Making Art for the Spirit

Oshun’s Golden Radiance, I

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Mixed Media: Yellow-gold satin, sheer gold metallic, gold safety pins, gold thread, sequins, milagros, photocopy and stamp images, shells, beads, rose petals. 27″ X 27″, © 1994
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Oshun’s Golden Radiance I

Gift & Devotion for the Yoruba Goddess of the River

Web Altar Cloth Number 2
This work is a web altar cloth made as a gift, shrine decoration, and extant meditation device. My initial impulse for making the piece was gratitude and celebration. In the Spring of 1994 I was identified as a daughter of Oshun through divination performed by Yeye Luisah Teish. It was a life-changing revelation, but I found that Oshun’s path and the world of Orisha spirituality were unfamiliar to me.
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I started making the web in 1994 and it became an extended work-in-progress providing a point of focus for meditation and prayer. I made changes and additions to the cloth using art making as an integrative practice. The final version, Oshun’s Golden Radiance 2 emerged in the Summer of 1995.
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Making Art for the Spirit, The Intersections of Feminist, Sacred & Creative Practice ; Part III — Elements of Making Art for the Spirt, Element of Oshun’s Golden Radiance Version I, 1994; © 2001