The IMAGE magazine article made it clear to me that I needed to make more Candelabra pieces. I began that process back in December. In spite of a severe illness last winter and teaching responsibilities, I moved through the first 4 of them fairly quickly. I immediately had imagery for all of them and it felt NATURAL. Those works are already posted elsewhere on the site. So, buoyed by that I set the next 4 up, looked at them and.....nothing. Just hit 'repeat'? Nothing was asking for my attention. My fallback position was to start re-cycling imagery that I have used in the past; desert/trees. I figured that these would laregly be desert-themed pieces anyway. Reapproaching the desert imagery activated an object that I had gotten on e-bay a few years back, an old-style can of Drano. That quickly became the organizing element for one of drawing. I had gotten that with the idea of using it to evoke the goal of the desert fathers and mothers from the Orthodox tradition; men and women who went into self-seclusion, in a very under-stimulating environment, in order to clear their souls of ego in order to set up the interior conditions for a Divine encounter. I thought that Drano was a fine, if somewhat jocular way to get at that process. The single ear is a recycle from a Myhtinburbia piece that drew on a line from a poem by the 4th-5th cen. mystic, Gregory Nazianzus: "all creation sends up a hymn of silence to Thee".
Initially I thought that I would try to make 12 pieces. But here we are at 7, and it seems full.