A Beltane Party, 2014

Beltane Fire Dancer

2014

In the last post, I mentioned some of the artists on my private Facebook page that celebrate Beltane and make Beltane-related art. If you are new to my blog see the previous post HERE. 

Do you wonder what a Beltane festival or party is? Go here to the Wikipedia article on it. In short, it is a Gaelic festival about the arrival of Spring typically celebrated on May Day (or a weekend before or after, for those who work M - F). 

Since I know a lot of people who love to celebrate these events, I get invited to a lot Beltane rituals, parties and art-happenings. The fire dancer above was at one of the ones I attended. You can't see her costume, but she wore boots, a mini skirt with bright metallic-like spangles and a headdress with horns. There were at least 10 drummers there to keep her on beat. At this particular event there were about four fire dancers and one fire-eater.

Some people showed up in costume: there were women with a bouquet of flowers around their head, other folks with horns and leaves on their heads and heavily tattooed, some were wearing the Celtic tree of Life somewhere on their person, some re-enactors came with full body chainmaille and impressive ornate swords, some people came with Irish capes and some people didn't dress up at all. In other years I have gone, some people showed up with Green Man masks and regalia and some came with faerie costuming. I was disappointed they weren't there this time. This year there were more tee-shirts, jeans and beer than other years, possibly because there were a lot of young rock bands in the barn on the property (or maybe it was the cold night: who wants to cover up a nice costume with blankets or a coat?).

Some Beltane festivals have Maypole dancing as well, but that kind of event usually takes place in the day time. It also features women with long dresses and flowers in their hair as this picture will confirm. I have also done quite a bit of Maypole dancing throughout the years to celebrate Beltane.

Almost all of the Beltane festivals I have been to feature a bonfire where people dance to drums. For these pictures, these bonfires had just been lit, so there were no dancers yet. There were 3 bonfires in all. A large medieval-like catapult was used to throw a minimal fire into a large pile of wood (i.e. to light the bonfire). 

Here are some pictures of the bonfires:

I liked this photo of a boy in profile:

Here are some more pictures of the fire dancers:

Beltane is also about sitting around fire pits, socializing (the picture is blurry because it was after sundown, a few minutes before the sky turned pitch black):

It is also about eating, drinking and being merry. In this case I was more interested in what was going on behind the people eating, which is why they aren't particularly featured:

Which brings me to a situation where more explanation is probably due. This Beltane party was held at a friend's studio (and grounds). He is a sculptor and there are sculptures everywhere, on everything imaginable. I'd love to tell you who made all of these beautiful pieces (and he very much deserves the credit), but since they are on his private property, I won't, but it makes for an even more enchanting Beltane experience.   

Here is one of his sculptures that has been offered a beer by some of the guests in the background (again, it was taken after sundown, so it is amazing I got any photo at all):

Here is one of the roads (this particular road led to the party, which is why there are lanterns placed along it). In the dark, the lanterns illuminate the faces of the sculptures. It is really a cool effect when you're tired and you are stumbling your way back to your car. Every road should be lined with sculptures to help you on your journey through life:

Some of the statues along that road:

Here is gypsy-type caravan he made complete with a relief sculpture above the door:

Even the wood-stacking shelter gets some sculpture:

How about a tree? Super fuzzy photo -- but you get the idea...

Even a cart that he made gets the treatment:

Here is another one of his carts (just because I liked it). One of his sculptures you can see in the background of the photo:

Here is one last one I took (before I couldn't take any more pictures of anything except fire):

Perhaps another year I can get some Beltane photos that aren't challenged by a quickly setting sun!

I hope you've enjoyed going down Beltane lane with me.

Dreams Series I, (pottery and sculpture)

THE STAR

I am influenced by dreams, especially for my art and music. I decided that in addition to posting my work, I would start blogging about my dreams too.

Someone once told me that eating leafy greens every day will make a person dream. If that is true, then I am no exception: I eat a hefty salad of mixed greens every day for lunch.

I studied under Robert Moss, the dream expert, at Kripalu, a yoga center, years ago. My dreams had become difficult to ignore and I was introduced to his writing by a friend. When I saw that he was going to be at Kripalu, I sought out his help.

The experience of the workshop was something right out of Be Here Now by Ram Dass (when Ram Dass first meets the guru, Neem Karoli Baba). It was just as wrenching as the experience in that book, except the *guru* at the workshop took me by total surprise, an unsuspected young woman in typical western US dress of only 19 years old who saw all of the traumatic events of my life in the private corners of my mind... in another unsuspected place-- a dining room! I had the same experience as Ram Dass did too: racing mind, falling down, unable to speak, crying my heart out, etc, etc. A friend who went there with me told me that we should probably never speak of what happened to us at Kripalu because... who would believe it? It's just too *out there* for most people.

So, I won't ask you to believe anything, but I will say that the experience was a life-changing event that seemed to leave a distinct break with my past, past relationships & old habits of deny, deny, deny, don't look too closely at that phenomenon, don't listen to what you can't explain, pay no attention to that hunch, dreams are just churning out stuff from the day, and so on. The "deny habit" came from wanting to please intellectual doubters, left brained types who believe that the only realities in the world are what the five senses can perceive.

But... the one dream area I never spent time trying to ignore before or after this experience was with my art and music.

Usually when I dream of an art form or ideas, I delve right in. Of course, there are too many images that flash through my mind when I am sleeping, so some of it I simply write down for later (like, for instance, at this moment in time, I am working on 14 pieces at once).

Anyway, when I was in college, I was busy thinking of myself as a sculptor. These are the kinds of pieces I was making (note: the images are from scanned slides, not high quality, & the lighting is a bit funky, but that's the best I could do then):

And while I was making these sculptures I had many dreams of making these kinds of pieces:

Anyway, after I had 3 somewhat identical dreams, I got on the potters wheel and it took many, many years before I could tackle the pieces I dreamt about, but I kept true to "the vision" and never looked back.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips) 

How Angels Communicate in the Evening and How Angels Communicate in the Evening II

Note: the copyright watermarks do not appear in the actual art (needed for on-line display only).

These are 2 new designs I finished on October 19 from graphically altering relief sculptures. The relief sculpture was done on a wall-hanging platter shape. The platter is visible on my website here. You can see that I did quite a bit of altering to make it into a graphic. I have shown the actual sculpture in a number of places, but the graphic alteration is completely new.

As I said in my previous post, I like the monochromatic effect I get with playing with and re-arranging my ceramic sculptures in this way. It gives another life to my ceramic creations and it is another art form I am just now discovering. I like working in the two mediums and this is a way for me to do that.

Right now I have the images for sale in my Etsy shop as greeting cards, but I may do more to make them into prints (& possibly other alterations down the road). Once I printed the greeting cards, they looked different from what was in my monitor, so I tried to represent them as best I could with the other two images (shown). Monitors display colors differently though, so it may be a futile exercise.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby

4 Unicorns: Unicorn II in Dayglow, Unicorn V in Red, Unicorn III at Dusk, Unicorn VI at Midnight

Note: the copyright watermarks do not appear in the actual art (needed for on-line display only).

These are 4 new unicorns I made from graphically altering relief sculptures. The relief was done on wall-hanging platter shapes. The platters are visible on my website here. You can see that I did quite a bit of altering. The pottery pieces were shown at Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Center for a 5-person invitational juried exhibit called Once Again in March of this year and I also sold the greeting cards in the art center shop concurrent to the exhibit. Later, I brought them to more shops.

I like the monochromatic effect I get with these alterations, something one sees at night, at dusk and at dawn, which is why some are titled that. It’s something I never tried before, but I like the effect and it gives another life to my ceramic creations.

Right now I have them for sale in my Etsy shop as greeting cards, but I may do more to make them into prints (& possibly other alterations down the road).

Right now they are printed on linen card stock from a giclee printer with archival inks (rated to last 100 years). They are also signed, so they are a little more special than my mass produced cards which use soy based inks and have barcodes. Sometimes I test new designs out in this way, printing a small number.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby