Our Human Condition

ECCE HOMO  2003-2010

Collage, oil stick, bistre pigment wash on Stonehenge paper

28" x 20" (image size)

I am battling the tail end of a cold virus that has lingered for weeks.  The good thing is that it has allowed me lots of down time and time to play with my website and even attempt to write a blog for the first time in about a year...

Also, time to reflect.  It is the time of year for remembrance:  10 years since America was filled with war cries and started the Iraq war.  It is the time of Passover and the time of Holy Week.    A time to contemplate on our human condition...

I created the above piece over a period of 7 years.  I started it at the beginning of the Iraq war.  We were living in a community were most folks were very pro war.  So this was a way to process and deal with my own feelings.  I would collect the newspaper pieces and put them into a file then pull them out as the Spirit called me through the years to work more on this.

As you look at the bits, you can see a photograph of a 'mended' veteran's face, Abu Graib, a grieving woman dating back to the Haiti earthquake, and on and on.  As I finished the piece when our troops left Iraq in 2010, I became aware that what had started as an outlet to process the beginning of the Iraq war, over the years evolved into a statement about our human condition. 

I do not know how the quote "Love is the power behind non violence" ended up right at the place where the human heart would be in the crucifix figure...  "Ecce Homo".

May this week be a profound time for Christian, Jew and all of us searching for Divine Mystery.

EPIPHYTIC

Spiderwoman, mixed media on paper, 7" x 6"

I am back after quite a few months away from writing any blogs.  Sometimes life gets too overwhelming and dear friends, sorry, but I am not that much of the digital age that I can pour my heart and soul out on line for all to see…

Yes I am back and opening a new exhibit this coming Saturday at Kat Cowan’s delightful little place in the alley at downtown Kapaa on the East side of Kauai Island on Kuhio Hwy. 

The name of the show is EPIPHYTIC.  I have been asked by a number of people:  what is ‘epihytic’??

Epiphytic means:  not drawing nourishment from other plants or ground but from air/moisture in the air and therefore not parasitic.  I felt that to be a wonderful description for my orchid pieces.  For me orchids are  metaphors for us humans.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  We are earthbound with all our ego frills, vanities and needs yet spiritual  beings on a journey to a higher dimension.

In this exhibit I am still on my orchid binge. Not necessarily only moth orchids like before but EPIPHYTES for sure. The majority of orchids grow as epiphytes on trees where suitable regimes of light and humidity occur.  Most of the critters featured in this show are free floating, suspended in air, no roots.  There will be a few of my moth orchid images as well.  But the featured orchid is the spider orchid.  And, yes, I did have someone in mind when creating some of the new, smaller pieces.

Opening reception should be lots of fun with live music by the New Old School band, refreshment, pupus, fire dancing.  Kat throws a great party! 

Hope to see you there.  If not, the show runs through the summer and comes down 9/29/11.

Gallery will be closed, however, last week of August and first week of September!

A hui hou!

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