We have spent the week looking at the power of dreams, in our cultures, a power that is transformative in very literal terms. It’s a dynamic found in many cultures and visible in our world in both tangible and metaphorical terms: metamorphosis, transmogrification, transfiguration, shapeshifting. Today’s featured work embodies all of these processes.
Throughout the month of September, we have reserved this space for an exploration of the sculpture of Ned Archuleta, one of Taos Pueblo’s masters in the practice of summoning spirit from stone. For this final Friday Feature (and final day) of the month, I reserved my favorite among his works, a piece entitled BearHawk. From its description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
In his trademark style, master carver Ned Archuleta (Taos Pueblo) melds together the spirits of a traditional elder and an animal into one mystical piece. Here, it’s the elder and a bear, traditional symbol of medicine and power, rendered in smooth, flowing, silken lines of clay-colored alabaster shot with bits of warm golden-hued streaks in the stone. About six inches in overall length, it sits on a wooden base.
Alabaster on wooden base
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
I’ve been asked about the name in the past: Most people assume that a work named BearHawk would combine a bear and a raptor, rather than a bear and an elder.
But it’s more complex than that.
On the right is the elder, a traditional man who, depending on one’s point of view, may wear his hair long or simply be wrapped in an equally traditional blanket. Whether long locks or blanket folds, the stone along either side of his face flows gracefully downward like the great wings of hawk held at rest. At the shoulder, his identity shifts: From his body merged the head and upper body of a bear. All of these identities are discrete . . . and all are one.
In our cultures, animals often serve as spirit guides. Sometimes, they hold greater immanence, becoming, or simply being, wholly identified with and a part of an individual. It’s too facile to describe them as a mere “guide,” or even to think of such persons in terms of shapeshifters, which, thanks to fiction, now hold a negative connotation almost exclusively. It is, rather, a form of transfiguration, one that often occurs in conjunction with or as a result of an altered state.
In other words, in visions and dreams.
In our cultures, dreams are not merely an altered state of consciousness, but an altered state of being. They grant us access to other worlds, and to the spirits that dwell within them, but they also grant us access to other aspects of ourselves — aspects of identity that manifest as other beings, other spirits.
In dreams, we are transformed, allowed to be wholly ourselves in the ways given to us by the spirits.
In dreams, we become.
~ Aji
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