Vernal Equinox SOLD

KORE RISING is a re-run, yes -- I still haven't gotten around to taking new photos, I'm afraid. I am posting Kore again, because this is the time of year she is intended to celebrate. Kore is Persephone, who spends half her life as queen of the underworld, and March 20, the vernal equinox, is the time when she rises from the underworld and starts the whole cycle of blossom and fruit over again. I posted her before for the New Year -- well, back in the day, this was the new year!

And in spite of the chill today, I have seen the speartops of the spring bulbs poking up, and the little birds that live in the ivy of the Penn DOT building have been screaming Spring since the beginning of February. Turns out they were right, as they are every year! I have bought a big box of baby arugula to celebrate the first return of green.

Millennium

MILLENNIUM (12" x 20") is another assemblage in a styrofoam packing piece. It draws on several fairly conventional apocalyptic images: the last angel blasting the last note on the Last Trump is a Renaissance angel cut from a Christmas calendar with wings of maple seed "helicopters;" the scythe collaged onto the bottom is part of the face of a clock.

This piece was done as the Y2K heebie-jeebies were getting lots of attention, but since then, I've noticed that every couple of years, there is a new "The End of the World as We Know It is Near" scenario. The last election was high on some people's radar; 2012 is next, I understand. Somebody must be making money on it!

Open Studios today and tomorrow at the National Transit Art Studios, 206-210 Seneca Street, Oil City, PA, noon to 5:00 p.m. Come and visit -- I am in Studio E in the Annex!

Psychopomp

PSYCHOPOMP is a 21" x 22"composition in a styrofoam packing case frame with a window in it. It is one of the attributes of the god Hermes -- it means the conductor of souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead. You can see the winged cap as he swoops by the window. There are dozens of little bits of glitter hanging in mid-air (mounted on pins, really) to mark his passage.

I recently talked with an old friend who is familiar with my work, and he asked if I was still dealing with death -- which took me by surprise. But when I went back to look at my work, there it undeniably is. And there this piece was, overlooked in my digital photo collection, waiting to be posted.

I didn't take new pictures last weekend as I had planned -- instead I did my taxes. Death and Taxes! The inevitables. I'd rather be artistically inspired by death than by taxes, though, I guess.