Archaeology – Linda C. Everson

Dia de los Muertos

Linda — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 13:30:24 +0000

October 31 -November 2.

Dia de los Muertos,

Day of the Dead,

All Saints Day,

All Souls Day,

Allhallowtide,

Hallowmas.

And of course, Halloween!

A day to pray for and honor family and friends who died, especially in Mexico, but throughout the world. Traditionally, altars are created, graves visited and cleaned, stories told. Publicly there are parades, art shows, and festivals with altars, costumes, food, and music. Skeleton and skull images are abundant. Candles, flowers (marigolds), and food too. It is not always sorrowful, but can be filled with joy too. It is a celebration of the circle of life!

Family Album Hieroglyphics are a series of intaglio prints by Linda C Everson. The inspiration for the art was her children’s stick figures, which she embelished with backgrounds of rock art, ancient Native American dwellings, and other natural imagery. This intaglio print called Jack be Nimble… references the nursery rhyme Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick, Jack jumped over the candlestick (or pumpkin). It embodies both a spooky and a playful nature. Halloween of course can be both. And Dia de los Muertos, is meant to be joyful, but traditionally, many believed that if you did not clean the gravesites, the departed would come back to haunt you.

Stories We Tell…

Linda — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 03:14:53 +0000

Stories are not only written but are often told in the form of visual art, dance, theater, etc… My intaglio print “Family Album Hieroglyphics: Man, Full With His Memories” was recently accepted into the catalog for the WCA (Women’s Caucus for the Arts) show “STORIES WE TELL” in New York.

A symbiosis of two art forms was the basis for the “Family Album Hieroglyphic” series – my children’s “stick figures” and my photographs. When my children were young, our family took many trips in Colorado and Utah. We hiked through the canyon lands and visited many unusual rock formations, cliff dwellings, pueblos, petroglyphs and pictographs.

At the time, there was a direct relationship between the primitive “stick figures” my children had drawn and the petroglyphs and western landscapes I was photographing. I combined the two art forms and exposed them on to zinc plates which I etched, inked, and printed on paper on an etching press. That was the creation of this intaglio print series “Family Album Hieroglyphics”.

The intense emotions evoked in my children’s “stick figures” validated many family and cultural issues that are commonplace to everyone. Fears, friendship, loneliness, ethnic and gender issues, strife, pets, holidays, sports, and celestial configurations were captured in their simple, yet complex renderings. By combining my children’s primitive “stick figures” and my photographic backgrounds, I created art images that tell multiple stories with a sense of depth and compassion. The “Family Album Hieroglyphic” intaglio prints ALL tell stories and recollect emotions that we can relate to.

“Man, Full With His Memories” brings back recollections of both friends and foe, happiness and hostility. A faceless tree-like figure is imprisoned by hand holding pairs of smiling figures in “Mr. Lonetree Stands Alone”. This print depicts alienation, loneliness, and the need for relationships. “Women, They’re All the Same…” is a common, but inaccurate statement. Although a satirical art piece, my child’s rendition of women’s hairdo’s is humorous. Are women really so robotic in nature? “Jack Be Nimble…” is spoof on the well known rhyme and Halloween spooks. “Indian Memories” is as haunting as Edward Munch’s “The Scream”, which is one of my favorite works of art and depicts intense human emotion. “Man’s Best Friend, Or Is It?” tells about our preoccupation with our favorite pet, the dog.

I’m fascinated with many other primitive art forms and enchanted by the symbolism and story telling involved. I’ve visited many “prehistoric” or Upper Paleolithic caves such as Lascaux in France and Cueva de la Pileta in Spain. The stories about the discovery of these caves is remarkable too! In Lascaux, the sophistication of the so called “prehistoric artists” is exemplified by the overlapping of animals, use of perspective, and blending of colors. Egyptian hieroglyphics in later centuries was a formal pictorial writing system that also influenced my art.

Stories We Tell is a common theme in artwork throughout the ages!

All Eyes on Egypt

Linda — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:06:33 +0000

In the last week, the chaos and protests that have taken place in Egypt have kept our eyes locked on the TV for more news. Recently looters had broken in the Egyptian museum, and luckily not much was ransacked, unlike the looting done in Iraq during the invasion.

I was in Egypt a few years ago and visited the Egyptian Museum, the pyramids, and other famous sites of anquities that are so valuable. One can only hope that Egypt, it’s people, and its famous sites will not be harmed too badly.

All eyes are on Egypt these days and although it is difficult, journalists are recording the events as they unfold. They hopefully have all-seeing eyes.

This reminds me of the many eye hieroglyphics that I saw so often while there. I use aspen tree eye images in many of my Arborglyph monoprints, and recently began a new series which included tree eyes, hieroglyphics and of course The Eye of Horus, which is said to have protective and healing powers. Let’s hope that during these protests in Egypt, there will be a protective eye over everyone there.

Detail

Art in Israel

Linda — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:36:01 +0000

When visiting Israel I photographed several interesting artistic views. Art is everywhere and it inspires us all. All the different religious, cultural and historical factors mixed together create such fascinating imagery.

Acre sculptures and laundry

Acre more sculpture

Old Jaffa van and vines

Acre bread oven

Old Jerusaleum art on wall

Old Jerusaleum crosses

Old Jaffa entryway

Mosaic

Old Jerusaleum religious icons

Roman capital in Caesarea

Old Jerusaleum African cross graffiti

Yahweh and The Source

Linda — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 02:25:33 +0000

Tell Dan

I visited Israel recently and saw layer upon layer of many different civilizations and religions that inhabited the land. While there I explored Tell Dan in northern Israel and also climbed the tell at Beit She’an to view the excavations below. Archaeology has always been interesting to me.

Beit She'an with tell in background

A perfect accompaniment on the trip was The Source by James Michener. It’s a fictitious historical novel about Tell Makor in northern Israel, where archaeologists dig through multiple layers of the tell or mound and uncover 10,000 years of civilization. Each layer in the tell unearths artifacts from a previous period in time, and the story then reverts back to that time.

What is particularly interesting in The Source is the evolution of religion and “god”. It starts with Stone Age man and the first glimpses of spirituality; then proceeds with the fertility goddess Astarte and the fertility god/s Baal, describing in detail the various sacrifices and monoliths. The Cananite deity El eventually evolved into El Shaddai, and then into Yahweh (YHWH), the Hebrew god of Moses and possibly his ancestors. Monotheism (one god) starkly contrasted with the polytheistic (multiple gods) of the Greeks and Romans in later years.

One of my Arborglyph monoprints is called All Seeing Yahweh. For many Jewish people, the name Yahweh should never be spoken. Therefore, the Tetragrammaton or four letters YHWH often replaces the name Yahweh. However it’s possible that:

Hebrew scripts write it as four consonants, rendered in Roman letters as YHWH, due to the fact that most alphabets, prior the Greek alphabet, did not display vowels, and required that vowels be mentally pronounced in the proper places.

And although the name Yahweh should not be spoken, the Jewish Encyclopedia states that The Old Testament had 6,823 references to Yahweh.

Yahweh was a strong, demanding ‘god’ to the Hebrews. The meaning of the word Yahweh has been interpreted as “to be”, or according to WordIQ many scholars believe it means “He Brings into Existence Whatever Exists”. This coincides with a timelessness about ‘gods’ existence. Which gets back to the novel The Source and its prevailing theme of many gods and religions throughout the centuries in Israel.

My Arborglyph monoprint, All Seeing Yahweh has several images with an IY symbol and also contains several ‘tree eyes’; hence the All Seeing title. The “all-seeing eye” has been associated with several other religions or cultures… The “Eye of Horus” in Egypt, the “Eye of the World” in Buddhism and the Christian Trinity.

The “all-seeing eye of God” is also analagous to the “Eye of Providence” which generally depicts an eye that is sometimes surrounded by a triangle. This “Eye of Providence” is on the Great Seal of the United States and is also a Free Masonry symbol. The eye icon is a powerful image in many cultures and in countless artworks.

Archaeology in Israel

Linda — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 19:28:43 +0000

I recently visited Israel. In only 5 days time, I saw Caesarea, Acre/Akko, Nazareth, Tel Dan in the Golan Heights, Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee, Beit She’an, the Dead Sea, the Caves of Qumran, Massada, and numerous sites in Jerusaleum. I saw layers upon layers of civilization, and heard the countless stories of various cultures and religions that have inhabited the area. It was an amazing experience!

Caesarea

On the coast I visited the port city of Caesarea, where the great Roman architect Herod built 2 harbors, an aqueduct, a Roman amphitheatre, marvelous temples and markets in 30 BCE.

Crusaders Castle

Layers of other cultures and invaders show in the remnants of a Crusaders Castle (1101 – 1265) in Caesarea.

In the Old City of Acre I saw the Citadel and then went underground into the “belly”of the Crusader city where I experienced the Knights Halls with it’s monsterous pillars, arches, crypts, and the Templar’s Tunnel. Above ground (or above our heads) stands the Muslim quarter and markets with Khan El Qmdan.

Tell Dan

Capernaum

In the Golan Heights, I visited the headwaters of the River Jordan, Tell Dan, and Capernaum where Jesus and Peter lived. Everywhere you saw rocks and more rocks, layers and more layers. Several years ago I did a series of monoprints called Natural Abstractions, and rocks and layers were the major theme.

Nearby in Beit She’an (where only 1/10th of the 400 acre site has been excavated) I marveled as I walked through the Hellenistic and Romanesque baths, pillars, and temples. In the background was a another huge tell (first inhabited in fifth milllennium BCE) with more layers of history to be uncovered, so we naturally climbed the tell to get a better look from above. Looking back at the excavation we could see the signs of a modern industrial city on the top layer.

Beit She'an with tell in background

Beit She'an below, modern industry above

Wall and church above in Jerusaleum

Old Jerusaleum with its four ancient quarters again reiterated the theme of layers. Its impossible to explain in a blog all the buildings throughout history that were built and destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed, in Jerusaleum. One religion ontop of another, anywhere you went. For example, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built over the site of a temple of Aphrodite. And the infamous Muslim Dome of the Rock sits ontop of the Temple Mount, which was the site of the Second Temple of the Jews. The rock walls are part of the Western Wall complex that is a sacred site for Jews. Temple Mount is the most contested religious site in world. Trying to keep track of what was where when was very difficult.

Western Wall Tunnels

One of the highlights of the area was the Western Wall Tunnels Tour which opened recently.

Israel is a land of layers, one civilization built on top of another. Visiting Israel shows you the story… a modern and ancient land in one. I was above ground, under ground in tunnels and caverns and cisterns, and everywhere in between.

An excellant book to read about Israel and its layers of civilization is The Source by James Michener. Most of the sites that I saw were in the book, and seeing them made the story more visual. Read my blog about the book and its relevance to some of my artwork.

Graffiti art – StrassenKunst show

Linda — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:24:09 +0000

From August 27 – Sept 19, 2010, one of my Arborglyph monoprints is in an international exhibit called StrassenKunst at Artspace Gallery in Richmond, VA. The theme of the exhibit is artwork INSPIRED by graffiti with 59 artworks chosen. There are photos of graffiti, paintings with graffiti images, jewelry and sculpture scratched with graffiti-like symbols, and so on.

Graffiti art isn’t just street art, nor is it always gang related. While graffiti today is often thought of as destructive and a form of vandalism, it has helped arhaeologists decipher interesting cultural practices and has brought history to a forefront.

The first graffiti art was created over 30,000 years ago at Lauscaux caves, and a few summers ago I visited that wonderful site. I have a penchant for cave art, rock art, petroglyphs, and pictograms, and those sites are inspiration for my Arborglyph monoprints. My graffiti inspiration is the from the markings on aspen tree bark in Colorado by humans, animals, or nature’s own scarring. In the American west, many trees were first engraved by the Basque and Hispanic shephards and the term Arborglyph (tree with a glyph) was born.

Apparently, the term “graffiti” came from the Italian term “graffiato” which means “scratched”. Graffiti generally means any writing on a public place, and it has been done over the centuries by the Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Vikings, and Celtics, to name a few. I was in Pompeii this summer, and the archaeologists had unearthed some interesting graffiti on walls there. In China, Mao Zedong was known for publicizing everything, including a 4000 character graffiti slogan on a wall. Throughout history man has yearned to “make a mark”.

Although their are many controversaries over some artists such as Bansky from England, graffiti has become more accepted in some fine art circles. Artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michael Basquiat did graffiti in subway stations and in the streets. Later they both became famous by showing in fine art galleries in the early 1980’s, and numerous videos were made of their lives and art. Interestingly, Basquiat in his early graffiti years left his “tag” SAMO in many places. The symbol I use in my art title in the StrassenKunst exhibit is SAM. I wouldn’t claim that I use “tags” in my artwork, but I do use symbols in the titles that are my own “alphabet”.

A “tag” is the most basic writing of an artist’s name, it is simply a handstyle. A graffiti writer’s tag is his or her personalized signature. Tagging is often the example given when opponents of graffiti refer to any acts of handstyle graffiti writing (it is by far the most common form of graffiti). Tags can contain subtle and sometimes cryptic messages, and might incorporate the artist’s crew initials or other letters.

Subsequently there are many graffiti INSPIRED artists and art exhibits today. I personally do not condone defacing public property with art. However, photographing graffiti art (on trees) has proven to be an interesting subject matter for me.