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I hope you’ve had a good summer. It’s finally nice and cool here after the worst heat wave since, probably forever. Everything I’ve been working on this month in some way relates to that, how sensitive we are to our environment and how resistant we have to be.
From my oracle project you can watch the animations of a salamander cut off from the world and a couple seahorses completely immersed in theirs. In my deck these are the species most different from humans so they represent the deepest most unknown parts of ourselves, which still hold a memory of the emotional environment we grew up in, whether it was caring and protective, harsh and unwelcoming, or everything in between.
Then as part of my zodiac deck project you can read about the crab and the myth of Cancer, which is that in-between space inside a protective shell, the kind of transitional place we may find ourselves in during times of change.
And finally you'll see the painting of a stickleback fish swimming in hot water due to climate change, which I did for the cover of a scientific journal. |
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Myth of Cancer
The earliest environment we've ever been in was the womb of our mother. It's our home, our source, the place where dreams are born but also where monsters hide. In his second labor, Heracles has to fight this kind of monster, a serpent with many heads sent by his stepmother Hera, who I see as the equivalent of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Like Glenda the good witch for Dorothy, Heracles has Athena, a kind of big sister who helps him vanquish the monster.
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This is the stickleback fish, which I imagined being in a kind of purgatory, with yellow leaves quivering like flames and greener shades above to show the warmer water.
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