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Showing posts with the label Greek Myth

Aphrodite, She's beautiful but flighty...

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My cut steel sculpture "Aphrodite" exhibits Feb 7- March 1, 2020 at Roby King Gallery on Bainbridge Island in "A Trio of Print-makers".  Opening reception is Tonight, Feb. 7, 6-8 pm.  Aphrodite is the ancient Greek goddess associated with love, beauty, pleasure, passion and procreation.  
 I love the description of her in this version of “Give me that old time religion” made popular by folk musician Pete Seeger.
 Shall I worship Zarathustra 
just the way we use ta? 
 Be a Zarathustra Booster
 What a thing to be! Or maybe Aphrodite
 She’s beautiful but flighty
 and doesn’t wear a nighty, now there’s a sight to see. 
Or perhaps I’ll choose Apollo 
 a decent god to follow
 I’d grovel and I’d wallow
 Brought low on bended knee. 
Elohim or Yahweh?
 Allah or the highway? 
 I think I’ll just go my way.
 That’s good enough for me. 
Give me that old time religion 
Give me that old time religion
.... It's good enough for me!

Icarus

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"Icarus", Brian Fisher, Steel Sculpture My sculpture Icarus will exhibit at   Roby King Gallery Feb 7- March 1 Opening Reception Feb 7, 6-8 pm.   Icarus by Rebecca G. Bagget The story is so simple really. Imagine yourself gifted with wings, every child's sleeping and waking dream, imagine that you could defy that force dragging us all to heel, imagine every sweet safe green harbor below, laid out for your choosing like candies in their box. Then imagine that one gold coin, that fierce and pulsing point around which worlds dance, imagine the gentleness below and that wildness above, imagine that something in you echoed to the leaping of its flames, imagine how its one question beat in your veins, how you saw with perfect clarity that moment in which each of us chooses, forever. Imagine that voice far below crying: Come back      Come back   ...

Night Sky

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  "Night Sky," Brian Fisher, monotype print, 24k gold I've been thinking about SKY and making art about it for several years.  In the VIVA Holiday Art Studio Tour, December 1-2 & 8-9, I will exhibit at least 10 images that are related to sky myths, sky gods and the cosmos.  This is "Night Sky".  “I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia” ― Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy wrote Almagest or Syntaxis , his influential treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and of planetary paths, in about 150 AD. He postulated an incorrect though influential cosmology that would become the basis of our understanding of the cosmos and our place in it for the next 1,200 years.  However wrong his geocentric treatise, it included and kept alive ancient Greek trigonometr...

Journey

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Zetos I am working on compositions based upon the subject of " Journey," specifically “The Argonautika”  and the mythic story of Jason and  his quest for the Golden Fleece.   It is an old, old, (really old), hero’s journey.  Older even than Homer’s Iliad, wherein the Argos and its’ many heroes are referred. Through millennium the Argosy and the Argonauts have become synonymous with adventure, discovery and in our present age name pervasive to every product and service one might imagine.  Just Google Argosy and you will currently see (about) 8,000,000 results.  I find that remarkable, daunting and relevant to why Jason's mythic quest is still potent.  “The Argonauticka” is a classic tale of betrayal, vengeance and like many Greek myths has a tragic ending.  It is a story of group dynamics (a crew of 50 heroes), about stretching geographical boundaries and like every important myth it also explores the very huma...

ATLAS

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And so, the world turns . In archaic Greek cosmological explanations of the heavens the Telamones became one and and the one was Atlas . Described as the sufferer or bearer of the heavens, Atlas was a second generation Titan. His brothers, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoitios were all sons of Iapetos and Asia, or perhaps Iapetos and Klymene. Homer, in the Odyssey, writes,"Atlas the baleful, (oloophron); knows the depths of all the seas, and he, no other, guards (or holds) the tall pillars that keep the sky and earth apart." After Atlas leads a failed revolt against the Olympian gods Zeus condemns him to this fate and he becomes the one who turns the heavens on their axis, causing the stars to revolve.  I have been playing with compositions for digital prints with Atlas as subject.  Above is an example.