Visual Arts – Page 2

December 24, 2021January 9, 2024

Denise Kester’s Artwork Draws on the Dream for our 2022 Symposium

“The Caretaker of the Precious” by Denise Kester

Our thanks to Denise Kester for sharing her artwork with us for our 2022 Symposium, “Hearing the Invisible: Lessons from Sentient Beings and Inter-related Ecosystems.” Our focus is on connections and relationships among people, animals, and the green world. Denise’s monoprint “The Caretaker of the Precious” (2001) beautifully conveys the intention and spirit of our program, as does her poem that accompanies the piece:

She says it is the small things that matter.

She says it is the life force of the unseen and

the vulnerable that hold our world

together by their fragile threads.

She says these things are precious to me.

I will care for them.

Denise is a full-time artist in Ashland, Oregon. She is author of the book “Drawing on the Dream.” She specializes in monoprint and monotype viscosity printing, as well as drawing and painting, based in part on her dreams and intuition. Denise teaches a variety of workshops on the creative process, including printmaking, bookmaking, surface design, collage, and block printing.

She says of her work, “I draw from the dream and the dream draws from me. The stories and the art I reach for are also reaching for me. Together in partnership we create a visual story that is relevant to me and also to the global community. I explore the connection and interconnection with the universe through art and dreams.”

Check out Denise’s interview with Oregon Art Beat to see the behind-the-scenes creative process that results in her colorful images of animals and nature. And see more of her work on her website, Denise Kester: Drawing on the Dream.

December 3, 2021January 9, 2024

Call for Proposals: ASWM 2022 Symposium

“Hearing the Invisible: Lessons from Sentient Beings and Inter-relational Ecosystems”

Call for Proposals: ASWM Online Symposium: Sunday, April 10, 2020

“The Caretaker of the Precious,” Denise Kester (2001)

Jane Goodall has pointed out our own contemporary lesson that human global disregard for nature brought on the current pandemic, documenting that mistreatment/exploitation of sentient beings can result in an exponential crisis for the whole planet.

Our 2022 biennial Symposium focuses on meanings found in the relational reality among science, culture, and mythology in regards to animals, the green world, and ecosystems.

We especially encourage proposals from Native American/Indigenous scholars and women of color. We welcome scholars from all fields with contributions to further expanding our understanding of our universal relatedness in the community of sentient beings.

With our primary focus on interconnectedness, we welcome academic and artistic presentations concerning ecological and scientific scholarship. In particular we seek work that addresses collaborations between humans and other sentient beings, foundational myths about earth’s response to misuse, and scientific solutions to transgressions against the balance of nature.

Such topics may include (but are not limited to):

Dialogues between “Western” scientific findings and indigenous science and insights
Cautionary tales of animal guardians redressing human greed and over-consumption
Examples, in Haraway’s terms, of “staying with the trouble” of ecological devastation
Women’s roles in promoting justice for land, animals and climate
Patterns of Cross-species Companionship in Science and Contemporary Fiction and Arts
Our Cousins the Bears: Myths of Cross-species Relationships
Selkies and Crane Wives: What Shapeshifting Women can teach us
Goddesses and Sea Creatures: Wisdom from the Deep
Comparative mythologies and science about pollinator-plant symbiosis
Mythologies and goddesses of origins, transitions, liminalities, and migration
Divine interventions for healing out-of-balance human behaviors
Myths of reciprocity and partnership among sentient beings
Feminist spiritual traditions that inspire earth-centered activism

Proposal deadline: January 20, 2022

For questions, contact submissions@womenandmyth.org .

Click here to view a detailed Call for Proposals with guidelines and submission form

About the artwork: “The Caretaker of the Precious,” a monoprint by Denise Kester of Drawing on the Dream (2001) beautifully conveys the intention and spirit of our program.

July 7, 2021January 9, 2024

Opening: Our International Art Exhibition

“Wisdom Across the Ages: An International Women’s Art Exhibition”

July 7 – December 31 2021

ASWM Online Art Gallery

Association for the Study of Women and Mythology

Artemisia Gentileschi Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting

We are delighted to announce the opening of our inaugural juried exhibition in ASWM’s new online art gallery. This exhibition of works by 45 artists and filmmakers from around the world was created in concert with our 2021 online symposium, “Wisdom Across the Ages: A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas.”

Our organization was founded by women who appreciated the essential role of the arts in developing, promoting, and inspiring scholarship and research.

Patricia Monaghan was not only the author and editor of many books about goddess scholarship; she was also an internationally recognized poet. Pat’s well-crafted words continue to find their way into performances, ceremonies and women’s life passages. Sid Reger is a visual artist with a happy background in feminist theatre. She has also created and promoted festivals and arts events on local, national, and international stages.

Sid says, “We understood from the beginning that all of the arts were essential sources of inspiration and collaboration for scholarship. Many artists are scholars, and vice versa, and we were always excited to see what happens when they meet in the same room. We were guided by one simple idea: Change the images (or words or dances), and you can change the world.”

We dedicate this exhibition and the gallery itself to our beloved artist-foremothers, Mary B. Kelly and Lydia Ruyle.

The exhibition runs from July 7 to December 31 in our gallery and is open to the general public.

Join us for the symposium:

Member Registration

Non-member Registration

To give you plenty of time to view the program at leisure, all sessions will remain available, to those who register, for twelve months following the event.

December 10, 2020January 9, 2024

“Wisdom Across the Ages” 2021 Symposium To Honor Marija Gimbutas

Wisdom Across the Ages: Celebrating the Centennial of Archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas

July 16-18, 2021

Call Deadline: Feb 15, 2021

Marija Gimbutas’ pioneering scholarship on the earliest horticultural societies focuses on Old European cultures of Europe and the Mediterranean (6500-3500 BCE).

She founded the field of archaeomythology to investigate beliefs, rituals, symbols, and social structures of these early societies. Archaeomythology is inspiring a new generation of scholars to develop a deeper understanding of past and present earth-based societies.

Our ASWM symposium seeks to expand this understanding by highlighting the voices of First Nations and Indigenous scholars to discuss indigenous, Old European, and other Nature-based cultures.

We are seeking proposals in these topic areas:

Women at the Center: Matrifocal, Matristic, Matriarchal Societies
Voices from the Land
Sacred Human-Animal Relationships

We are also seeking artists’ entries for a juried art exhibit.

Links to the Calls are on the womenandmyth.org/symposium page.

Our 2021 Symposium is presented in cooperation with the Institute of Archaeomythology (IAM). Inspired by the scholarship of Lithuanian-American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, IAM is an international organization of scholars dedicated to fostering an interdisciplinary approach to cultural research with particular emphasis on the beliefs, rituals, social structure, and symbolism of past and present societies. The Institute encourages dialogue among specialists from diverse fields by sponsoring international symposia, by publishing collected papers and monographs, and by promoting creative collaboration within an atmosphere of mutual support.

The Institute for Archaeomythology

ASWM’s 2021 Symposium, “Wisdom Across the Ages: Celebrating the Centennial of Archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas,” is presented in cooperation with the Institute of Archaeomythology (IAM). Inspired by the scholarship of Lithuanian-American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, IAM is an international organization of scholars dedicated to fostering an interdisciplinary approach to cultural research with particular emphasis on the beliefs, rituals, social structure, and symbolism of past and present societies. The Institute encourages dialogue among specialists from diverse fields by sponsoring international symposia, by publishing collected papers and monographs, and by promoting creative collaboration within an atmosphere of mutual support.

Background

A visionary scholar, Marija Gimbutas actively encouraged students and colleagues from a variety of fields to examine problems in European prehistory with a more inclusive and interdisciplinary point of view. A major focus of her research centered on the Neolithic cultures of Old Europe and the Indo-European Bronze Age societies that replaced them. She stressed the importance of investigating the enormous changes in beliefs, rituals and social structure that took place as a result of the “collusion of cultures” that took place between c. 4500-2500 BC, during the Indo-Europeanization of Europe, in order to more fully understand subsequent European cultural development. In Gimbutas’s view, this was “one of the most complex and least understood [periods] in prehistory.”

Journal of Archaeomythology

The JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOMYTHOLOGY has been published on a semi-yearly basis since 2005. The Journal is available on an OPEN ACCESS basis. All issues of the Journal are freely available to members and non-members alike. To have full access to all Journal articles, please click here to register for a free account. IAM also publishes collected papers from international symposia and monographs on archaeomythological themes. Learn more at their website. IAM is a membership organization; learn more here.