heavenly haven

Each person comes to a trip with their own personal expectation of what they want to experience. As an artist and a person who engages all senses whenever possible, my desire is to absorb as much as I can no matter where I am knowing that at some point, it will all come out in collage or written form, sometimes both. I also try to set aside time for creativity when I travel. Visiting a gallery to view the works of local artists is my first choice however that’s not always possible. On my past two trips I packed a small kit of collage supplies that fits nicely in either my carry-on or checked bag. As hectic as our tour schedule was in Egypt, spirit compelled me to carve out some time the night before our last full day to climb into bed after a three hour bus ride from Alexandria back to Cairo to make a torn paper collage. My intention was to capture the feel of the country in strips of paper. Just when I thought it was near completion, a female form began to emerge. A goddess was taking shape and much like the very first one I made many years before, I didn’t see her coming. I’m sure she surfaced because I had heard about the goddess Hathar’s temple, wanted to stand before it but did not have the chance since it was not included on our schedule; she actually showed up at various other sites.

Sacramento presented me with such an unexpected natural goddess heaven that I never touched the collage materials in my suitcase. From the moment I stepped into the park across from the hotel, the trees engaged me in a sensual dialogue, their curvaceous forms speaking directly to the primal earth woman in me. I thought about when the creative process surrounding my goddess collages began, how pictures in magazines uncovered breasts, buttocks, the fullness of a belly. The trees seemed to want me to see their proudly displayed naked bosoms, behinds and piercings…

…magnolia bodies of females and males intertwined with one another, one of them unabashedly allowed her lover to touch the ripe spot between her thighs, sprouted red flowering reproductions from the seduction. A voyeur aroused by an orgy at rest, my camera could not be still…

 …I couldn’t get enough of their eroticism risking my safety by venturing back into the park alone on the dark rainy Sunday afternoon to get a glimpse of the trees when they were wet and glistening. Smooth damp dark brown and ebony bark reminds me of skin fresh from the shower…

Though I did not get to a gallery on either of my trips, I did find an antique bracelet on my first day in Luxor at a serious tourist trap, slipped into a small store in Sacramento that from the outside was quite deceiving; it looked like a place with lots of inexpensive touristy items that I almost passed up until I heard myself say to myself, “Don’t judge a book, you have the eye.” Treasure awaited. A weighty ornate and aged African brass bracelet winked at me from beneath a few less attractive meaningless pieces on a table so low to the ground that it almost went unnoticed. On a shelf in a glass enclosed case way in the back of the place stood Goddess Radha who had been there for more than a year I was told so of course, I plucked the bronze and brass beauty from her cabinet to keep close to me once I got home.

 

I can’t shake the feeling that something is brewing, has been since I was in Egypt. I was wrapped in a heavenly haven of nature’s goddesses for hours…art worn by women who I will never meet adorn my wrist…my physical and spiritual transformation…both Hathar and Radha are associated with beauty and love…I haven’t sat down to the table to see if a goddess wants to make her appearance but someone wants to make my acquaintance, everything in me feels a presence so...

keep your peepers open!®