The Wilderness Journey Fused Glass Triptych
2014 Breaking News Update: My article, Interfaith Art for Interfaith Chapels has been published in Faith and Form, the sacred sector quarterly journal of the American Institute of Architects.
Click here for the link to the online version of the article, or check my blog post titled Faith and Form.
Pillar of Fire
Pillar of Cloud
Pillar with Wings
http://anneshamsart.info/AnneShamsArt.info/Wilderness_Journey.html
The dream that inspired the wilderness Journey Triptych was lucid. I saw a white pillar, then a red pillar, and finally a pillar from the bottom of which emerged two wings. I pondered the imagery of that dream for a few years. One day the Episcopal priest, the Reverend Alla Renée Bozarth, suggested to me that the images might represent the pillars of cloud and fire that the desert wanderers followed from the Sinai Peninsula to Palestine. She showed me a Tarot card of Wisdom, illustrating a woman standing by a pillar, and I grasped the connection between the pillar with wings and the Shekinah, the feminine aspect of the Divine, hovering over the community like a mother bird protecting its children. As I read more widely I learned the parallel story in the Islamic tradition, where the Divine feminine is Sakinah.
I studied fused glass technique with Portland’s Bulls Eye Glass in a workshop called Painting with Light. This seemed the ideal medium to translate the luminous imagery,
Oregon’s Regional Arts and Culture granted me funds to cover part of the cost of creating the work and initiating exhibits featuring it. I expanded the initial Grant contract to include a Palestinian, Kanaan Kanaan, and a Jew, Rhoda London, to add their vision to the Wilderness Journey exhibits that showed at a Jewish Community Center and First Congregational Church in downtown Portland, Oregon.
