and then because I realized I have not yet written about Dwelling. . .

Dwelling -fruit petals and steel wire

Here's an old artist statement relating to all of my early daughter/mother pieces (including her, her and a piece carved of salt) :

The body is my muse. In my sculptures, I bring formal elements if the female body forward to allow them to speak of women’s stories, their conflicts and triumphs.

As a second generation artist, my work seems in many ways to be in homage to my mother. Her wispy graphite drawings of the female figure have a profound effect on my sculptural notions of the body. Passed from mother to daughter is the core belief that the body is beautiful. My mother defines the modern creative female, birthing both child and art. Past women’s roles have restricted women to the home and constricted their movement in the art world. Today the tension of balancing traditional and progressive roles molds our bodies, daily concerns, and ultimately our destinies. My sculptures reflect this tension in idealized, symmetrical and perfectly balanced female forms; they are beautiful in their severity. The form itself derives from archaic memory as an extension of prehistoric and African figurines. Through multiple creations with differing materials and slight shifts in scale, they become the embodiment of the archetypal She, the one female character in many roles. Through the exploration of material, patterns arise: processed steel is restrictive as well as structural, wood, petals and other organic matter, is ephemeral, unpredictable, and resistant to conformity, even cast bronze holds the warmth and the unpredictable nature of human flesh that steel will rarely have.

Our first architectural home is Mother. A mobile shelter- structured by bone, held together by tendon and muscle, and insulated by flesh- carries us through an enormous world. Unseen and unseeing, we exist in a completely protected space. Later in life dresses represent this space as a child takes comfort in and under the folds of Mother’s skirt. Abiding in that cloth shelter is perhaps forbidden, but no less desired. Lisa Dwelling materializes this desire. Adapted from the dome-shape of an adobe African Musgum dwelling, the steel rod structure is covered with several hundred fruit petals of a Chinese Parasol Tree. The ochre petals are delicate, seductive spoon shapes that create an evocative pattern, when shingled over the entire form. An arched doorway invites entry. The object is simultaneously dress and house. The form’s very existence is tenuous because of the nature of the petals. Through successive manifestations, this female form establishes a new iconography. For want of a heroine, I create her.

Rusulka

(re)calling, graphite and gesso, 15" x 6"

This past weekend I heard a radio program that touched me very deeply. The segment was about a Ukrainian songcatcher who records the stories women tell her through song. Some of the songs can be very old or the singers may tell their own personal stories into song weaving in metaphor, myth, and magic to relate the depth of their feelings. The periods of singing could last for hours and hours. Over time some of the spirits that dwell within the culture were sung about, one kind were the domovi house spirits, and another being the Rusalka, the spirits of women who died unjustly or very young, perhaps, unmarried women, women who died in childbirth or drowned. They are sort of nature spirits which can be benevolent or malicious, and one week a year women conduct rituals to appease the rusalki and to avoid natural disasters. Part of the week includes visiting the graves of family members and singing songs to them giving news of the present and and reminiscing about the past. Each woman in the procession has her own melody so the sound becomes a crowd of individual stories some filled with the poignant new grief of recent loss, or occasionally with the bitter words of a widow married to a long dead abusive husband.

As the Ukraine modernizes and the new generation turns to the radio for it's music, this practice is swiftly disappearing. It doesn't help that some of the some of the women interviewed were survivors of Chernobyl, a place that had a history rich with stories of rusulka and as a result these women are unable to perform the rusalki rituals in the place of their ancestors. The loss of a place once again marks the beginning of a loss of the culture.

Mariana the songcatcher also mentions that in the Ukraine the best singers are witches or fortunetellers. The word for witch meaning "the one who knows" how to heal and protect. She tells how at the age of nineteen when she traveled about listening to the songs of women, and one woman sang about Mariana, capturing her essence in song.

I am deeply interested the the ideas of women's personal stories told through song, and then mixed with ideas about reading one's essence, magic, and spirits, I am giddy. This tradition has such resonance for me as I used to sing in the woods that I explored as a child, sometimes my own heartaches, sometimes in nonsensical words, and then it has a connection to the work I've been making all along but especially to the drawings I made after my mom died. The drawing at the top is one of a series of bird drawings I began after my mom died. They all sing telling the stories I couldn't find the words for.

The program is about an hour long, but I highly recommend you to listen to it at thestory.org. The research led to a group based in San Francisco Kitka to make a CD based on these musical traditions. You can listen to two songs here. I am still absorbing the information, researching Russian folk spirits and trying to figure out what it means to me today.