Living Stages
My mixed media art piece, Living Stages, has found a new home. Homemade paper beads/macramé jute lines colourfully attempt to separate three systems (water, land, air) filled with movement within and between them. Our lives are constantly on the go; we dance and move through a life that swirls and twirls, darting here, flowing there, twisting return or move up or drop down, often taking air. We are never really still or are we always still but appear otherwise? Multiple pathways, multiple choices brighten our lives. as we mingle and change on our life’s stages, best described by Shakespeare:
All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
William Shakespeare
When all is said and done, the sum of our life can appear to fit upon a small board, have many things thrown at it as we go through it, and eventually we hang up our shield. We may say we had quite the trip but we will realize we are but a drop in the vast galaxy of life and only truly free when we escape the limits of what our water/land/air environments provided us (limited us?). Eventually we look beyond the chained board to see the real art and that is where it is placed.
It has hung from the trees where breezes push it around. Like its new home, the board is painted on all sides, the back is sponge painted presenting a calm, restful state–colourful and peaceful, but still glistening.
Realm
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