Open your mind and your inner eye, and imagine with
me...
The Ancient Ones
It
is 35,OOO B.C. ... give or take a few millennium. By the weaving,
uneven red-orange illumination of firelight, humans across the isolated lands of
the world are creating images on the walls of caves. Far in the future, modern
man will speculate on their meaning - ritual, magical, representation of their surroundings, or
mere record keeping? Whatever their purpose, these petroglyphs and pictographs often shared
common motifs, images, subjects and, yes, magic...
The
images are fascinating, thought evoking, near hypnotic at times. But let us
speculate not on these fascinating rock drawings, but on those who created
them, on those mysterious people who have blown as dust and whispered to us in
winds for centuries. I call them The Ancient Ones.
Shaman,
dancers, medicine men, magic-makers, wanderers, singers, and storytellers - they were,
in different ways, historians of a world tar different from the stark,
civilized, scientific culture of today.
The Ancient Ones are my interpretation of the idea
that man was more unicultural than multicultural. Location, weather and food
sources made different societies, but the wonderment of the world in which
they traveled, their desire to grasp life and death and the changing seasons,
and where they tit into the scheme of this world of deep magic was universal to
the creature called "man.'
My
attempts to depict The Ancient Ones are based on my imaginings, a world I share
with others through my work. The primary media is clay - a fundamental of earth itself, and therefore the natural means to depict
these basic, early people. Their decorations include painted wood, copper wire,
feathers, and beads of glass, clay and wood. As they sought beauty in their
world, so do I.
The firing techniques in these day figures range from
low fire and raku to high fire and salt, providing wide variety to the pieces.
The finishes differ as well, from traditional glazes and stains to acrylic
paint, enamel and shellac.
From collecting, drilling and preparing the rock bases to assembling the final figure, each art piece is unique, often based on variations of a theme.
Welcome
to my world, the world of The Ancient Ones...
