Disaster Cat Plays with Wax
Well, I did manage to get to sleep last night, eventually. Though its 2:30 am this morning, so I'm not sure how great I'm doing on the regular bedtime thing. But tonight I have an excuse, tonight (or this morning, which ever you prefer) I got distracted in a good cause. I was attempting to help out my husband's new jewelery business and explore my inner artist at the same time. Or, to put it another way, I got out my old archeology text books and tried my hand at making little wax Goddess figures. Really old time Goddess, the sort people worshiped at the same time they were out cooking mammoth steaks for lunch. Large, lovely ladies with lots of curves, rolls of fat and tiny feet. My first effort, which I thought looked pretty good, was met with a critical eye by my artist husband. I didn't mind, this was an experiment and the designs have to be good enough for a professional jewelery catalog. I'm much more of a fiber artist, and well no for my complete lack of drawing ability. I do have a rather nice, if primitive style, when it comes to clay. Which is why husband decided to have me try my hand at stone age art. Anyway, my first lady was too square and lacked "curves." My husband said,
"The thing that makes these women attractive is not a modern standard of beauty, but the fact that every part of them is so round, so soft, you want to touch it and stroke it with your hands..."
Did I ever mention that my husband's idea of a fine looking women is to watch over my shoulder while I'm shopping in the large ladies lingerie catalog? The one they advertise using fellow "Big, Beautiful Women?" Not that I think he is injecting any personal bias into his art or anything. But, he is the design manager for the business, so I ignore the fact that a large number of Goddess type jewelery is bought by ladies who shall we say prefer ladies, curved or not; and went on to try another piece.
This time, I tried actually looking at the three pictures of some "Venus" figurines, that I could find on such short notice. I realized that rather than squished, the way most of the commercial clay figures seem to be; these carvings seemed to be a series of round shapes. The most obvious being the large tummies and memory glands. But the heads, shouders and even upper legs seemed to be made of circles and oblongs. My husband was right, there was nothing square or flat about them at all. So, I tried a different tract, I rolled each part of the body and built it up using balls, cylinders and tubes. The results were really amazing. The figures don't look exactly like the stone age ones (I wasn't tying to make copies, I'm no good at doing that anyway, I'll leave museum quality reproductions to my husband and house-mate) but they did have real energy. Even without faces, each one seemed to have a personality of its own. Very much like the stone age ones. I begin to think my husband is right, well, OK maybe the huggy-cuddly bit is a more a man thing than a women thing. But the round curves and lack of sharp lines, does bring about a suggestion that is very feminine and at the same time suggest a real person. I begin to wonder if some of the originals are portraits of real people; the wives, sisters, mothers, daughters of the artists or even the occasional self-portrait. This doesn't mean the figures are not meant to be divine or Goddess figures at the same time. After all, plenty of painters used their female friends and relations for models of the Virgin Mary (and other religious figures) over the years. But the more I look at the original stone age figurines, the more I can see the women behind the statues. Here's one that looks to be very old, but she is pregnant. Is she for real? Or just living in an age where a 45 years old women might look sixty to me? Here's another who looks much younger, but has nursed at least two or three children. She holds her breasts like they hurt sometimes. Another one has a mid-drift bulge exactly in the same place a good friend of my does (and is why she only wore one piece bathing suits). All the figures I had to look at tonight were nude, but some of the other statues are dressed, at least by stone age standards. I'm going to look for them tomorrow.
Meanwhile, my pieces are all too big to use as necklaces, but my husband says I'm on the right track and to keep practicing. He really likes the look. I sure he means it, otherwise, it wouldn't be worth our time for me to keep playing around with this (except maybe for my own entertainment). I don't know exactly what he likes about them, but I did get a clue when our house-mate came home from an SCA event late tonight. He stared at the figures for about one second and said,
"They're seem to be a lot of big BOOBS on them..."
Ah, yes, er..a.. that could explain it....I guess some things never change, even after 30,000 years...
More later,
Disaster Cat