Redemption
It took 650 hours to create.
How did I do it?
Very carefully.
A slab of crystal isn’t very forgiving when it comes to mistakes.
The detailed carving has to be done under water. The slab would shatter and explode in my face if it wasn’t. I stood at my kitchen sink wearing flipflops with the piece balanced on the edges of the sink as water dripped from the faucet.
The thing about pouring water on crystal, is that it made everything invisible when I did it. So all the carving was done by touch. That meant I couldn’t wear any gloves. As I carved, splinters and shards of crystal flew off, embedding themselves in my hands and arms.
From start to finish all I can describe about it is to say that my attention was held. Psychologists would most likely label it ‘compulsive obsessive’. What it was, was a state of total surrender. My concentration was ‘held’ in stillness, a mantra playing over and over inside my heart and mind.
From the point of Love
Within the heart of God
Let Love descend
To fill the hearts of Man.
Through 650 hours of meticulous tedium. Something I happen to excel at.
When I do something, I give it all my heart. I pour all of myself into it. And have to be reminded most of the time to remember ‘me’. Remember Love is like yeast. I can’t give all I have. I have to hold some back for me in order to grow a new batch.
Inspiration for the piece came from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In the allegory prisoners are chained to look always on the wall of a cave. Behind them, burn great fires. Between the fires and the prisoners there are others, who walk back and forth across the cave, carrying different things. As they do, shadows are cast on the walls of the cave, for the prisoners to see. To the prisoners, the shadows on the wall are their reality. Awards are given to those prisoners best able to predict certain happenings based on associating the different patterns of shadows on the wall.
One day one of the prisoners gets free. He sees the fires and those moving in front of them. He sees the shadows on the wall as they are…just shadows. He also sees the entrance to the cave and walks out of it.
There, for the very first time in his life, he sees the sun. He’s sees real Light. It blinds him at first. Makes his eyes tear up, for before, all he had known was of shadows and darkness.
Then he remembers his companions, still chained in darkness and shadows. And decides he must go back. To carry the truth back to them so that they, too, can be free and see the Light. But when he goes back, it takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the darkness after seeing the Light. His fellows and companions think him mad and blinded by what he did. He couldn’t even see anything. Why would any of them want that? So they don’t believe him and fight to remain in their chains.
…the allegory of the cave…
A story about realities based on shadows. A story of realities based on illusions of things and, not real.
Do you see my cave?
Do you see on the horizon the solar eclipse? The sun and moon inseparable?
In esoteric symbolism the Sun represents Being and the Moon represents Becoming. And I carved no distance, no separation, between them.
Do you see what Lights up my cave?
Do you see the Cross?
The Cross symbolizes Always.
The horizontal line represents duality, from one polarity to the other, embracing both and all in between. The vertical line represents all spheres and dimensions. All aboves and all bellows.
Always Embraces All Ways.
This piece is an expression of the Light of redemption I found.
Within the cave of my own heart.
I made it one Christmas. As a Gift, A Present.
I could share with others.
S.E.
KoraKaos
I am thankful your love exists. May it attract more and more love. That’s all...
pu erh tea
CordieB
michael j contos
November 12th, 2007 - 1:03 pm
What an amazingly beautiful piece, Sue Ann. 650 hours??? I simply can’t imagine what that must have been like. It seems that many true artists lose themselves in the creation process.
I have a confession. Half the time I have no idea what you are talking about.
It’s as if you are speaking another language. I’ve come across this before with people who have had some sort of drastic life/death situation they have overcome…and experience some sort of supercharged “enlightenment” in the process.
I wish I understood you better….I think I would come here more often. You are a fascinating person and I intuitively believe I could learn alot form you if I could only understand your delivery…
btw The email you said you were going to send…some sort of game we were going to play….never arrived.
Anyway, redemption is such a powerful word, and concept. It’s one that I feel I’ve experienced myself several times over during the course of my journey.
One thing that I would truly like Redeemed is my memory. I would like to remember all of the things I forgot after the moment of my birth.
Namaste, Sue Ann…
November 13th, 2007 - 11:01 am
Sometimes I wish I could remember too Grace:) the first memory I have, without prompts or pictures is when I was about five, it was in a kindergarden class and I was standing next to a teacher playing the piano. This memory is so vivid to me.
November 13th, 2007 - 3:45 pm
I Love you {{Grace}}.
Heavy sigh. Yes, 650 hours. But it’s really ‘worse’ then you might imagine. This was the 4th piece of such intensity I had done in one year. Not all of them took as much time. But each one was intense. Intense for me, that is. For someone else it may have been a cakewalk.
The deep carving is done by sandblasting. I sit 5 inches away as sand blasts out a handgun at no less then 125psi, (pounds-per-square-inch) It feels like millions of stings as the grains of sand hit me at those speeds. Of course I wear protective clothing. But my hands cannot be covered.
Again, I work by feel, carving everything from the back of the piece. In reverse of the design.
In order to carve the image, I’m seeing the image in reverse…backwards.
It’s interesting to note that when I set up my material and air hoses, I set them up reversing the usual couplings. I had ‘male’, where standard was ‘female’ and vice versa. I didn’t know what was standard. I just put everything together in a way they worked.
So what you describe as a type of dsylexia with me, is what I know as ‘normal’. I’m apologize for not being able to communicate ‘normally’. I used to be able better then I am now. But that was before I desired the same thing(s) as you are expressing you desire.
I didn’t set out to be this way. Honestly, I didn’t. I set out to find out how and why I could do the things I could do, knowing in my heart I was no different then anyone else. And why I always screwed things up when it came to communicating. I set out to find out why and how, so I could stop it. So I could be like everybody else. I so desired not to be different.
Being different hurt.
So I thank you and all others, from the very depths of my soul, for being Patient with me. And Compassionate, as I develop the versatility and flexibility to convey meaning, in ways easier to understand.
It’s sort of my ‘job’, my ‘role’, to pitch screwballs. ‘Something coming out of left field.’ Like {{Mark}} said over at Naked Soul, something with a slant.
I do it because I know us. And I know how we are.
An Illusionist is good at what an Illusionist does because attention is misdirected and focused on this misdirection. Like the ole’ “where’s the peanut under the coconut shell?” game.
It’s the same thing if I want to take something away from a baby. I offer the baby something else that distracts their attention. As the baby reaches for the new bauble, they let go of the old. We all did it, do it. Every single one of us.
So I come along and throw screwballs, introducing some view usually ‘odd’ and, provide a distraction. Popping up at our buffet of life with an odd sort of dish to contribute to the table. In addition to. Not in place of, or instead of. In addition to. Maybe consider this?
Uh er…, when I “Kneel before the Throne”, I bow as a Jester.
Ahhhh…’enlightenment’…the Tower card in Tarot. You’re right about it. It’s hard to be struck by lightening and not be changed and re-wired as a result of it. My life is more like a cartoon strip, where the character walks every few feet, then gets struck by lightning, walks a few feet more and gets struck again. And off they go into the sunset…zap…zap…zap.
I got to where I am today by wishing it would be over. I had no idea when I started, that what I had iamgined, could only come as a result of being Complete/Whole. Nor did I have a clue as to what it would take for me to get there.
It would have helped if I hadn’t gone kicking and screaming all the way. Helped as in, been easier on me and more comfortable.
I remember blasting this piece outside, artifical lighting strung up everywhere, so I could finish this stage before the bad weather came in. Little did I realize as I sat there pelted with sleet and snow, that the bad weather was already there. But my body did.
An agony and an ecstacy…yes, that would be the experience of it. Taken to new heights and new lows. Doing things you didn’t know you could do and calling upon resources you didn’t even know you had.
{{grace}} I remember our game. Then circumstances came up that were more important for your attention. People in your community were in need of your attention.
I couldn’t communicate the idea of ‘seeing’ and having faith that everything would be OK, regardless of how horrid it looks…fast enough in a simple enough way to be understood. Instead, I set off buttons. When I was endavoring to communicate with you the faith and assurance, so then you could go among your community radiating the same thing, sowing the same feelings.
But I flubbed it. And when I did, I stopped trying. I don’t want to make matters worse.
Yes I do have some fun to share with you. But you wouldn’t have seen it as much fun during a time when you were already fired up about something. That’s the Fire of Creativity you’ve got flowing through you, though I bet you’ve always labeled it as something derogatory, that you cite as the cause for a lot of relationship troubles, like ‘temper’ or ‘rashness’ or ‘impetuousness’.
Ever been accussed of ‘flying off the handle?’
Ever wondered that maybe you were being given a compliment? In recognition and acknowledgment of your WILLpower? Your Fire of Spirit? That fuels your Love of Life?
What if I said the ‘you’ you knew before you were born is more then just a memory? IS ‘here’ or ‘there’ with you NOW? Always HAS BEEN, too?
It’s that we don’t recognize ‘it’ for what ‘it’ Is. Because we’re too busy thinking ‘it’ is something else.
Between ‘then’ and ‘now’ {{Grace}} my computer’s gotten ‘off’ and I’ve reformated all of my hard drives. All my mail went with it because I have yet to figure out how to back it up.
Would you please re-send your email to me Grace? I’ve got most of your chart in my head as it is and I have much to share that may shed a light of a different color on a lot of your Life.
{{hugs}}
November 13th, 2007 - 4:58 pm
(((( Sue Ann )))) Oh my. I’ve been waiting (holding my breath) for your reply. I was so afraid I’d offend you…which wasn’t my intent at ALL. Thank the Creator that there are people like you who can see past my verbal (written) stumblings to my heart. THANK YOU. I feel re-united. I send you love.
First I’d like to say that I got every single word of this. Every one I feel I understood and ‘felt’ J I would like to say thank YOU for being patient with ME (I won’t speak for anyone else) while I learn your language. If I want to try and step into your space, I feel it would only be right for me to learn your language…
650 hours…I did the math (literally). If you were working a 40 hour week on this, for example, it would have taken 16 weeks. FOUR MONTHS of labor. And you did this Four times. How incredible are you??? ((( Sue Ann ))) Here’s what really gets me….I wish I could see your hands. Are they scared? Have they been permanently marked, over and over, while you lost yourself and yet found the “angel in the marble”?
Is it even possible to remain unscarred as we carve out the angel that is buried beneath the stone of forgetfulness within us?
Hum…we are soul sisters, maybe, on some level. While I certainly haven’t had the priviledge (nor the pain) of your own brand of uniqueness, I have had my own struggles with being “different”. I did this test a couple of years ago. My results came out ‘backwards’. The instructor asked me, “Were you left handed as a child?” (I write with my right hand). I told him I wasn’t sure…but in those days, they ‘made’ lefties switch – almost from the moment we picked up our first crayon. And, another btw: when I did archetypal work through Caroline Myss’ Sacred Contracts, I picked “Jester” as one of my 12 personal archetypes,,, Sending you more love…
Re: the Fire. Girl, why I haven’t spontaneously combusted by now is beyond me. At the risk of starting to cry again at my desk here at work, all I can say is YES. I’m better at naming my fire something positive than I used to be, but not all the time. But sometimes that’s because I try to cover it up or stamp it out instead, in order to be ‘acceptable’ or ‘normal’ or ‘vibrating at a higher level’ or whatever the hell it’s called. No one really knows..no one other than God…what burns inside of my chest every minute of every day. SHOOT. There goes the tears! Lol J
Here is my email: sweet_jaine@hotmail.com. It might be in my comment, too, from your side of the screen.
THANK YOU. I so look forward to renewing our discussions and sharing. You’re really a lovely person.
November 13th, 2007 - 9:21 pm
{{tumel}} It was with both of you in mnd I posted “I Am Sam”. With corrections made (I hope) as {{grace}} let me know of troubles.
Hugs.
November 13th, 2007 - 11:01 pm
grace!!!!
GRINNING REAL BIG
Aren’t we silly?
You’re a lovely person, too, ya’ know.
Now that feels better. Resolved…
As for my hands, no, they are not scarred. They don’t exactly look in the prime of youth but I’m working on it. I don’t know how to do pampery things. Girlie things. And I dislike shopping.
But I have to say that the doctors said I would lose the tip of one finger and all my fingernails on my left hand as a result of an artery in my shoulder that got smashed. And I somehow re-grew the tip of my finger and have all of my fingernails. The one tip looks kinda’ odd if you look closely but I’m rather glad to have it.
My body does screwy things with me, keeping everything running.
Your math is correct. Just add in that I said not all pieces took as long in time. And consider that I worked more then a 40 hour week. When I would start one of the carving stages, I was in a habit of not stopping until done. I would rest for at most 4 hours at a time and then, only because I was in a state of collapse. The deep carving stage of this piece took 7 days, working about 18-20 hours a day.
And it took me two weeks to recover from walking pneumonia.
I aim myself at a target and then proceed like a train gathering momentum. When I reach the station, my whistle blows and I’m not going anywhere until my engines cool.
Same Fire. Just comes out different, that’s all. You’re a sports car. I’m a train. You can cover more area then I can. Where I’m good for the long haul.
Here’s the 4, just for fun, that were all carved in 1 year, 1992. In order
“Quintessence”
“One”
“Threshold”
“Redemption”
One more big one came out of me but I shattered it.
Each piece is masked completely as I work on it. That means even I can’t see what it is looking like. Until I’m done. Then I get to look at what I’ve done the same time as everyone else sees it. I get to face what has sprung out of me this time.
The further I went the more it scared the hell out of me. That last piece, I KNEW what is was when I saw it. I saw something there I hadn’t been aware of putting there. Oh, I’d drawn it for sure but I hadn’t seen what I’d drawn.
And I didn’t understand then, so I shattered it with a sledge hammer screaming, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it.”
I named it ‘Pete’, knowing there would most likely be someday, a re-pete.
I did a few piddly pieces since then but had lost my heart, so I stopped.
I hated that piece. I hated what it meant. It was when I faced that I had gone too far. My hopes of ever being ‘normal’ or anywheres close to it were shattered the moment I saw that finished piece. That’s why I shattered it.
I wanted to make the seen, unseen again. And I succeeded, for everyone except myself. I can’t not have seen it. It was the beginning of my ‘walk to cavalry’.
walk….I don’t know if I can call it that really, with as much kicking and yelling and digging in of my heels as I did along the way. Spirit’s had to knock me senseless to knock some sense into me sometimes. But I kept asking for more of it, wondering if I was a moron or a masochist.
I grew up in a family of 5. My dad & I were the oddballs. We were right handed. Mom and both my brother and sister were lefties. Even my mom’s scissors were for left handed people. I remember mom teaching me how to tie my shoes by sitting in front of me, in reverse. It’s the same way I showed my son, who was born a lefty, too.
Lefties don’t throw me one bit. We just have to watch out for sitting together in booths, so we don’t end up playing elbow wars.
{{hugs}}