SACRED MUSE by Mary-Ellen Latino

As part of the Westies group, which is a subgroup of Art cloth Network and comprised of artists mostly from California and Canada, I have created a piece from a call entitled, “One Long Earth Song”. Each artist was prompted to read “Benedicto” by Edward Abbey for inspiration and create a piece 36” (W) and 18” (H) by 2/29/24.

I decided to create a piece to highlight such wonders of Mother Earth in the Petrified National Forest in Arizona. While visiting there, I was captivated by fossilized logs and stumps that had metamorphosed from trees over a period spanning 200 million years. Bursting with magical color, texture and glimmer, they exemplify powerful strength and perseverance in the face of adversity. These petrified beauties are gifts we will treasure forever.

I digitally developed a photo I had taken in the forest, commercially printed, machine stitched and fused (gilded) the log with multiple layers of metallic foil.

Here is the piece in progress as I apply foil with heat to develop surface design.

After several days of applying the foil in many layers using Misty fuse and heat, the piece is done!                 

                                                                     SACRED MUSE

Here are  3 detail views of SACRED MUSE:

SACRED MUSE, detail 1

SACRED MUSE, detail 2

SACRED MUSE, detail 3

One of my favorite poet and authors is John O'Donohue (1/1/1956-1/4/2008) who was an Irish poet, author, priest and philosopher. His writing also speaks to me about this piece.

“THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH IS THE FIRST BEAUTY. MILLIONS OF years before us the earth lived in wild elegance. Landscape is the first-born of creation. Sculpted with huge patience over millennia, landscape has enormous diversity of shape, presence and memory."

SACRED MUSE is the second piece in the Petrified Log series. I plan on creating more pieces in this series.

PETRIFIED LOGS (diptych) was juried into the ACN exhibition LAYERS in 2022 by juror Lasse Antonsen.

 

                                                                     PETRIFIED LOGS 

“The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

by Mary-Ellen Latino