Breath of the Mother

Title: 'Breath of the Mother'
Bronze
23cm x 11cm
Limited edition: /11

Breath of the Mother references the thread that connects us to the first mother. When a woman is born, all of her eggs are contained within her ovaries. This means there is a direct genetic connection to our maternal line. Reverence for this ancestry is signaled by the blue and white cloth that represents this line in African religions. These colors are honored in the white swirls of spirit and tiny blue dots in this sculpture. When I pray to my ancestors, I place this cloth on the left side. The depth and reach of this history lends weight to my rituals. The beginning of all people was present with the first. This genetic and spiritual lineage can be sensed in the quietest, most private moments. 

The flames lick upwards, tonguing the damp night air. Drumbeats reverberate through the darkness, into the earth, and through her bones. Her heels stamp upon the soil, again and again, as her body writhes and twists. She is a snake, a branch in the wind, the waves upon the shore. As she dances, the light mist coalesces into a form. The droplets draw together into wisps that swirl around her body. The ancestors have joined her. The pulse of life beats inside her. It reaches out with a shimmering thread, a spider vein that flows to her mother before her to her mother before her and on and on. The First held the beginning of All. She stamps and twirls and shouts into the night. Sweat trickles between her breasts and down her spine. The ghosts cluster around her. They, too, are dancing.

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Across millennia and cultures, the four natural elements appear and re-appear in our most sacred prayers and rituals. They go beyond the form of the ceremonial rites designed by each culture to reach something deep within us. They are access points to the infinite. Creating a bridge between us and the world that embraces us, these elements evoke the general in the specific. Bronze, itself a child of all four elements, is the perfect medium for this series which begs to be touched and held as the viewer contemplates the divine through the tangible.