Hello friends and Happy New Year!
I hope 2024 offers you joy, peace, and prosperity.
And for me, the ability to carve out plenty of studio time for compelling new work. 😄
Looking back, the highlight of 2023 for me would have to be my pilgrimage to the Great Circle Earthworks, a part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks complex in Newark, Ohio.
While there, I checked out the “Mounds, Moon and Stars” exhibit at the Ohio Center for History, Art & Technology, which includes two of my works, “Ancestral Plane” and “Burning Tree”(seen below).
December 31, 2023 marked the closing of the “Mounds, Moon and Stars” exhibit at its 2nd venue, the Campus Martius Museum in Marietta, Ohio (a museum that interprets Ohio history).
“Mounds, Moon and Stars: The Legacy of Ohio’s Magnificent Mounds”
at the Campus Martius Museum in Marietta, Ohio
The founders and curators of the “Mounds, Moon and Stars” exhibit, Belinda Gore and Marcus Burroughs, have managed to set up an entire touring schedule for the show to travel the Ohio mound museum circuit for the next year at least. So, with the start of 2024, the show is leaving Marietta, and on its way to Portsmouth (and then on to other cities in Ohio after that)!
UNESCO World Heritage Site Approval
Amazingly, the Marietta exhibit coincided with the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks sites being designated as Ohio’s first UNESCO World heritage site and the 25th in the United States at large (other World Heritage Sites include the Taj Mahal, the Great Barrier Reef and Stonehenge).
This long awaited distinction includes the Newark Great Circle Earthworks complex. The Great Circle is the largest earthen enclosure in the world, and, as of my visit in February 2023, was still doubling as a golf course because it was not yet officially recognized by UNESCO!
“Ancestral Plane” and “Burning Tree”
Below are the two pieces I have in the traveling “Mounds, Moon and Stars” exhibit, works you may not have had a chance to see in 2023! 👇
“Ancestral Plane” depicts a cross section of a burial mound breaking open to reveal remnants and remains of cultural relics and people. The trees draw upon these vestiges for sustenance while the embryo also is fed to support its new life (re-awakening/re-birth).
The Great Circle Alliance has purchased this signed and framed “Ancestral Plane” limited edition print (currently traveling in the show).
There’s plenty more where this came from and you can even choose a frame on my site if you’re interested. It comes in 3 limited edition sizes, all marked with my special signature chop:
“Burning Tree Ancestral Spaceship” is also included in the show. The totem-like construction of this hanging sculpture depicts the Celestial Tree, a traditional icon common to Indigenous creation stories across North America. Standing at the center of the universe, its branches reach out in the four cardinal directions and towards the upper sky dome. Its roots are anchored in the watery underworld through a mound. This earthwork contains cloth prayer ties, containing whispered words of reverence for the earth, trees, waters and sky.
About the Marietta Earthworks, Marietta, Ohio
The Marietta Earthworks is the largest earthwork complex in the eastern half of southern Ohio. Considered by archaeologists as part of the late Adena and Hopewell cultures, this site was used for approximately 1,000 years for ceremonial purposes before being abandoned.
It’s located on a terrace above the Muskigum river. It was originally made up of two large rectangular enclosures, two platform mounds, and a ceremonial, graded walkway down to the river.
My inclusion in the “Mounds, Moon and Stars” exhibit was a direct outcome of Chadwick Allen’s groundbreaking book about Indian burial mounds, Earth Works Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts (September, 2022).
As you may remember, color platesof six of my works were included in the book, with my “Ancestral Plane” collage being placed on the cover:
To read up on the “Mounds, Moon and Stars” exhibit and the UNESCO World Heritage Designation, see the “links mound” below:
