Posts Tagged ‘Tears of the Moon’

Sweat Of The Sun,Tears Of The Moon

Tuesday, August 27th, 2019

In the 80’s several friends tried to get me involved in quilting, but I resisted, saying I didn’t have time, which was true at that time – creative embroidery, stitch, was more important to me. I’d had attended several fabulous workshops by inspiring teachers, and was using stitch (hand and fme) with paint and found objects to express my interests in landscape. I was invited to have my first solo exhibition, Sunburnt Textures in 1987; and at the end of that year we relocated to USA for a while. Through a new neighbour, Carol, I finally met traditional American geometric patchwork, an intense affair that dominated a large part of my life for a couple of years. However, that ended amicably enough when I was introduced to improvisational piecing, IP, and I haven’t looked looked back since.

I still carry several enduring marks I’d call influences rather than scars, the most obvious being use of repeated units of surface decoration (traditional ‘blocks’) in an overall design of rows. Other artists who share my love of grids include a favourite, Agnes Martin, Guillermo Kitka, James Sienna, Sol Lewitt, Sean Scully and Chung-Im Kim, about whom I wrote https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=4419

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The first sample, on the left was a quick demo to show artist friend Lillian how easy IP is. Excited by this little sample, after she left I made a few more. However, a particular technique doesn’t necessarily translate to ‘a work of art’, and those samples sat on my wall for nearly a year. I gave them regular, thoughtful attention, but nothing clicked until after I’d watched the 2017 eclipse of the sun in Colorado.

Staying with our daughter Anna in Greeley CO at the time, in an area expecting to be in about 80% partial darkness, and with UNC classes cancelled for the day, the obvious thing to do was organise an eclipse party with fellow UNC grad students.

All food and drinks had sun-related labelling, and my personal favourite were the eclipse eggs. Later a pizza was served with a partial eclipse of black olives on a cheese background …

Even in the C21 in a modern civilisation, that silence of birds and animals which descends as light disappears or fades at the wrong time of day feels strange, eerie, truly awesome. To the ancients on all continents, eclipses of the sun and the moon, and the transit of comets and planets across the sky, and their regular appearances on different cycles, were mysterious and sometimes fearsome events, often a pretty handy tie-in to primitive religious beliefs. I remembered a TV documentary Sweat of The Sun,Tears Of The Moon seen 30+ years ago, and this brain activity led to my 125cm x 60cm diptych by that name. It will be at the 2019 Quilt Festival in Gramado Brasil in the masters(teachers) exhibition: because of course, that is where I will be teaching in 3 weeks’ time.

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Sweat Of The Sun, Tears Of The Moon diptych, 125cm x 60cm

Something Spherical, Continued

Tuesday, November 7th, 2017

On October 10th last, I wrote in this  blog about a new work, and showed the left part of the photo below:

Untitled work in progress:  machine piecing (left)  machine quilting (right)

 

Progress has been intermittent, but apparently like a phone app, my mind has been quietly working on in the background looking for a good title for this.  My custom is to start a list of words and phrases that could become titles, and add to it as I go along.  The list for this piece already includes Moonlight Sonata and Dark Side of The Moon (both really famous musical works already, so not hot contenders for this) but there’s Lunar Eclipse, Night Light, Lunar Grids… and about 20 more.  As I got into the shower this morning, the phrase “…Tears of the Moon” popped into my head, and I knew it followed something about the sun, but couldn’t remember the other part of the metaphor.  So I had to look it up – and where else but Wikipedia, that excellent starting point or, in this case, aide memoire ?   I quickly found what I’d forgotten – that the Incas referred to gold as Sweat of the Sun and silver as Tears of The Moon, and remembered that was the title of an outstanding tv doco series I saw years ago (before I ever came to South America) and I will look for it now to watch again.  As you can see by this extract from the Wiki page, this section of text alone could take me off on a full day at the computer, following interesting links and having a fascinating time learning new things, but I really want to finish the quilting on this piece while I consider a possible companion piece, plus, I’m listening to a fascinating audio book “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, A 500-year History” by Kurt Andersen.

“Mama Killa (Quechua mama mother, killa moon, “Mother Moon”,[1] hispanicized spelling Mama Quilla), in Inca mythology and religion, was the third power and goddess of the moon. She was the sister and wife of Inti, daughter of Viracocha and mother of Manco Cápac and Mama Uqllu (Mama Ocllo), mythical founders of the Inca empire and culture. She was the goddess of marriage and the menstrual cycle, and considered a defender of women. She was also important for the Inca calendar.

Myths surrounding Mama Killa include that she cried tears of silver and that lunar eclipses were caused when she was being attacked by an animal. She was envisaged in the form of a beautiful woman and her temples were served by dedicated priestesses.”

It won’t be Tears of the Moon – that’s been done, but something good will come from this I know … Silver Eclipse ?…Silver Moon ?… and the app churns on.

 

 

 

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