Joelen Mulvaney told me about her work a few months ago. I asked her to send along photos of it once completed.
Hopefully I can figure out how to post them.
Here's the message she just sent. My thanks to her for her thoughtful work.
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Dear NAFPS;
At your request I am sending some images of the completed installation I call, "On turtle's Back". Thank you for helping by doing all that research and reporting on the tragedies accompanying errant ceremony. I did extensive research and identified 13 deaths related to ceremony gone wrong, all but one a direct result of attempts at sweat ceremony. The names of each victim are printed on raw canvas and added to the bottom of the painting as a fringe. I researched each individual, found out where they lived and found the indigenous tribe who also live there. The names of each tribe is scratched into the bark of the frame.
Attached are a few photos of the installation I put together in my Johnson, Vt. studio before moving to Barre. The writing was a series of excerpts from news accounts and excerpts from historical writings about early white contact observances by whites of sweat ceremonies.
To explain a couple of elements not easily observed...
The painting has the elements honored in sweat ceremony and a skewed image of the Hopi prophecy symbol of reunification of the races. I painted over each color representing race with the next race color, working counter clockwise around the image. Transforming each color into the other by layering, symbolizing blending the races, combining them, really, speaking the truth about race, that it does not exist, except in the human imagination.
My theory about connecting with spirituality that is borrowed, not a part of your own tradition, is that first you must connect in some real way with the people who keep that tradition. Perhaps if the victims of the lodges had connected with the indigenous cultures where they lived, they would be alive today. I cut the branches and constructed the model sweat frame the way I was taught by my Algonkin adopted family in Rapid Lake, the prayer ties hanging from it were from the sweat ceremony that honored the passing of my mother conducted a week to the day before the Yavapai county sweat and the birch bowl underneath it made by my Algonkin teacher, Irene Wawati Jerome. The police tape is from the chief of police in Barre, where I live, who is Mohawk. I scratched the names of each group indigenous to where the victims lived that each could have connected with. So, for example, Tonkawa are the people nearest to the person who was from Oklahoma/Texas border area.
The painting is 4' X4' and has a turtle shell tucked in between the canvas and the stretcher.
Dear NAFPS;
At your request I am sending some images of the completed installation I call, "On turtle's Back". Thank you for helping by doing all that research and reporting on the tragedies accompanying errant ceremony. I did extensive research and identified 13 deaths related to ceremony gone wrong, all but one a direct result of attempts at sweat ceremony. The names of each victim are printed on raw canvas and added to the bottom of the painting as a fringe. I researched each individual, found out where they lived and found the indigenous tribe who also live there. The names of each tribe is scratched into the bark of the frame.
Attached are a few photos of the installation I put together in my Johnson, Vt. studio before moving to Barre. The writing was a series of excerpts from news accounts and excerpts from historical writings about early white contact observances by whites of sweat ceremonies.
To explain a couple of elements not easily observed...
The painting has the elements honored in sweat ceremony and a skewed image of the Hopi prophecy symbol of reunification of the races. I painted over each color representing race with the next race color, working counter clockwise around the image. Transforming each color into the other by layering, symbolizing blending the races, combining them, really, speaking the truth about race, that it does not exist, except in the human imagination.
My theory about connecting with spirituality that is borrowed, not a part of your own tradition, is that first you must connect in some real way with the people who keep that tradition. Perhaps if the victims of the lodges had connected with the indigenous cultures where they lived, they would be alive today. I cut the branches and constructed the model sweat frame the way I was taught by my Algonkin adopted family in Rapid Lake, the prayer ties hanging from it were from the sweat ceremony that honored the passing of my mother conducted a week to the day before the Yavapai county sweat and the birch bowl underneath it made by my Algonkin teacher, Irene Wawati Jerome. The police tape is from the chief of police in Barre, where I live, who is Mohawk. I scratched the names of each group indigenous to where the victims lived that each could have connected with. So, for example, Tonkawa are the people nearest to the person who was from Oklahoma/Texas border area.
The painting is 4' X4' and has a turtle shell tucked in between the canvas and the stretcher.
Dear NAFPS;
At your request I am sending some images of the completed installation I call, "On turtle's Back". Thank you for helping by doing all that research and reporting on the tragedies accompanying errant ceremony. I did extensive research and identified 13 deaths related to ceremony gone wrong, all but one a direct result of attempts at sweat ceremony. The names of each victim are printed on raw canvas and added to the bottom of the painting as a fringe. I researched each individual, found out where they lived and found the indigenous tribe who also live there. The names of each tribe is scratched into the bark of the frame.
Attached are a few photos of the installation I put together in my Johnson, Vt. studio before moving to Barre. The writing was a series of excerpts from news accounts and excerpts from historical writings about early white contact observances by whites of sweat ceremonies.
To explain a couple of elements not easily observed...
The painting has the elements honored in sweat ceremony and a skewed image of the Hopi prophecy symbol of reunification of the races. I painted over each color representing race with the next race color, working counter clockwise around the image. Transforming each color into the other by layering, symbolizing blending the races, combining them, really, speaking the truth about race, that it does not exist, except in the human imagination.
My theory about connecting with spirituality that is borrowed, not a part of your own tradition, is that first you must connect in some real way with the people who keep that tradition. Perhaps if the victims of the lodges had connected with the indigenous cultures where they lived, they would be alive today. I cut the branches and constructed the model sweat frame the way I was taught by my Algonkin adopted family in Rapid Lake, the prayer ties hanging from it were from the sweat ceremony that honored the passing of my mother conducted a week to the day before the Yavapai county sweat and the birch bowl underneath it made by my Algonkin teacher, Irene Wawati Jerome. The police tape is from the chief of police in Barre, where I live, who is Mohawk. I scratched the names of each group indigenous to where the victims lived that each could have connected with. So, for example, Tonkawa are the people nearest to the person who was from Oklahoma/Texas border area.
The painting is 4' X4' and has a turtle shell tucked in between the canvas and the stretcher.
