My assemblage sculpture Red Corn Mother from the “Ancestral Spaceship” series is included in Reclaiming My Time: Contemporary Women Artists of the Regional South. This exhibit is put on by the Visual Art Exchange (VAE) of Raleigh, NC. It will be at The National Humanities Center, which is a nonprofit institute for the study of all areas of humanities located in the Research Triangle.
Red Corn Mother is part of the “Ancestral Spaceship” series (2004 – 2017) of assemblage collage sculptures. These cut-out forms explore the creation stories and ceremonial/seasonal cycles of my Indigenous ancestors. Each totem-like construction represents a different traditional icon that is common to indigenous creation stories and ceremonial practices across North, Central and South America.
For thousands of years corn, beans and squash have been staple foods in the Indigenous world. Corn, as the agricultural backbone, is equated with life itself. Red Corn Mother shows the corn icon rooted in, and growing up from, an underground “Corn Mother” who gives of herself to nourish the roots of a red corn plant. She is the Northern equivalent of Tonantzin, “Goddess of Sustenance”, who, after Spanish colonization, transmuted into the present-day Catholic influenced “Lady of Guadeloupe.”
The Reclaiming My Time: Contemporary Women Artists of the Regional South exhibit runs from Sept. 1 through December 2019! The NHC incoming class of Learning Fellows (from 30 states and four countries) will be on-site for the duration of this exhibit!
Read More About The “Reclaiming My Time” exhibit on the Humanities Center Website!
Beautiful work Alyssa. Thanks for sharing your good news with us. Anne Reese