Zodiac Paintings Gallery page 1 - Susan
Shie
if you like, go to Zodiac
Gallery page 2 now, to view the first six paintings.
Or go to Zodiac Gallery page 3, to view the last six paintings.
Note: Cosmic Moms Greeting Cards and Calendar: Amber Lotus has made 12 greeting cards from this series, as well as a 2005 calendar. Look for them as my Cosmic Moms cards and calendar. If you want to buy a very nice package of one each of all 12 cards, since they are the Zodiac, visit Web of Thread. Their package also includes a little page I've made up special. They hope to have the calendars soon, too! St Theresa's Textile Trove is also selling the cards and calendar!
This is a gallery of my Zodiac paintings on stretched canvas, which I made in November and December, 2001, soon after my mother's death (on October 27, 2001). I found making this artwork to be very helpful in my grieving for my mother. Each painting is 24"h x 18"w, painted on stretched canvas with acrylics and regular brushes, not airbrush. I used paint markers for the lines. All the paintings were hung together, as part of my solo show at Jewel Heart Center for Buddhism and Tibetan Culture, in Tremont, Ohio, at 2670 W. 14th St, Cleveland in December, 2001 and January, 2002.
This body of work honors my mother, Marie Snyder Shie, who has always been the model for St. Quilta the Comforter, an art image character I created in 1997. In the making of these pieces, I searched my memories of Mom's things and her habits and ways, to illustrate each astrology sign's qualities. For the first time, once I got to Taurus, I decided to make the face of St Quilta look like my mother's. Before that, she had always been a large, generous woman of all nationalities. Mom was 100% Mennonite.
They each have a written commentary around the thin sides of the canvas, where the staples hold the canvas to the stretchers. I created this body of work very quickly with the drive of my emotional intensity of just having lost my mother, pushing me to do nothing at all but make these pieces!
A companion book is available on this site, with a hand written story of Mom's life that correlates with the paintings, reproduced in black and white photo images in the book. Also, my diary online for Nov 21, 01, written soon after Mom's death, gives her life story in family pictures.
All 12 of these paintings are now together in a private collection.
This is the Jewel Heart Center for Tibetan
Culture and Buddhism in Tremont, where the show was up from Dec. 14, 2001
to Jan. 26, 02.
This was the first time the space had been used as a gallery for an art show. And normally its function is that of a meeting space for Cleveland's Jewel Heart Buddhist community.
The Jewel Heart of Cleveland group took over the space in 2001 and has worked very hard to create a place for meditation, studies, meetings, and a few art shows a year. I am so grateful to them!
Here are the first five paintings, Aries through
Leo, which faced the other seven pieces in the series, in this front room.
You can see into the back room, too.
On this wall of the gallery, were the last
seven paintings in the series, Virgo through Pisces.
Besides the paintings of the zodiac signs,
which are on the second page of this gallery, the show included some more
of my work.
My painting "Dad's Chair," an homage to my father, after he died, hung in the back room, on the left. "Po-Mo Rainbow," a collaboration between Anne Warren, Therese May, Jimmy, and me, made in 1993, 71" square, was in the middle. And on the right was my "Car Handover" diptych made in 2001.
Anne built a portable wall of hinged doors
to divide the space into two rooms. Some of my small pieces and my statement
were on this wall. My greeting cards, laminated cards, and books were on
the table. You can buy all these here
on the site.
Here's Anne Warren, my dear friend, who made it possible
for me to have this show.
She, Jimmy, and I installed the show, and she and I spent the night in the center, between the opening and tha gallery talk the next day. She even found time to take me on guided tours of Tremont, her new neighborhood, which has been becoming a very active artists' community in the last 15 years or more.
Here are Anne and me, celebrating our hard work's end,
when the show was all hung! A little toast to Buddha! Happy we are!
I made "St. Quilta the Comforter Blesses
this Garden" in June, 2001. It's 24" square, painted on wood
with acrylics.
This is the little piece I made about Mom,
starting it by drawing her in her hospital bed, the last week of her life,
with an ink pen right on the fabric. It's a little art quilt a little over
9" square, roughly, with embroidery forming the whole image, and beads.
I worked on this piece quite a bit more in July of 2003, so that now it's got very soft stitching all over, making Mom's face a lot nicer than it was here. I'll add that image soon.
For my gallery talk, Sarah (left) brought her
mother Alice (middle) along. Alice had middle stage Alzheimer's Disease.
Sarah and Anne were trying here to help Alice enjoy the afternoon. She
could still talk a tiny bit, but picked up more than she could give back
in communication.
I had a chance to sit and talk and sing with Alice, whose warmth and condition reminded me of Mom in the middle years of her struggle with this same disease. I feel very privileged that Sara and Alice attended my talk, and that I got to meet them both.
Yo,
Picasso! Ha-ha! Anne's son Aaron took this picture for me. Got my Kent
State tee shirt on, to honor my grad school, and for good luck!
I really had a good time there that Friday and Saturday, doing the opening and gallery talk. I also loved just having a chance to show my Zodiac paintings of Mom, and also teaching a workshop at Jewel Heart on Jan 26, 2002.
Many thanks to Anne Warren!!!!!
The zodiac paintings are each shown separately, starting on Page 2 of this gallery.
if you like, go to Zodiac Gallery page 2 now, to view the first six paintings.
Or go to Zodiac Gallery page 3, to view the last six paintings.
Turtle Moon Studios
Susan Shie and James Acord
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This page updated by Susan Shie, August 23, 2004.
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