Object and Event

You are not alone.
Millions wonder where it ends.
We suspect nothing stands still.

Recalling.... Genesis blossoms from nothingness. Her agitated twin Origin appearing as Prometheus dreams back to from where we come. Vulnerability to before-fire intimation and winking-dark seduction leads the long way out of paradise.  

We have yet to arrive at the flaming gate.

...

NOTE
— Image-photo-modified: Sculpture by Jan Zach, Prometheus (1958) at UO
— Further and before: Slow Fire, March 2022
https://rockartoregon.blogspot.com/2022/03/slow-fire.html

...

CODA
There was a silence. Something real was happening: this was, as it were, her life. If she could keep that in mind, she would be able to play it through, do the right thing, whatever that meant. —Joan Didion

Underpassage: She Who Sees

Original Deer Feb 2014

 A community project guided by artist Kari Johnson.
Below:  New Deer 2017

 Artwork by Kari Johnson, after over-painting Original Deer

This artwork of a place I call Underpassage: the six-block city park zone in Eugene under a prominent north-south freeway overpass which as a bridge crosses the Willamette River leading into and away from downtown.

Deer through various visitations, occupations, degradations, 2020-2022. Below, early-March 2022.

In March 2022 City closed the park-zone. The public, including campers, excluded, the area fenced, the concrete painted, ground reseeded.

Mid-2023 re-opened as a public park. Below, with anti-graffiti coating on the original artwork, artist Kari Johnson scraped off ODOTs latex paint-over -- revealing and resurrecting -- Deer of the Underpassage.

Fall 2023. Kari renovated and extended the mural-artwork. Below, December 2023.

NOTE The mask-like image on the left of the Deer mural-artwork is adapted from the Tsagiglalal (or Tsagaglalal) motif.

 

This bear-mask-motif appears in various styles in rock art and artifacts of the indigenous peoples of Lower Columbia River and the Chinook areas of the Northwest coast.  A prominent — and iconic — petroglyph of Tsagiglalal on the Washington side of the river across from The Dalles was photographed in the early 20th century and later became famous - and commercialized - in popular culture as She Who Watches.  There have been and are many ways to experience the petroglyph-as-image and its intent.  “She Who Watches” may be a passive observer, a protector, a guardian, a fearsome warning, an omen of death, a witch, a witness, a supplication. She-Who-Sees-All-the-Comings-and-Goings holds closest to this evocative presence. I believe this image — as mask, as persona, as apparition, as resurrection — may open us to ever greater patience in the face of the unknown.