I have been reading about the shamanic and healing traditions of tribal peoples with great interest, focusing particularly on the Cheyennes( who call themselves the Tsitsistas), but also asian, african, and south and central american examples.The shamanic idea of an interchange between nature and the spirit world speaks to me of a deep route to healing and restoring harmony with nature. The medicine people/shaman travel via trance states into other dimensions and learn to negotiate that realm for purposes of knowledge and healing. Some of this urge seems present in many artists.
THE SHAMAN'S JOURNEY
SHE'LL BE COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN
Mary is one of the many faces of the divine feminine, her appearance and the revival of interest in Gaia seems to send out a cocka-doodle-do question about how we will care for this planet. The Dragon in chinese culture is identified with lightning storms and other primal earth energies .
SHAMAN JOURNEY
Original stained glass art by Joseph Tracy AFSD*
page 8
This image began as a scene from a children's story I wrote some years ago which has a young boy and a horse and takes place in the Andes.
RAINSTORM
Stained glass art based on an intense actual rainstorm that began while painting the central image of the bird woman which was later combined with imagery about the medieval poem Sweeny Astray. The hand is from DaVinci's La Giaconda and it is touching a cell in mitosis, the face is cast glass based on an anciet Irish gravestone. The central figure is part human, part bird, vulerable to the weatherlike Sweeny, only female.
AFSD*
EVE
This window is a collage with galaxies, a peony with ants, plant mitosis, and diatoms all surrounding an image of Eve's fall by medieval sculptor, Gislbertus. The Eve story has many interpretations, but in my mind Eve is reaching for knowledge and that changes everything, opening a world of wonder and danger.I think Gislebertus conveyed the beauty, courage and and sadness all in the same gesture. Original glass art composition by Joseph Tracy
