Our Lady of Departing Sorrows

The body of this doll is an overdimensional slide frame. I printed out a transparency (an architectural drawing of a renaissance cathedral) and stuck it in the frame. Only the foundation was still visible after I finished adding the rest of the elements. Strangely (do I hear laughter?) the elements had all gathered around the table over a period of weeks and months: the bloom, the lily, the lilac colored wire for the spiral, even the face. To friends of signs and imagery, the doll speaks volumes.

I suppose you could say the doll comes with a subtitle of something like "paper revelations". There were/are a few things heavy on my mind as I made her, and she shows them to me. That's what I love about doing art angelix (I mean the act, not just the name of the blog): things manifest, and the lady speaks.

Just yesterday, as it happens, I was watching a children's TV programme in which the presenters explained that up until the renaissance, most people understood the language of symbols (because, of course, few could read). I remember this from India, too. Hmmm... This month I received an invitation to stay with a friend in Madras. I have a little bit of a hunger for temples statues that speak (don't take everything western-style literally, especially in connection with India) a winter in India and idlis with green sauce for breakfast... for a riot of color (ok, and beggars and squalor and...) . I shan't go, of course, but what a thought it is. I've not felt the pull of that in years.