Sacred Vessels

My inspiration for this series title “Sacred Vessels” come from my thoughts about healing. I look at materials I used in creating this series, it is about the wood that I choose, wood that had a previous use and spent time in the desert weathering the elements over many seasons. It has marinated in the DNA of the desert and recorded the desert experience both day and night. 

Spiritually speaking, I have explored the nature of healing and the influence of light to the process. God is described as Light in many of the major religions. Light plays an important role in my work. Most of my pieces are infused with translucent phosphorescence layers. These layers emit a light, a glow in dark and the darker the setting the stronger the light.

I remember an evening where my mind and soul wandered into a thick darkness, a wilderness place that I came across looking for answers to prayer and meditation on healing I was seeking. In the heavy darkness, one of my pieces provided enough light to refuel faith and hope.

Taos is spiritually magical and has special places of healing and mission Chimayo being one of those healing places.  I embed soil I have collected from Mission Chimayo within all my artwork. 

I like to believe that my pieces help contemplate spirituality. That although God is invisible his manifestation can be perceived by the power of Light, the emotion of love.  and His healing nature.

Finally, music influence my work and remembered the message from the group Jars of Clay.

2 Cor 4:7

If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives.

A message is embedded in our ordinary lives….we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

I am reminded as an artist that I have Light to share.

“Desert Passage”

My latest pieces explore the contrast of elements; where sky and earth meet
and where light penetrates the darkness. Translucence layers accentuate the
glimmering hues of color that shift in the light. Layers of translucent resins
create dream like landscapes and mirages. Mirages are deceptive and the small
nature of these pieces can deceive the viewer looking at the objects. I like to
imagine vast vistas of the sky and layers of clouds captured in a moment of time.

“Desert Passages”

Inspiration for this new work comes from the desert and the
sea and where the sky meets earth and where light is
captured in a space of “luminous colored layers”. It
also comes from deeper inside-from the DNA of the
desert and sea and from the inner being of who I am.
“Am I a mirage”…Is a question that comes to mind.

“Desert Seasons”

Summer is passing in the desert and the light is shifting
higher in the sky…we transition to fall-then to winter-back to spring and then to summer. The seasons of the desert have one thing in common…Light.

“Mirage”

Cubes and Terraforms

As the seasons change, I am transitioning into the hot summer days and nights. My spring work included some of my largest pieces including “Lost Memories” a 7′ casting into the live edge of a Sycamore slab.

 

 

Late spring and going into the summer has me working on a series of cast resin cubes. I have describe some of my pieces as “terraforms” …worlds within worlds and “other worldly”. I see vast desert and ocean wilderness areas that have been part of my entire life. Dry clouds over a horizon, light dancing off the morning water and a millions stars illuminating the night sky.

The desert has played a pivotal role throughout history including the flight of a group of immigrants redeemed from slavery and promised a” land” of milk and honey. A visible sign of an invisible God is seen in the distance.The column penetrates layers of clouds lighting the sky for all to see and never leaving them-strengthening the promise made long ago. Exodus 13:20-22

Set on lighted platforms or as a stand alone piece in a garden window and sills. The cubes absorb light energy and exchange it as luminescence, eerie illumination produced.  StoryBox-creations as An Obliq Artist 

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Exploring the Invisible

Wood-Resin-Steel & Light

How do create images of the invisible?  Can they be mirages? Or dreams? Or are they hallucinations? I have pondered this conundrum for some time now and somehow my artwork answers that question with memories of wilderness experiences. There is something about being absolutely alone under a big sky or vast ocean.

My latest work is much larger in scale. I use colored translucent layers of resin mixed with pearlescent & phosphorescent powders and cast onto the “live edge” of native Arizona woods. I have always consider myself a landscape painter and now entering a new phase as a sculptor. The “landscapes” created in my work are  memories and images perhaps even mirages of undiscovered realms in the desert and along the shores of oceans.

LED lighting illuminates the translucent layers of resin and “charges” other layers of phosphorescent powder cast in the resin. An eerie landscape emerges as this light diffuses throughout the piece. I love how light penetrates darkness. I often muse about my work and how I prefer to see it in very dark settings. Part of that thought come from a sense of reverence that somehow light penetrating the darkness allows..I think its a primal force. 

Sitting on the pieces allows me to somehow “connect” with the DNA of the piece of dead wood, now resurrected to a “new life”. feeling the wood and the resin arouses memories of time in the desert and there is something almost like reading braille when I run my fingers and hand along the  highly polished and smoothed wood and resin. One such edge on one of my pieces reminds me of surfing this undulating gift from the sea, imprinted on my mind forever. 

At times I feel like I’m an alchemist working late into the night casting layers of thought and creating something from “base” elements into something that somehow points to something spiritual…and that has to be God.

 

 

I experience the world created by the Creator. When I am working in my studio and creating work, I am on a spiritual journey and the right place to be in.

http://www.stor-ybox.com

@anObliqArtist