Nicole Lemelin*
Medium: Mixed medium
Date Created: July 2009
I was surprised by the theme of the Psiber Dream Conference this year: “Magical, Mythical Dreams of Transformation”. It was more than interesting - it was more a synchronicity to go alone with prior events.
August was the opening of the sculpture show “In touch with the Spirit of the Creek”, co-curated with a friend in Palenville. The piece I put in the show is titled: “On Zephyrs of the Kaaterskill Clove”, a metaphor on the transformation process of the human spirit through its journey.
A big part of that sculpture appeared to me in a dream at the end of the winter after I hurt my leg and was forced to abandon my initial project and find an alternative. What else could I do considering the new limitations imposed by the situation? I started my quest, looking at different materials I had or that were around. One night as I went to bed I said to myself: “La nuit porte conseil”, as we say in French (which can be translated by “sleep on it – don’t decide anything now”), so relax and let us see. During that night, I had a dream. I remember very clearly being there looking at an organic installation – I saw the colors and the pattern on the ground. I saw a structure lying on it; it was the tree trunk I had found in the forest during the winter. As I woke up I was all excited and drew a “croquis” (sketch) of what I had seen in my dream and I started cultivating this vision.
When in my studio, in the afternoon, I could feel something was there and wanted to materialize. I took some clay and I started working. Everything fell in place easily and harmoniously. Like the last piece of the puzzle the Spirit manifested itself and materialized into a form to be integrated in the installation.
What is so interesting to me is not only the cooperation between my “day consciousness and my night consciousness” which is a familiar process to me as it is a manifestation of the wholeness of a “reality”, but also how the dream and the unconscious brought to surface a symbolic language that feeds the growing process. How this encounter between those two parts of self expressed so clearly an image that contains more than a way to solve the so call original problem of finding an alternative for my sculpture project but again gave me precious clues to integrate in my personal quest, using universal symbolisms that can be read and interpreted on a more collective base.
About the piece: “On Zephyrs of the Kaaterskill Clove”
The two parts of this installation translate the ongoing exchange that takes place between consciousness - material world (outside part of the sculpture); and the un-consciousness (the spirit and the wood part). The large piece of wood lying down on some creek stones into the wire cocoon symbolizes the human spirit in the process of “be-coming”.
The combination of the two geometric forms that are the circle and the square evokes movement, change and evolution. The square being a synthesis of the 4 phases of human life (childhood, youth, adulthood and old age) and the circle, the completion of the cycle. The five lines represent the quintessence - It is the number of the harmony and the perfect balance.
The project is realized using the four alchemical colours: black, white, red and gold as a metaphor for the transformation process of the human spirit through its journey, to reach a perfect balance, a full “Potential”. (September 2009)
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