Dancing the body of the possible…
…Painting…Writing…
Consciousness takes form
poised within the timeless
willing entry into life”

Lines from my poem, “Dancing,” streamed into mind as I drove home from an art gallery. With the words came the image of a fiber arts mobile composed of a drawing of dancers, a pearl bead, an egg on a nest, dried flowers filled with seed, and more. Arriving home, I sketched the mobile, and over the next three weeks assembled it from items in my studio.

The images from works in the gallery resonated with my own symbol system from earlier paintings, pastels, and fiber arts works, and with my feeling for the process of the artist and its relationship to the mystery of consciousness and life itself.

In my belief, all elements of physical life on earth- whether animal, plant, or mineral- are forms of consciousness and are interconnected. Following this belief, symbols of all three forms are represented in my mobile art, and are interconnected through the structures of the mobile. To me, in life, ultimately, everything is formed of the energy of consciousness; this is represented in the mobiles through the use of lines of fiber which are variously connected to other lines to symbolize the mystery of the structural framework of the universe. (It is my own string theory!)

The mobiles themselves can be enjoyed as forms moving in space without knowing all of the above, yet, all of the above, held within myself, combines with an inner force “willing entry into life” and compels me to create the mobiles. They would not exist without their metaphysics.

The structure of the mobile, “Dancing,” creates space to symbolize consciousness taking form. The varicolored purple, amorphously-shaped, polished stone and the silver threads surrounding it at the apex of the mobile represent the energy of potential consciousness- the chaos of being and knowledge before it comes clearly to consciousness and physical existence. The pearl bead represents clarity of consciousness ready to take form, and on another level, the mystery of conscious being.

The silver threads represent energy of consciousness throughout the mobile. Consciousness extends from the chaos before being, into clarity of consciousness, into creations of consciousness and manifestations of life that emerge through the mysterious matrix of creation that is symbolized by the woven web framework of the mobile.

A mini-artwork of word and image, dried plants containing seed, shells, polished stones, and colored glass beads (silica mineral) symbolize forms that have emerged into life. The egg nested on the matrix/web symbolizes life “poised within the timeless.” The clear glass beads on silver lines of thread represent the infinite forms and ways consciousness can be expressed. All forms manifest on silver threads representing energy of consciousness.

Ribbons of illusion (net fiber) play through the space occupied by the symbolic forms and tracing paper is layered over the mini-artwork to represent levels and layers of conscious awareness. Words on the mini-artwork medallion emerge through these layers and levels as do the dancers in the artwork- a united female and male who move through space and time “dancing the body of the possible.