attention or just brace yourself and hold on? do you process inwardly or outwardly?
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The Tetrahedron: Aum New Years Festival 2022
Super slick night time shot, what a moon! The art collective…I’m the one with huge daisy sunglasses
Why hello there and welcome to my website, and most importantly thank you for your interest in the artwork debut’d at Aum Festival NYE 2022. This means you are a curious, considerate soul. We should be friends. As art is an our main point of connection in this moment, let’s dive right in. I am so grateful that Fleur accepted me into the Aum Arts group, and I’m very inspired by her mission of making public art less toxic, more compassionate to the Earth and its life. She encouraged us to think about wastage, materials being non-toxic, and the life-span of things. We’ve seen so much throw-away-culture crop up as a result of large music festivals and I love that the team at Aum have always come from a different approach and stuck to their guns. So I haven’t done a lot of public art, this is really special to me and something I’d love to make more frequent in my life. Here’s to 2023 being more large scale public artworks cropping up in Aotearoa!
What’s the Story of The Tetrahendron?
Have you noticed that you feel differently about art once you’ve heard a little bit of about its backstory? Yeah, artwork in a gallery, without any commentary or prompts can be really alienating. This post is all about offering up more food for thought about what my intent was and broadening the impact of what’s in my mind and what you take away from the sculpture.
It’s a tetrahedron! What is that? It’s a really magical shape. Here’s more about them.
When I first thought of making a painting for Aum’s theme…Imaginarium…I immediately thought of an ecosystem of fertility, wild abundance, and just the miracle of plant-life. Once the triangle shape came to be I realised I wanted the base of that shape to be about the subterranean world, mycelium, and the roots of the mighty trees we see. The most important part of our existence is beneath our feet. So I wanted it to be the biggest part of the sculpture.
Because the piece is all about 3’s there’s also three different perspectives happening. Up close details of mycelium, roots, and soil…then a far away view of our Earth, then finally the void, the abyss of night skies. With those three you have a good sense of how many ways there are to view life as we know it. From the potential of our history, the stars all the way to our actual compiled past, the crust and undergrowth below. It’s also a good time to talk about the symbolism behind the number three. Three is the number of harmony, wisdom and understanding. It was also the number of time – past, present, future; birth, life, death; beginning, middle, end – it was the number of the divine (almost every religious or cosmology has a strong connection to three beings unified as one). Three is often the magic number in fairy tales, in architecture, even in our own practical language “on the count of three, or third times’ the charm”….I love that.
I wanted to work within the sacred number of three’s the whole way, to imbue this work with a the golden ratio both in composition, surface numbers, and story.
But why all that dark soil Rudo, isn’t this supposed to be a psychedlic colourful art show?
Yeah…yeah it is. Trust me if you’ve seen the rest of my gallery you’ll know my religion is colour…But I’ve been reframing my personal relationship with death…how important decay and renewal is…and I think it deserves its time in the limelight. To be really inside of something is to be encased inside the dark womb-like cave of presence. There is nothing more important for us at this time to be at home with our bodies, with death, and be present. I wanted you to be grounded when you are around my work. There’s a lot of disembodiment, ungroundedness at festivals and public spaces…this digital world is heady and intellectual but it has to keep good standing with our most important asset…our presence and our groundedness and the Earth itself. We’re not immortal, everything we do is a step closer to the end of our physical existence and I for one want to have a fantastic time with that, I am sick of being scared of growing old, of being useless, of being forgotten. I’m ready to embody the sensual, feminine, powerful and brutal reality that to be alive is also to be close to death. I hope that doesn’t freak you out. I’d love for this to be a celebration of all that can be shed. All that makes us free…and to feel deeply connected to the life-giving powers that shouldn’t be taken for granted…to return to ritual, ceremony, myth, and wonder.
This work couldn’t have happened without an incredible collection of builders, dreams, and schemers…Sarah Cunningham did a particularly amazing job being my painting buddy to keep us on track in time for the festival!
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Animals Within- Humming Bird Woman
I have a real strong love of birds. Especially hummingbirds, I mean those feathers are just the most flashy fantastical feature of the natural world. Prismatics are nature’s fireworks. And my love of connecting symbolic attributes to human forms…here’s where it get interesting. I know that we soar. We fly over situations, we rise above our fears and hubris, we sing and flock together. And those wings are there just as real as the love I have for our unbreakable spirits. What attributes do you love to dream up metaphors to?
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Venus
One thing that’s quirky about sharing the art online is you, the viewer, have no sense of scale. This whimsical floaty figure is about 10 cm big…or shall I say small?
What I like about it isn’t the way she looks as much as the way I feel when I look at her…and the way I think she may be feeling. Complete bliss. Completely inside herself.
In sky wisdom, a person’s Venus placement represents the expression of desire, how passion is expressed, what is valued, and how pleasure is experienced. It’s also about relationships and how we love. -
Sculptures made of light
I’m more of a painter than a sculptor. This doesn’t reflect my passion as much as the convenience of making. Creating things like this are hard. And making it outdoors, battling wind and humidity were not kind to my sanity. But the actual magic of making something that takes up space…especially a public festival space…wow. It was incredible and something I feel adds whimsy and gives a nod to naturally occurring forms for the festival goers. There were a lot of awesome artworks at this Spirit Fest, but I was caught in the vortex of overwhelm and madly rushing to finish this in one day that I forgot to take any pictures other than these…Definitely something that requires a team I think. My sweet sister helped me with glue and tissue paper and holding found sticks together as I worked to build in the midst of this odd wind tunnel between a grove of pines. I should have hooked up with a photographer to ensure it had be captured well! Thanks to Kadby for randomly taking a pic that I was able to use. I think he took a lot of photos, perhaps I’lll search the Spirit Fest site one day. It was a little raw and intense so I confess here is a little wall between trials and tribulations and the craft itself. It feels temporal and of a moment. But worth sharing the bits that I have left of the memory.