A Child of Earth and the Starry Heaven

The Petelia Gold Tablet or Petelia Tablet is an orphic inscription or Totenpass that was found near the ancient city of Petelia, southern Italy in the early nineteenth century. Since 1843, the original has been kept in the British Museum.

Here is the 2019 translation from the ancient greek.

Thanks to Wikipedia for this information.

  1. You will find a spring on your left in Hades’ halls
  2. and by it the cypress with its luminous sheen.
  3. Do not go near this spring or drink its water.
  4. You will find another, cold water flowing from Memory’s lake;
  5. its guardians stand before it.
  6. Say: ‘I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven,
  7. but descended from Heaven; you yourselves know this.
  8. I am parched with thirst and dying: quickly, give me
  9. the cool water flowing from Memory’s lake.’
  10. And they will give you water from the sacred spring

Spirit Tiles

Travelling with unfamiliar spirits series

Spirit Tiles on display in an art exhibition at the Corinium Museum Cirencester 2016

The transformational alchemy of the work begun during a residency in 2014 and continued over several years. I worked in both digital and analogue media often in a state of light trance until images of the individual spirits revealed themselves. I reproduced these images as a series of glass tiles.

I:MAGE 2014 my artist residency series

During my artist residency at Fulgur’s I:MAGE 2014 Travelling with Unfamiliar Spirits. I created a community led text work as a sigil and interface between the event and the unseen world. Once this sigil was created and activated it continued to work with me for a number of years and I created a large body of work in different formats and media. I have recently moved to a new studio and as I unpack I have found this work re emerging. Time to start travelling with the spirits again I think and to document this at least in part on this blog.

Here is a description of the event from Fulgur’s website.

“I:MAGE 2014 developed the ideas initiated by the 2013 programme to deliver a multi-location interdisciplinary event over twelve days. Centred upon an exhibition of esoteric art curated by FULGUR at the Cob Gallery, London, the schedule included artist-led workshops and discussions, a day of lectures at the Warburg Institute, evening events, a live performance from the artist Mark Titchner, and the launch of the Black Mirror Network publishing series with Volume 0 – territory.

I:MAGE 2014 was also the first to support an artist in residence, Elaine Knight, who collected words from participants to create a collaborative community-led text work.

One of the highlights of I:MAGE 2014 was a series of works loaned by Steffi Grant: Austin Osman Spare’s Black Eagle, Steffi Grant’s Shadows of the Old Ones, Kenneth Grant’s Desmodus and Aleister Crowley’s LAM. These had never been exhibited together previously, and furthermore, LAM had not been seen in public since it was exhibited by Crowley’s New York studio in 1917.”

I:MAGE 2014

Mending

Earlier this year I was taken to hospital with several (non Covid) life threatening conditions, thankfully my life was saved and after a week they discharged me. I was so glad to be home but was still somewhat fragile, however I grew stronger every day and so was on the road to recovery.

While I was away there was snow and freezing temperatures. Outside in my garden a pot was accidentally left full of water which turned to ice and split the pot in two. Such is the force of Nature.

I pondered this and decided to mend it using a form of the Japanese art of Kintsugi or “Golden Joinery”. This entails mending the pot with gold so that the cracks show. The philosophy behind this is that if an object has been damaged then it has more of a history and should, therefore, be celebrated and highlighted, rather than hidden or discarded. Here is an image of my mended pot.

I was really pleased with the result and shared this with a fellow artist in an email exchange. He praised my first time attempt and added that he hoped that I was on the mend. This brought home a connection that I had not made before. Not only was I on the mend but during this period of recuperation I had mended and perhaps even enhanced a pot I was particularly attached to and did not want to discard. I hold on to the hope the same can be said of myself.

Forces of Nature

I participated in an installation Ai no Keshiki (Indigo Views) which is soon to be part of an exhibition called “Forces of Nature ” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery from October 16, 2020 to June 27, 2021!!(https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/invitational-2020)At the special exhibition “FORCES OF NATURE: Renwick Invitational 2020 ” where Ai no Keshiki (Indigo Views) will be exhibited, four invited artists selected from all over the world will approach the long history of art’s engagement with the natural world through unconventional and highly personal perspectives. Roland Ricketts, one of the invited artists, supervises Indigo Art “Ai no Keshiki”