Posts
It was a
nice surprise to get this email yesterday from the New Hampshire Art
Association:
Congratulations!
Your artwork, Garden Totem, won
a honorable mention receiving $100 in the 16th Annual Joan Dunfey
Open Juried Exhibit.
 |
| Garden Totem CC Jean Stimmell |
This is the
second image from my “Bony Garden Series" to be recognized. Back in August, another, Resurrection, got accepted in the 36th Annual
Parfitt Open Juried Exhibition. A little
background information might be helpful to trace the history of how the “Bony Gardens Series" came to be – and the crucial role adversity played in the process.
It all
started in August when I was recuperating from prostate cancer surgery. I was in a lot of
pain with a fever of 103.° Looking past myself out the window, I became
fascinated with the glint of the morning sun off the bones hanging on our barn,
bones of wild animals that our hound dog, Coco, hauled back home for us as
presents.
In my
bathrobe with a catheter bag slung off a strap over my shoulder, I unsteadily ventured
outside, my camera in hand. I was fascinated with these bones. I didn't know why. The barn was
a poor backdrop so I took one of the intricate bones, the spine of a deer, into the
garden.
Brought
together by forces outside my conscious awareness, the bones and the garden
perfectly complimented each other, despite – or perhaps because of – my fever-addled brain. Blissfully, time
flew by as I photographed away, forgetting all my medical maladies.
This
is how it came to be that Resurrection was born.
 |
| Resurrection CC Jean Stimmell |
I continued
to photograph various Coco's bones in my garden, from time to time, over the summer and, in the process, amassed a series of
prints. I also did some studying, researching the symbolic meaning of these two elements, gardens and bones:
Gardens, of
course by their very nature , represent the essence of life: The garden
contains “the life-giving Tree, fruit, or
flower, the reward of him who finds the center. The garden is also the symbol
of the soul…”[1]
Bones I
found out are not, as in our modern culture, just something that dogs gnaw on: To indigenous people, who still live embraced in the arms of mother nature as opposed to some digital device, bones are sacred:
"Indeed, for the hunting peoples, the bone symbolizes the ultimate
root of animal Life, the matrix from which the flesh is continually renewed. It
is starting with the bones that animals and men are re-born... according to an uninterrupted cycle that constitutes an eternal
return…By contemplating himself as a skeleton, the shaman does away with time
and stands in the presence of the eternal source of Life."[2]
So, in summary, I feel blessed that these
symbols were able to manifest through me in my photographs. And I am eager to express my debt to adversity, which focused my attention and deepened my sense of mortality, opening me up to what the muse was trying to tell me.
No comments:
Post a Comment