member of:Observers of the Interdependence of Domestic Objects and Their Influence on Everyday Life


This group has been active for a long time and has already made some remarkable assertions which render life simpler from the practical point of view. For example, I move a pot of green color five centimeters to the right, I push in the thumbtack beside the comb and if Mr. A (another adherent like me) at this moment puts his volume about bee-keeping beside a pattern for cutting out vests, I am sure to meet on the sidewalk of the avenida Madero a woman who intrigues me and whose origin and address I never could have known...
--Remedios Varo


(Slideshow is of Artwork by Remedios Varo)
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
--Franz Kafka

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Queens of Fate

Some of my paintings:




Three of the paintings in the video belong to a series on the Three Fates:


Three Fates Dreaming the World Under the Watchful Eye of the Baku



From Blogger Pictures



There is an old Hindu idea that the world is a dream, and each dreamer dreams all the other dreamers, which are all aspects of him/herself. The dreamer is then the creator of the universe and also an actor in it-- all the actors in it, in fact. Here, the dreamer takes the role of the Three Fates from Greek mythology, as they weave the world, simultaneously weaving each other. In the beginning, as always, there is chaos, the mushy sky, formless. In the beginning, the dreamer is already there, taking form from spirit and energy left over from the last dream (is this karma?). One Fate feeds the spool from her hair, and the thread gives form to the chaos of the sky, shaping another Fate, who is already escaping her cloth, one arm reaching out into the forming universe, offering her Gift: nourishment for the birds. The third Fate, who pulls the excess thread in from the second Fate's cloth, her body performing the alchemy that changes air to water, feeds the world fish, which become the birds the second Fate feeds.



The Fates Reconsider


copyright (zoe) alexia jordan


Here the Three Fates have wandered out from beneath the Baku's protective gaze. And as a result they dreamed up war, hwich is the tapestry to the upper right. The tapestry is a combination of pieces of Leonardo da Vinci's Battle of Anghiari and the sketches for Picasso's Guernica, and at the moment, having realized their mistake, they are unraveling that tapestry, trying to unsnarl it and preserve the thread for a new tapestry. The Fate at the far right is only trying to untangle her hair from it as her form disintegrates into feathers which then take flight as new birds (think Jungian transcendence), while the middle Fate is trying to replant her hair from the strands she rescues as her form returns to water. The water cascades down the slight rise and begins creeping up the far left Fate's leg as a tattoo, which extends to include the horse and rider from the tapestry, this time re-envisioned as a performing horse and rider, the sword of the previous rider now no more than the silver feather in the performer's headband, and the ram (equivalent in some mythologies to the phoenix, a symbol of rebirth) from his breastplate now a puppet-mask, hanging on her right shoulder from tattooed strands of hair. As the strands develop from tattoo to real hair, which she reels onto the new spool, the rest of the tattoo also begins to come to life, a real ram's mask hanging from her hair, and a child hanging from it in creative play, and other new creatures come into being, such as the flying cat (why not?).


Revolution: The Tapestry Comes to Life


copyright (zoe) alexia jordan



The child is now a more fully developed marionette; her maker's mask falls away to reveal her spirit mask as she grabs one of the ropes directing her in order to take control of her own movements. The horse has evolved into its own sort of magical beast, which stops short at the observing cat (the flying kitten, now well-satisfied), allowing its partner to go on flying of her own accord. and the threads of the background smoke and mist as they begin to form the shapes of the new world.

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