ART JOURNAL

  SUBJECT MATTER: MEXICAN BOUQUET Mexican paper flowers in an earthenware pitcher. It's said that the Spanish brought tissue paper from China to Mexico and that that introduction was the initial starting point for paper flowers being used for weddings, quinceaneras, and other ceremonial activities. But, in reality, no one knows for sure where and/or when the tradition actually started.  Earthenware in Mexico began during the Purron period (2300-1500 BCE) when they moved from stoneware to clayware. To put this into perspective, in pre-colonial America, pottery was being made over a thousand years before pottery in pre-colonial Mexico. The earliest known pottery in the U.S territory (in what is now known as Savanah, Georgia, United States) was being made by Native Indians in approximately 3500 BCE.  DIPICTION OF SUBJECT MATTER I used vibrant, gaudy colors for the stemless, floating flower heads and I used earthy, clay-like colors for the solid, blocklike, geometric, earthen...

  SUBJECT MATTER: THREE BALL CROSS The Three Ball Cross is symbolic of the Trinity; The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and of juggling the responsibility of a personal cross.  DIPICTION OF SUBJECT MATTER The base of the cross stretches from the earth and vaults into heaven where the three "balls" exist. This is a call to the axis mundi and the central point of existence from which all divinity rotates and/or flows to and from.  PERSONAL DRAW OF DATA FROM THE SUBJECT MATTER The cross in this image is grounded in the earth in the foreground of the picture plane to imply something more (i.e. an underworld) is available for the base of the cross to slip into. This lack of firm planting into the underworld itself, going only as far as the earth, shows me a personal lack of desire to dive into the sphere of the underworld and/or a personal lack of desire to know more about the realm of death as an actual destination.  Given that I find my personal power in God; in the Trinit...

SUBJECT MATTER: NAHUI OLLIN The Nahui Ollin is a Nahua and Aztec cultures' graphic, hard-edged representation of a four-petal flower. Here, it is depicted as a soft petal flower similar to the one found over the womb on the tunic of the heavily pregnant Virgen de Guadalupe. The Nahui Ollin is a Nahua and Aztec symbol that represents 5 era cycles of creation and destruction. The 4 petals represent the four cardinal directions and four previous cycles to the one we are currently in. The center of the flower represents the axis mundi; the central locus of the earth's rotation that conne cts the poles of the celestial bodies (the heavens and the underworld) to the earth. The axis mundi also represents the fifth sun; our current sun and earth cycle. Our current cycle, it's believed, will end due to numerous, catastrophic earthquakes. In other cultures, outside of South America, the axis mundi is represented as a pole, a line, a dot, a tree trunk, a temple, etc. which illustrate ...

    By way of introduction, I was born in Davenport, IA. Corn has always been a staple in my conscious awareness- at all times, it's just there. Corn jokes, corn idioms, corn as a symbol of state for mental registration of approximate geographic location in discussions with passersby about where I'm from, etc.  I don't eat much of it, but when I do, I like field corn. I like field corn more than sweet corn, more than "bread and butter" corn (known by most others as "butter and sugar" corn), and more than all other types of corn out there. Field corn, if you are wondering, is what "they" use as feed for livestock. Should I be a bit embarrassed that I prefer livestock feed more than the overly sweet, overly delicate, overly hyped fructose variety? Maybe. But, I don't really worry about all that. I like what I like.  Iowa, it's culture, it's ideals, it's modes and methods for interacting with the world, has always had a huge hand i...