Looking Up

Valorie Sheehan

Looking Back

IN THE BEGINNING

Portals 1 & 2 

CREATION -

The most basic creation story is that process by which chaos becomes cosmos – no thing becomes some thing. Man’s longing to answer the universal question “where do we come from” ensures that virtually every culture has its own creation myth. And in delving into these different narratives their common patterns become evident.  There is creation from nothing, from a cosmic egg, from world parents, from a process of earth-diving.  Depicting these archetypal patterns in a three dimensional form (as in the cosmic egg, the raven, and the world parents) was just a beginning.  What began as a scholarly investigation into the archetypal mythology of creation became a process of self-investigation and discovery.

 Caged Potential

RE-CREATION

Art-making is a form of recreation, and recreation has, as its goal, renewal or re-creation.  It lies behind every artist’s attempt to wrest significance from the chaos that the lump of clay or the blank canvas presents.  If the first, primal question is “where do we come from?, then “where are we going?” must surely follow.  For me, at mid-life, this search for re-creation is at the root of my attempts to make some thing, as well as to make something of my life.  That is, to make a difference in spite of the seemingly universal drive toward meaninglessness or mere routine.  My visual symbolic language has not changed over the years: eggs for the vast potential they hold, nests for the safety they represent, and wings for their ability to fly their owner toward great change. They are present in this body of work as is a new personal “avatar” – part cloaked female, part winged creature in constant search for some thing, for some meaning.

Emerging, On the Edge, On the Ledge, Out

My personal journey is beginning to find direction.  For the past 3 years I have been a volunteer art teacher at the Sophia Academy, a private middle school in Providence seeking to educate young girls at risk by virtue of their socio-economic background.  I have also begun working with “Groots”, an organization of African women helping women.  In the spring I will begin a project with 50 adolescent orphans of AIDS living in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya teaching them to knit blankets made with yarn donated by knitters and then helping to get these blankets sold.

The Raven

Marion Wilner

“In the Beginning”

Long before there were any scientific explanations as to how the world was created and humankind began, people tried to answer these basic questions in many ways.

Imaginative creation myths exist in every culture and religion as people sought to understand the world around them and their place in it. These yearnings come from the deepest and most powerful part of the human spirit.

How did the wondrous light of the sun, stars and moon come to be? The ever changing patterns of the natural world are still awe inspiring and mysterious.

As an artist I have always been fascinated by the richness of the human mind as it probes the secrets of nature. I am enchanted by the beauty that is revealed.

“In the Beginning” offers the viewer this artist’s personal interpretation of the seven days of creation from the book of Genesis in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Seven days or seven million years is a fact we may never know but I have linked them through color and design.

If you will, think of creation as an ongoing process and these ancient concepts as a gift from our distant ancestors.

Marion Wilner