Sources of Inspiration 5/5: Death

7 Extinction Events ©2006, 7 x 7 x 3 inches.
This book is about the extinction of the dinosaurs, but also about my own personal extinction. It's the one that matters the most to me.


7 Extinction Events
I have always thought a lot about death. As I get older, it gets more real to me, and makes a bigger appearance in my art. I wonder where we came from before we were born, and where we go when we die. I sometimes envision a starry landscape. I see a vast world, with small houses, or temples, here and there on the hills. The stars wheel slowly overhead. From a distance this world would appear to be one tiny point of light. It is small enough to hold us all as the atoms of one being, yet large enough to hold our spirits, with great spaces between us.



Man Moon-Go ©1989, 4-3/4 x 3 x 3/4 inches. While reading "On Dreams & Death" by Marie-Louise von Franz, I found this quote: "Many people made a doll to serve as a substitute for the corpse. The Chinese made one from a loincloth and called them Moon-Go." A few pages later she quotes Origen: "the spiritual body (which it is believed we reincarnate into) will be of a divine nature - the whole of us will see (will be eyes) the whole hear, the whole will serve as hands, the whole as feet."


Fish Messages, © 1992. 2-1/4 x 5-1/2 x 1 inch.
Fish for me symbolize both birth and death. Sometimes I imagine a giant fish that gives birth to the universe from her mouth. Everything flows from her, and then everything returns to her.


The fish who swims in the sky, ©1993. 3.5 x 6 x 1.5 inches.
I also see fish as creatures who can go places we can't go. They could bring back secret messages or information that would help us, including information about the before-life and the after-life.


The fish who swims in the sky
Inside are guts. The last page is a silver outline of the body. I thought of it as the spirit of the fish.