PRIMORDIAL RESOURCES ~ ALTARS & SHRINES

ALTAR MAKING

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ALTAR MAKING

When I learned impermanent art therapy/altar making, my whole world opened up.
You look at every plant feature - food, form or fibre. The relationship deepens.
Your eyes recognise each being.
Your calm and focused concentration sees:
COLOURED STEMS
WILD FRUITS
MADCAP SHAPES
JEWEL COLOURS
​The whole world is waiting and wanting you to look at it. Really SEE it.
I’m gathering materials at present. Colours leap forth. Twisted strands are everywhere. Geometric shapes are endless. Bush tucker is abundant.
What can you see around you if you really open your eyes ?
How do you bring your greatest offerings to nature ?

Melissa Hellwig, Environmental specialist, mindfulness practitioner and farmer   >LINK ON FB<

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beautiful necessity: the art and meaning of women's altars

In the most basic sense, an altar is a home for sacred images, a place for venerating and inviting the comfort, help, and companionship of the deities. But the amazing, dazzling, decorative, poignant, picturesque, inspiring, glowing and passionate altars in this book are not those of churches and temples, designed for the official worship of an omniscient god. Instead, these places are the expression of the most intimate beliefs and fears, memories and dreams of women who are making new spiritual traditions from ancient ones - animist, pagan, Goddess, Celtic and Buddhist for example. No one knows more about this remarkable efflorescence than Kay Turner, who has been exploring the subject for over twenty years since accidentally encountering the extraordinary altar of a Quiche Maya woman - described by its maker as a "beautiful necessity" - in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Since then she has gathered evidence of how this phenomenon grips women in the most diverse locations, from the studios of artists in New York, Detroit, and San Francisco to the kitchens of Mexican-American homes in Texas, from Mama Lola celebrating Afro-Caribbean gods in Brooklyn to a Wiccan priestess in California worshiping the goddess Aphrodite. The statues, flowers, pictures, photographs, drawings, amulets, pieces of shell, and bits of earth that are collaged together and reproduced in color represent their makers' histories, beliefs, and desires. Turner draws out the personal stories that lie behind these women's altars, and explains their appeal and significance.
>Amazon Link<

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