MINERALARTS: Iron and Thorn

It’s good to be working on the Moon Oracle again.  Finished the first of the eight Stones drawings.  These will depict various round white quartz and chalcedony pebbles in the geological environment where they are found (which is sometimes, though not necessarily, the environment where they form.)  This one is for the First Quarter Moon and was drawn from one of my photos.  There are several similar archaeological sites near my house, with grinding holes/bedrock mortars in granite outcrops along major washes.  When the Hohokam lived here, these places would have had mesquite bosques where people came to collect and grind the sweet pods for food.  The holes almost always have nearby petroglyphs depicting spirals or concentric rings, perhaps associated with water or the with the work of grinding.   

I found the two pitted and “eyed” chalcedony pebbles on the bajada near my house.  The pits on the pebbles reflect the grinding holes, and the concentric chalcedony layers that are revealed in the broken pebble mirror the ancient weathered petroglyphs.

I finished the last of the Stick drawings.  This one represents the Third Quarter Moon.  For some reason, this is the most stylized and least realistic of the series, though that wasn’t intentional.  Minor changes will be made in a couple of the drawings before printing, but for now you can see how they all look together on the Moon Oracle page:

http://www.mineralarts.com/artwork/MoonOracle.html

The 8 Sticks are only half of a 16-card oracle.  With the next moon, I’ll begin drawing the 8 Stones that will complete the project.

For the Waxing Gibbous Moon, the Stick Oracle shows a gate built of two heavy Arizona madrone branches placed in a pile of stones on a small island.  The young bark of madrones is smooth and dark red, so it is shown in black here.  Older bark is nearly white and is broken up into small square blocks.  The poles crossing the forked top are made of peeled branches.  Old stumps, repeatedly healed after fire damage, fade into the background.

Just in time for the First Quarter Moon - the corresponding card in my Stick Oracle, showing two forked staves marking the confluence of two creeks.  Although carefully sketched before inking, these Stick cards (six so far, with two to go) have had a lot of reworking as each develops on the way to the completed drawing.  When they are done, I will make minor changes in all of them to improve the way they fit together.  All are powerful images for me, from long ago and far away - they seem to have always been with me.  Although several of them have motifs in common with the Wands in the Tarot, they are more complex than that (for example, they have water as well as wood and stone). 

My next oracle project is a set of 16 Sticks and Stones cards.  The Sticks will depict twigs, wands, and staves along the Oldest River, and represent moon phases as well as the eight “fire festivals” of the solar year.  Four of these drawings are completed.  The Stones will show various types of naturally round white moon-like chalcedony pebbles in their geologic environments.  These are just pencil sketches so far.  I hadn’t planned to post about this oracle before it was finished, but yesterday I completed the Winter Solstice/New Moon card.  Since this year’s Winter Solstice is close to the Full Moon, I’ve posted the Full Moon/Summer Solstice card as well, for comparison.

The Winter Solstice or New Moon card shows the the Oak Maze, Daedalea quercina, growing on a rotting stump.  Water or ice trickles down the labyrinthine pores of the fungus and seems about to split it in half.  D. quercina is a woody brown bracket fungus that grows on dead oak wood and often persists for many years.  The gills (platelike structures on the underside of the fungus, where the spores develop) are unusually thick and interconnected in this species, creating fascinating and beautiful maze-like patterns.  The drawing was made from a specimen that I collected in Virginia many years ago.

The Summer Solstice or Full Moon card shows a stick shelter made from stacked and interwoven cottonwood branches.  The fallen and living cottonwood trees behind it offer additional protection, and the water seems to be flowing out of or into the shelter.  The hut is reminiscent of ancient mammoth bone shelters that would have been covered with skins and earth.  I photographed this structure along a river, long after whoever built and used it had continued their journey downstream.

I realize that this pair of drawings is rather cryptic now, but there is no point in offering more interpretation until the other pictures are done.  Meanwhile you will have to make up your own stories about them.

This is a new mineral pigment for my collection - a tiny piece of greenish-blue copper ore from a local abandoned mine.  It contains malachite, chrysocolla, and probably a bit of turquoise.  I already have several examples of all these pigments in my collection, but this piece was particularly bright and clean, so the paint is clear and (for copper ore) relatively intensely colored.  Sky and water, cool and warm, strong and delicate at the same time, like turquoise. Typical ore like the pieces in the photo is usually a mixture of several greenish or bluish copper minerals, often with dark impurities (cuprite, iron sulfides, and iron and manganese oxides) which make it unsuitable for pigment.  The small pieces are the best - they are the most pure, and usually contain the rarest and most intensely colored minerals.  Now I have the perfect pigment for my Copper Oracle, which is still in the pencil-sketch stage.

I printed the Lichen Oracle as a set of cards so I could learn how to work with it.  I’m finding it much more powerful this way, and the moon and three minor glyphs on each card allow for interesting patterns in a spread - it is an intriguing puzzle, yet the glyphs are good for meditation, and become even better as I grow more familiar with them.  The whole series flows, pauses, and moves very naturally.  Of course the published deck will look quite different - this practice set will help me decide what it should look like.

To celebrate yesterday’s Full Moon, here’s the Graphis Lichen Oracle, with 28 glyphs for a lunar month. More about it, including free online readings, on this new webpage:

http://www.mineralarts.com/artwork/LichenOracle.html