Guardian Art video

"The extraordinary is what art is about. Its concern is the edge, and  the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.  The occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything." - Mary  Oliver

About 15 years ago, our Westie, Pearl, came into our lives. In her youth, she was a getaway artist. In the process of closing all the holes in the perimeter to our property, I put a small (about six inches high) concrete Foo Dog, exactly like the one below, between the end of our entrance gate and the fence. Over the years, roses, honeysuckle, and bamboo covered what had been an escape portal. A month or two ago, my friend Are We Really pulled it out of the underbrush and asked why I had not painted it. So I sat it down on a table within eyesight of the chair I sit in when I paint outside. A few weeks ago I started with the eyebrows. As usual, I approached it as a bricoleur. Instead of coming up with a plan for how I would paint the many parts of the concrete figure, I just painted the eyebrows orange. That immediately led to painting the face in shades of green, orange's complement. The painting process that followed involved a chain of decisions like that.

After all that trouble painting the guardian figure with a #000 brush, it told me that it deserves a stand. Last year, my friend Paul propped up the acacia tree that leans across our driveway and furnishes the skeleton of the floral portal beyond our gate. He used a two by four. It occurred to me that this would be a good location for a guardian spirit, which I knew the Foo Dog to be. So I made a six-sided redwood base and notched one side to fit onto the base of the pillar holding up the tree at our entrance. That, of course, necessitated painting or sculpting something for the five outward-facing sides. I operated intuitively, as usual, but it quickly became clear that I was elaborating on the guardian figure theme. 

I have a set of cthonic guardians at the entrance to my studio, which I plan to document some day. Like the seven dwarves, leprachauns, and that figure who sits on top of red-white spotted psychedelic mushroom carvings all over europe. These figures guard the entrance to the secret. The dwarf-on-psychedelic-mushroom gives away their game: "Underground" (the literal meaning of the Greek root) is also "in the mind." And the hidden treasure is the direct experience of numinous dimensions, a "noetic" experience that is both a kind of knowledge and a state of being. So to me, the cthonic spirits are reminders. I'm entering a room. I'm also entering a laboratory of the sacred, where I attempt to manifest artistic renderings of that which doesn't adequately fit into words. I take a similarly Jungian attitude about the guardian figures. First: Foo Dog has worked pretty well for the 12 or so years he has been there (male Foo Dogs hold a ball under one paw, the female has a Foo Cub.) The other symbols: pentagram, mirror, griffin, Ouroboros, Hamsa, eye of Horus, are all guardian symbols of one kind or another. Again, I didn't research this. I just felt my way into it. I similarly fell in love with Garuda and Ganesh before I knew anything about their meaning. So there is my belief: these symbols are what magicians call Egregores. They have layers of cultural and historical meanings that they have an unconscious potency, even on people who may not be schooled in their traditional meanings. Anyone entering my property takes in these guardian symbols, whether they are aware of it or not.

Here's what it looks like from outside the gate. The sculpture on the left is something I did more than twenty years ago. There is one on each side.

This is the frontal view of the Foo Dog.

Side:

Back:

(I better break this into two parts. In the next part, I'll display the figures I created for the sides and briefly explain their symbolism)