The ancient wisdom of female spirituality

By Heather Killen

Spectator

NovaNewsNow.com

A group of local artists are sending out a call that it’s time to face the music and dance.

Peggy Ann Gregory, a textile artist; Margaret Janson, a potter and clay sculptor; Therese Gosselin, a master wire sculptor; Jo Leath, a writer; and Verna Burne, a visual artist have produced a mixed media exhibit that celebrates the ancient wisdom of feminine spirituality.

The message of the exhibit is a call for people to create a more authentic and positive direction that celebrates, rather than exploits nature, according to Gregory.

"We wanted to create an alternative vision to empower women and men," she said. "Any artist tries to help you shift your vision and reset the society’s values."

Gregory created a series of quilted panels celebrating the reciprocal relationships within nature, between species, and the natural rhythm of life and death.

Each artist in the exhibit based her work around three broad themes: unity, rhythm, and the dance. Each worked independently of the others using ancient symbols to create their own expressions in their chosen mediums.

The results were surprising. The five were delighted by the harmony of images that emerged in the work when the separate pieces were brought together.

"We were in awe," said Janson. "We worked separately on each piece, yet the same ideas were expressed by each artist."

Each was tasked to incorporate ancient symbols such as horns, eggs, and bees into her individual pieces.

Janson created a series of sculptures that showed how women and men co-create the future, incorporating images of male and female, horns and eggs, in balance.

Writer Jo Leath contributed a series of essays for the exhibition that contemplates the power of unity between the sexes in creating the future.

She also contemplates the heart’s natural rhythm as a guide to follow in recreating a new vision for humanity.

"Artists awaken things from the heart, so that society can find a new intent and desire, and then build from it," she said.

Visual artist Vera Burne said that as a society, we are bombarded by negative symbols that promote greed, power, and hatred. As an artist, she wanted to offer up more traditional values for the future.

"Green isn’t the colour of money, or envy; it’s the colour of life and creation," she added. "Red isn’t just violence and bloodshed, it’s ripened seeds. We have to stop making war with the environment."

Burne’s abstract paintings incorporate vivid colours with dynamic movement, inviting the viewer to appreciate and join the dance.

Therese Gosselin, a wire sculptor created a line of jewelry that considers the web of unity that connects all life. If people can envision another way, they will find the ways and means of making it reality.

"When you want to dance, you find the music," she said. "The movement that follows is the creation. Nature is a dance and the seasons are a rhythm."

She added that the exhibit is a reminder that we are ignoring the signs that nature is sending us, and that we need to envision a more authentic way of life in order to save the environment, and ourselves.

In keeping with traditional feminine values, the exhibit weighs the cost of the current course of environmental destruction to future generations.

"I know the next generation feels hopeless when they look around and see the trees cut down and the water being polluted," added Gregory.

Because we are all part of the dance, what affects one part of the web affects all other aspects. When one species is compromised, all species suffer.

"The male symbol of power is the pyramid, whereas the female symbol is the spider web," added Janson. "Nobody notices if someone falls off the top of a pyramid, but the spider notices the slightest change in a web."

Women turn to others for support and form support networks of friends and family, this is in contrast to the patriarchal world that fosters power and competition.

The artists agree that while the exhibit incorporates old symbols that most people no longer recognize as they did in past cultures, the abstract messages are powerful enough to bridge the gaps not just between the genders, but between cultures.

"It’s a way to make the invisible visible again," said Leath. "The magic of art is that it can change the way we see things."

The Three Ways of Feminine Spirituality is showing at the Apple Pie Pottery and Gallery at 106 Main St. in Middleton until January 12.