I found out I got into the National Juried Show, Ephemera. It will be at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, MO from February 21st until March 18th of 2011. The juror,  Daniel Keegan, Milwaukee Art Museum Director, will give a presentation on Feb. 21st at 7p.m.

The piece of mine that got in is the video I created which in on my home page, Women are Like Flowers. The theme of the show is "the notion of time, impermanence, illusion, ruin, and/or the temporary as primary characteristics."

It's been an interesting week. Interviewing candidates for a curator position. One brought up the idea of Magic Realism - which I had to look up. I like the idea of being a part of a genre that I was not trying to be a part of. The original idea of Magic Realism by Franz Roh in 1925. He meant the term more as the idea that the world is magical - just as it is. Not supernatural.

Later the idea got to including more dreamlike - but still presented more as reality than imaginary. There is a comparison from Oregon State University that suggests that Magic Reality (also referred to as New Objectivity) is more sober than Expressionism. That the paint surfaces are thin as opposed to thick. But other writers state that there are no set rules. 

(http://www.phmoen.no/english/english_index.html?/english/magic_realism/what_is.html&main

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ger341/exns.htm)

I've reading books by Joseph Campbell, Marija Gimbutas and Merlin Stone (and others) about ancient religions. I'm curious about the concept of Mother Nature and how it was thought of several millennia ago. I'm also interested in what snakes and bulls and some other symbols meant.

According to Gimbutas, the idea of Mother Nature was one group and ideas about the Snake Goddess were another. But it seems to all overlap with Mother Nature worshippers having the snake as various symbols.

It is evident the the snake meant healing by it's use in present day medical symbols even though the snake is pretty much demonized in the Judeo-Christian tradition. I have read things in the past that suggest there may have been some use of venom that was used in ceremonies in ancient Greece (such that a little bit of venom may have helped induce visions in people who were versed in that). 

One book said that there was an old idea from India that the earth is balanced on a giant snake. And that the snake accounted for earthquakes. (In China - snakes are currently used to predict earthquakes.)

Beyond those things, snakes have been associated with water and also with renewal and transformation - what with their skin shedding. Water, of course, being integral to life, was also integral to various Goddesses and was represented in different ways.

The concept of snakes being associated with the divine is common to so many religions around the world that it leads to the idea that the concept was commonly shared - probably when the world population was quite small and the idea was spread as people spread over the earth. There are snakes that adorn the roofs of old Stave Christian churches in Norway  - and also snakes that adorn the roofs of religious buildings in Thailand. There are snakes and dragons on religious buildings in the Americas from before Columbus came. 

Most ancient culture's religions have something about goddesses and snakes. In addition to water, healing and renewal, snakes were associated with the ancient concept of the Tree of Life. A snake rested at the bottom and an eagle was on top.  

Gimbutas studied abstract snake imagery on Goddess figurines dating from 6000-2200 BCE. Some pregnant goddess/women figurines had a symbol of a snake coiled around the abdomen area. Campbell wrote that the Goddess figurines were created during the Aurignacian culture 35,000 - 26,000 BCE through the Old Europe time that Gimbutas wrote about and that there were still pockets of places in the mid-20th century where they were still being made. Often they were made in such a way that they could be stuck in the ground. Wishes for fertility, especially of crops, were often the purpose.

I live out in the country and I have wildflowers (and a few weeds) growing outside of my studio. I have seen a few snakes outside from time to time - mostly small ones - a brownish one less than a foot long, a thin green one that may have been 3 feet long, another reddish-brown one that seemed to shoot straight into the ground. More of a variety than what I have seen in the past.

I have never seen one inside any of my houses, though, until last week. I have my studio downstairs. There are two main rooms - one carpeted and one not (the messy painting room) - plus a furnace room that I sometimes use to photograph art - and a bathroom. I was just coming out of the messy room after getting my coffee and here was a thick black line that tapered to a point. At first I thought it could be a piece of black felt - because I have some of it around for backgrounds when photographing. The room was fairly dark - but I thought I could make out where it looked more three-dimensional than a piece of felt would look. It seemed to have some light shining on it in a way that felt would not. And then it moved its tail. So.

I started painting snakes a year or so ago. So it's interesting to me to have one visit my studio. It's hard tellin' how much time it spends there. 

The first couple of days after the snake's appearance - I mostly stayed upstairs. But I'm getting more used to the idea. We put out more poison for the mice - which seem to love it down there. And I try to make noise when I walk around so I don't surprise it. 

The experience has caused me to reflect on how I feel about snakes. It's one thing to see them outside and in the wild - and it's something else when they are able to get in one's home. They are able to be so quiet and move in way that seems so effortless (whether it is or not). But they mostly manage to stay hidden from view - unlike in my paintings - where they have been coming out to interact with (or at least look at) people.

So I had to consider what snakes represent to me - and I think it is Nature, itself (the living, wild part of Nature), taking the form of a snake. It can also mean regeneration - but definitely NOT evil - and not necessarily knowledge or cunning, either. And that is what I felt like with the snake in my house - that Nature, itself had come inside my house and there was little that I could do about it (besides trying to get rid of it's food source - and look for holes to fill). So I may as well get used to it.