The Hazel Tree Mother: The Tree in Winter, 2007, acrylic and digital collage, Alice Dubiel
Lay Women Healers in Medieval Europe, mural for Student Health Center, San Jose State University, 1979, acrylic media, Alice Dubiel
Apocalyptic Visions: Scrolls for a Fearful Time: We feared the slow death of fish and marine life from the poisoning of the planet, Scroll II, watercolor on paper, wood, silk, 1984, Alice Dubiel
Rhinewater Purification Plant, installation, 1972 Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany, Hans Haacke
Dreaming the Earth Whole: Watershrine, 1990, Bumbershoot Seattle, mixed media installation, Alice Dubiel; for complete installation, collaborators Marita Dingus, Ann T. Rosenthal, Sarah Teofanov
Flowing Salmon Shrine, 1997, mixed media, (Carkeek Park and other locations) Alice Dubiel
Agriculture and Reproductive Freedom: A Tale of Crisis Management, 1992-1997 (2 images), Alice Dubiel
Re:Seeding Gaia: Flow, 1996, acrylic on paper, wood, Alice Dubiel
Penelope’s Web: The Light Bursts Forth, 1999, acrylic and mixed media on paper, Alice Dubiel
The Landscape Tale, from Agriculture: An Alchemical Treatise, 1993-4, installation at 911 media arts, Seattle
The Landscape Tale, exhibition announcement, 1993, commercially printed art card of image by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, 1809, and letterpress of map of Paris c. 18th C. superimposed, Alice Dubiel
Strategic Clearing: Mt. Rainier, 2004, acrylic, photocopy and mixed media on paper, mounted on stretched canvas, Alice Dubiel
Strategic Clearing: White Pass and Bumping Lake, 2000, acrylic, photocopy and mixed media on paper, mounted on stretched canvas, Alice Dubiel
North Cascades Lichen Leaves, 2006, digital print and relief paint, Alice Dubiel
Mt. Stephen, 2009, photo by Alice Dubiel or Jim Hopfenbeck
Walcott 2009, conference reception at Whyte Museum, Banff, Alberta, photo by Alice Dubiel
Opabinia regalis, specimen prepared by Charles Doolittle Walcott, described by Harry Whittington, photos by Chip Clark, and Opabinia action figure, courtesy Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
Sculpin egg mass, Summer 2009, Golden Gardens Park Beach, photo by Alice Dubiel
A New Song in Praise of Peace, 2009, acrylic and mixed media on board, Alice Dubiel (also cover to Laude Novella, compact disk recording by Medieval Women’s Choir)
Also included Seed Card piece, Imagination Resists Domination: Crimson Clover, 1994-2003. This was a revision of seed packets pieces accompanying shrines and other installations.
Here's the text:
Imagination resists domination
Crimson clover
Plant in urbanized areas to colonize increased plant space, roots break the subsurface. Green manures fertilize and cultivate soils. Plant the seeds of your dreams in the dark of your imagination. As you sow, visualize a city which nourishes without depletion, where fertility is wealth. Hold the soil in your hand. Make your wish come true.
© 1994-2003 Alice Dubiel
http://www.planetart.us/
for The Landscape Tale: http://www.varoregistry.org/dubiel/more4.html
for Crisis Management: http://www.varoregistry.org/dubiel/more3.html
Showing posts with label environmental stewardship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environmental stewardship. Show all posts
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Penelope’s Web
A Statement
From The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Book 5, ll. 315-35
A great wave drove at him with toppling crest
spinning him round, in one tremendous blow,
and he went plunging overboard, the oar-haft
wrenched from his grip. A gust that came on howling
at the same instant broke his mast in two,
hurling his yard and sail far out to leeward.
Now the big wave a long time kept him under,
helpless to surface, held by tons of water,
tangled, too, by the seacloak of Kalypso.
Long, long, until he came up spouting brine,
with streamlets gushing from his head and beard;
but still bethought him, half-drowned as he was,
to flounder for the boat and get a handhold into the bilge--to crouch there, foiling death.
Across the foaming water, to and fro,
the boat careered like a ball of tumbleweed
blown on autumn plains, but intact still.
So the winds drove this wreck over the deep,
East Wind and North Wind, then South Wind and West,
coursing each in turn to the brutal harry.
Penelope was the wife of the ancient Greek warrior, Odysseus, who fought ten years in the Trojan War and journeyed for ten more years before returning home. Penelope waited for Odysseus’s return: during this wait, her son grew to maturity; her mother-in-law, with whom she lived, died of grief, suiciding; and many suitors courted Ithaca’s queen. Her father-in-law retired to the hills, living among the herders: she, alone, managed the household. As was the custom, the suitors came to her home, exploiting her hospitality, screwing her servants, insulting her son, insisting Odysseus was dead and would never return. She developed a stratagem to delay them against his return: every day she wove the shroud for her father-in-law’s eventual burial, and each night she unraveled nearly all the day’s work. For years, she kept the suitors away until they found out about the unraveling from a servant. They confronted her, and still she declined their posturing, seeking the goddess’s protection until Odysseus, in disguise, drew near.
Penelope’s power is self-contained and not contingent upon Odysseus’s presence.
The series, Penelope’s web, is about power: the power of personal integrity amid the complexity of domesticity. The web is a symbol of protection. It is about connections to the dead and the living, about hope’s secret struggle against despair. It is about connections and threads, which may unravel but remain connected to the true heart. It is about sending messages across the wine-dark sea, never knowing whether they will be heard. It is about protecting oneself, one’s household in the face of insults, adversity, transgression and abandonment.
Penelope’s web of protection can be a metaphor to explore our stewardship of the planet. We cannot neglect our duty, especially to our urban environment; we can use our creative skills to devise new strategies to protect our earth household, neither to exploit nor abandon it. Nor can we await someone else to complete it. Rather, we are the caretakers whose struggle retains the inheritance for posterity and dignity for the honored guest.
Alice Dubiel October 1999
From The Women’s Dictionary of Myth and Symbols by Barbara Walker
“Penelope’s web is an interesting pattern of ten small pentacles ranged around a central wheel of ten spokes. All the pentacles together are composed of only two lines, as can be seen by following their interlaced patterns with the eye. This is a sign of protection like the simple pentacle, made even more suggestively defensive by the ring of twenty outward facing points, and the lines of connection drawing all sections together in the center, as a unifying cause or concept draws people together for the preservation of all.
“The mythological figure of Penelope is especially associated with preservation and protection because it was she, with her constant refusal to cut the thread of like, who preserved the life of her husband Odysseus through his many adventures, even after a death curse had been laid on him by the Trojan Queen and High Priestess of Hecate. Penelope, whose name means ‘veiled one,’ was really a title of the Fate-goddess who could determine men’s destinies by the treatment of her woven threads. When she cut, the man would die. According to Homer, Penelope unwove her web each night rather than cut the thread that represented Odysseus; and so he escaped all dangers and eventually returned to his home.”
From The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Book 5, ll. 315-35
A great wave drove at him with toppling crest
spinning him round, in one tremendous blow,
and he went plunging overboard, the oar-haft
wrenched from his grip. A gust that came on howling
at the same instant broke his mast in two,
hurling his yard and sail far out to leeward.
Now the big wave a long time kept him under,
helpless to surface, held by tons of water,
tangled, too, by the seacloak of Kalypso.
Long, long, until he came up spouting brine,
with streamlets gushing from his head and beard;
but still bethought him, half-drowned as he was,
to flounder for the boat and get a handhold into the bilge--to crouch there, foiling death.
Across the foaming water, to and fro,
the boat careered like a ball of tumbleweed
blown on autumn plains, but intact still.
So the winds drove this wreck over the deep,
East Wind and North Wind, then South Wind and West,
coursing each in turn to the brutal harry.
Penelope was the wife of the ancient Greek warrior, Odysseus, who fought ten years in the Trojan War and journeyed for ten more years before returning home. Penelope waited for Odysseus’s return: during this wait, her son grew to maturity; her mother-in-law, with whom she lived, died of grief, suiciding; and many suitors courted Ithaca’s queen. Her father-in-law retired to the hills, living among the herders: she, alone, managed the household. As was the custom, the suitors came to her home, exploiting her hospitality, screwing her servants, insulting her son, insisting Odysseus was dead and would never return. She developed a stratagem to delay them against his return: every day she wove the shroud for her father-in-law’s eventual burial, and each night she unraveled nearly all the day’s work. For years, she kept the suitors away until they found out about the unraveling from a servant. They confronted her, and still she declined their posturing, seeking the goddess’s protection until Odysseus, in disguise, drew near.
Penelope’s power is self-contained and not contingent upon Odysseus’s presence.
The series, Penelope’s web, is about power: the power of personal integrity amid the complexity of domesticity. The web is a symbol of protection. It is about connections to the dead and the living, about hope’s secret struggle against despair. It is about connections and threads, which may unravel but remain connected to the true heart. It is about sending messages across the wine-dark sea, never knowing whether they will be heard. It is about protecting oneself, one’s household in the face of insults, adversity, transgression and abandonment.
Penelope’s web of protection can be a metaphor to explore our stewardship of the planet. We cannot neglect our duty, especially to our urban environment; we can use our creative skills to devise new strategies to protect our earth household, neither to exploit nor abandon it. Nor can we await someone else to complete it. Rather, we are the caretakers whose struggle retains the inheritance for posterity and dignity for the honored guest.
Alice Dubiel October 1999
From The Women’s Dictionary of Myth and Symbols by Barbara Walker
“Penelope’s web is an interesting pattern of ten small pentacles ranged around a central wheel of ten spokes. All the pentacles together are composed of only two lines, as can be seen by following their interlaced patterns with the eye. This is a sign of protection like the simple pentacle, made even more suggestively defensive by the ring of twenty outward facing points, and the lines of connection drawing all sections together in the center, as a unifying cause or concept draws people together for the preservation of all.
“The mythological figure of Penelope is especially associated with preservation and protection because it was she, with her constant refusal to cut the thread of like, who preserved the life of her husband Odysseus through his many adventures, even after a death curse had been laid on him by the Trojan Queen and High Priestess of Hecate. Penelope, whose name means ‘veiled one,’ was really a title of the Fate-goddess who could determine men’s destinies by the treatment of her woven threads. When she cut, the man would die. According to Homer, Penelope unwove her web each night rather than cut the thread that represented Odysseus; and so he escaped all dangers and eventually returned to his home.”
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