Like Coatlicue, The Great and Terrible Mother, 2015

 

Laser engraved burl oakwood, installation of 18 individual 6in x 6in panels

 

I am interested in the tension between domestic and wildness- how these spaces coexist in tenuous relationship both in the environment but also in the inner landscape of the mind and body.

 

Coatlicue is a powerful Aztec earth goddess and mother deity. The name means "She of the Serpent Skirt," and she symbolizes both the creative and destructive forces of nature. She is not the only deity to represent both birth and death, there is also Hecate, Kali, The Morrigan, among others, but it was my discovery of Coatlicue that inspired this piece. 

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These individual experiences mirror universal events, as both the earth and human bodies, especially maternal bodies, are environments in and on which many living organisms live and depend.