origin story of bird women
After much reflection and deep self inquiry, I want to share the origin of my bird women series of art I’ve been working and playing with for the past 3 years.
It all began in India, as we were stranded there at the beginning of the world wide covid pandemic.
Covid
Corvid
Corvid
Covid
We were in India, stranded, with canceled flights and no way home.
This created stress and anxiety as everyday the situation felt more and more dire. What would we do? How would we get home?
We made homemade masks and used “Thieves Oil” on the inside of the mask as some layer of protection, if only to soothe our nerves. “Thieves Oil” is a blend of different herbal ingredients that Doctors who treated the plague victims used. They put the herbal infusion on their hands, ears, temples & feet, and wore beak-like masks stuffed with cloths containing this special blend.
I was seeing this image from the Thieves Oil bottle floating around the internet and it intrigued me, these men with bird heads and long gowns. In my art journal, using collage papers I wanted to subvert/amplify the idea a little by changing the man in a gown to a woman in a mutlicoloured, patchwork dress, with a bird-like head/mask. Having just traveled to Rajasthan, India, my mind was filled with imagery of patterned and multicolored clothing and textiles of all kinds.
And the series began.
This first messy and wild mixed media paper piece became my Priestess of Protection. She hung on the wall in our rented room while we scrambled online trying to secure a way home from our travels.
On her I wrote the words:
“I am safe and protected”
See pix and READ the rest of the story BELOW.
Eventually we made it home, safe, sound and incredibly grateful to land here on beloved Gabriola Island, on the unceded traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation.
I arrived home to ravens in the trees all around this land, calling and playing. Beginning their spring ritual of nesting and raising young ones.
The idea that had hatched in India stayed with me, and I continued playing and exploring with this bird woman image on everything from beach wood, to full size sheets of plywood to teeny tiny canvases.
Eventually they found their way into my glass art too, because that’s how creativity flows, right?
I created 2 stuffed raven women dolls out of patchworked fabric with brown corduroy heads. These bird women want to be seen in every medium I work in.
I’m obsessed with them! We’re having a seriously playful relationship!
They want to be seen, they insist on being created, they insist on BEING.
I choose to L I S T E N….
They arrived in all forms: tall, short, thin, wide, colourful, plain, friendly, distant, warm, cool.
Their names changed from Priestess of Protection to Raven Priestess to Raven Goddess to Raven Women to Bird Women….they morphed and grew and shifted and changed.
Gradually over time they came to symbolize more than protection.
I began to inquire of them:
Are you a bird or are you a woman? Or both? Are you stuffed in your dress or are your wings gracefully hidden? Are there even wings under there? Are you captive or are you free? Or both? Are you real or are you mythical? Or both? Do you love to adorn yourself with your patchwork, multicoloured and textured dress or do you feel stifled by it? Or both?
Maybe like me, YOU feel and resonate with them too.
We have a mutually nourishing and enriching relationship, these bird women and me.
They’re maiden, mother, crone. Sister, auntie, cousin, friend, acolyte, lover.
They’re wild women, witches, priestesses, queens, goddesses, healers, dancers, singers, drummers, young, old, tiny and larger than life.
They travel solo, or in groups each to their own preference.
They are sovereign unto themselves, their own self appointed queens.
There are hundreds of influences at play in this series, maybe lifetimes of influences, from the most obvious ones I’ve already shared and more.
My own love of colour, adornment, patchwork, mismatched prints, checks and polka dots in my clothing, to the Hutterite women’s clothing that I saw all the time where I grew up on the prairies, to the house dress and apron my Gramma wore. Balinese shadow puppets, Venetian masked balls, textiles from Guatemala and India and on and on all have an influence.
My love of the feminine, my love of sovereignty, freedom and authentic expression.
These bird women are badass!
They’re Sovereign Bird Women, feminine, fierce, tender, wild, strong, vulnerable, playful, serious, messy and gloriously, gloriously ALIVE!
With conviction I claim them, and in return they claim me.
