"The Timer / Hanged One. " Detail view and statement.
by Susan Shie Contact me
back to 2008 Gallery page ////// Full view.
"The Timer / Hanged One: Card #12 in the Kitchen Tarot.” 2008 62"h x 46"w #352. Peace Cozy #23
Begun 4-30-08, fiinished 5-26-08. ////// Full view.
Materials: Whole cloth painting on white Kona cotton, fabric paint. Cotton machine thread, Nature-fil bamboo and organic cotton batting. Perle cotton embroidery thread. One flameworked pink girl Buddha bead and one green temple Buddha Boy bead.
Techniques: Freehand drawing and painting made with airbrush and fabric paint. Small journal writing made with airpen and fabric paint. Machine quilting with Mettler cotton thread. Hand stitching (just on the border) with DMC perle cotton.
I had to go back and remake one of the 22 Major Arcana card quilts for my Kitchen Tarot, because I’d gotten stuck on the little piece I’d started for the Hanged One traditional card in 2002, when I made it as the Dish Towel. Because dish towels hang in the kitchen! Somehow I’d moved on and left that piece stuck in limbo, partly hand sewn, very much a Hanged One situation. The traditional card signifies a time when something has to wait for resolution, and you can’t push it. As I was finishing my last Major Arcana card in the Kitchen Tarot, the Potluck / World, I was so surprised that the Democratic primary wasn’t resolved yet. I thought how this would be a perfect time to redo my stuck Hanged One piece and continue to chronicle the primary’s events. Only I soon realized that the Dish Towel wasn’t a good enough object in the kitchen to represent this waiting time. I re-chose. I decided to make my Hanged One be the Timer, signifying waiting for something to get done.
My kitchen goddess, St Quilta the Comforter, holds the mightly little kitchen timer in her arms, and she herself looks quite calm and ready to await the timer’s announcement that the waiting period is over. Above her right shoulder is a watched pot that never boils, and above her left shoulder hangs a dish towel, a nod to my earlier version of the Hanged One, that I haven’t finished. It just hangs there, in kind of the same silhouette as the actual hanged man has in the traditional card image.
There’s a big hanging upside-down me (or Eva?) on the painting’s left side, waiting patiently through whatever can’t be resolved yet, and two of my cats are climbing upside down all over the kitchen! They can wait, but they’re oh, so curious!
St Q sits Buddha style, as is her wont to do while meditating, and in front of her are: a big bowl of bread dough rising (you KNOW how long that takes!) and an old fashioned telephone … that someone’s waiting to hear it ring. You know how that goes!
I’ve painted my Peace Roses throughout the piece, and added my Peace Symbols, since one of the big things we’ve been waiting for, for many years now, is an end to the wars the US is involved in. Waiting doesn’t have to be passive. It can include prayers for a good, peaceful, and just resolution to the situation which one’s going through.
Two hourglasses are in the piece’s top corners, of course more ways to measure the time things take, forerunners of the sweet little wind-up kitchen timer. I didn’t include a digital timer, because it’s just not very inviting to look at. J
I made the tiny writing diary on this piece mostly about the 2008 Democratic primary election, as it went from May 1 to May 25, 08. You can’t read that writing from a photo, which is what I need for the Kitchen Tarot card, but you could read the big words on the first version! On May 25, Obama only needed 49 more delegates of any kind to get endorsements from, in order to obtain the official nomination at 2,025 delegates. Clinton needed a lot more, and she couldn’t get them, but she insisted on staying in the race. So once again the Hanged One waiting effect went on, as I finished this piece before the superdelegates flooded to Obama, leaving no doubt of who’d won the primary. The Puerto Rico election of June 1, with all eyes are on it, and the June 3 primaries in South Dakota and Montana were still to come, as I finished this piece. The Timer ticked on!!! The resolution didn’t come in time to be written about in this piece. Then I took an almost two month hiatus from making big pieces, so I guess I should tell about the grand finale of the election on the next piece, which I’m finally working on now: the remake of the #11 Kitchen Tarot card quilt, The Food Scales / Justice. Gotta get busy here!
Susan in Wooster, 7-23-08
Turtle Moon Studios: Outsider Art
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Susan Shie
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