"Water Signs: King of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot."
by Susan Shie Contact me
"Water Signs: King of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot."
©Susan Shie 2012. 39"h x 58"w. inventory #434. Peace Cozy #49.
Began 9-28-12. Finished 10-7-12.
Materials: White kona cotton, airbrush paint, fabric paint. Aurifil cotton machine thread, Artfabrik perle cotton embroidery thread, one Green Temple Buddha Boy bead. Nature-fil bamboo and organic cotton batting. Backing fabrics include Lunn Fabrics batiks.
Techniques: Whole cloth painting. Freehand black line drawing and color areas painting made with Aztek double action airbrush and Createx airbrush paint. Small, black writing made with Silkpaint.com’s basic Airpen and Jacquard Textile Colors fabric paint. Writing in color done with markers. Crazy grid machine quilting and one row of hand stitching (just on the border edge.)
Statement: I wanted to make a piece to enter into a show about Water, so this time I deliberately drew tarot cards from my Sakki-Sakki deck, until a Cups card I hadn't made into a piece came up. I got the King of Cups, which made me really happy, as I had just watched Al Gore's eco-documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," the 2006 movie about climate change, based on a slideshow he's been giving for years. A LOT of the story about climate change focuses on problems with the oceans, ice caps, glaciers, etc. WATER. Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and it seems to me he fits the King of Cups card pretty well.
The card itself, the King of Cups, is about a disciplined, intelligent, and very kind authority figure, very good at combining caring with leadership.
When I sketched for this piece, I made Al Gore a merman, and drew four women bringing him things: three of them represent the water signs: Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces. Each of them holds up a pyrex cup. The fourth woman is Aquarius, the air sign Water Bearer, who's pouring her water in front of Gore, whose laptop is being washed by her water. She and he are the part of the painting that will eventually become the Kitchen Tarot card, as I chose this right side of the piece to be the long rectangle that becomes the card later.
Each person here has a water bubble hat on: the three water signs women each have one part of the name H2O, and Aquarius Girl and Gore have water signs' symbols on their heads.
All the figures are standing in Water, which is the Ocean of Life. All the colors are watery, oceany. And most of the writing is about water and water conservation. I read a LOT about how we can help save the planet more, by better water habits.
Here are some of the current events I wrote about on the piece: I watched a video about Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer who won a prize from TED. She had a LOT to say about healing our oceans.
I studied up on church groups doing service through water projects around the world: Church World Service and Just Water are two of them bringing good drinking water to empoverished communities in developing nations.
I wrote biographies of Al Gore, including how he studied with one of the first ever scientists to start measuring carbon dioxide levels on Earth, for studying climate change. This was when Gore was in college in the 60s. He bacame the first congressman to hold hearings on climate change, in the late 70s. He worked hard on making the Kyoto Protocol, and he was elected by the people, as President of the United States in 2000. Then the Supreme Court changed it to Bush.
I read Gore's first book "Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit" 1992, in which he introduced his Global Marshall Plan, for the richer nations to help the poorer ones become more sustainable, as we all worked toward the same goals. It was a very scholarly, even spiritual book, with Gore going around the world, talking with many people about climage change. Even the Dalai Lama.
I did the National Geographic site's water use calculator, and found out that, in spite of my careful use of water in my day to day life, I blew more score off the map, because of how much water it takes to make all that jet fuel for our airplane flights. Still, I will continue to be a water miser at home!
In the war in Syria, there's now a big thing going on between Al Assad and Turkey, fighting. In the rebel insurgency in Syria itself, beginning in March, 2011, there are over 30-50,000 dead Syrians now, including rebels and army and civilians. This is really terrible, and there's no end in sight.
With the polar ice caps melting the most ever in one year this Summer (18% more than in the worst year ever before that, and with the remaining ice being much thinner than ever before) the heating up of the oceans is also escalating, because the Sun's rays that should be being bounced back into space at the poles, by the ice, are instead being soaked up by the ice-free water. This fast increase of polar water temperatures may change the ocean currents' pathways, which will in turn change the climates of places along the shores of those currents and definitely change the life of all sea creatures.
Fresh, drinkable water is only about one third of one percent of the world's water, and it's steadily being ruined, as we wash it down our drains to mix with polluted waters and use fresh water to water crops and in industry. We need to shift to using graywater systems, cisterns and rain barrels for water needs other than for drinking and preparing foods.
We must reduce our use of and dumping of plastics, as our landfills and oceans are overfilled with them. Even producing plastics uses up a lot of water, besides petroleum. Use less, use it over, and then recycle it. But mainly try to use natural products, and use as little as you really have to. The Earth is wearing out from our abusive habits.
On October 2, on ScienceDebate.org, I found a virtual debatte between Obama and Romney, with each anwering 10 questions the science community came up with for them. On this piece I wrote some of Obama's answers on Fresh Water, Ocean Health, and Climate Change.
Also on October 2, Jimmy and I went downtown and voted, on the first day you could vote in Ohio. Now you don't have to have a special reason to vote early, and you can do it in person or by mail.
I wrote about Osorb, the new organic nanoglass invented in 2005 by The College of Wooster's Dr Paul Edmiston, and now being produced here in Wooster by ABS Materials. Osorb has won awards and been recognized all over the world for its water cleaning use, without polluting at all. I know it's going to be a huge factor in saving the Earth, if people will only use it. I made a whole piece about it a year ago, so you can go read about it in my Rain Garden statement.
I wrote on this painting information about the three water signs of the zodiac: Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces, but the title Water Signs has a double meaning for us. Yes, there are astrology water signs, but right now we can see the damage to our planet in the water signs of warning: polluted streams, desertification, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and ice caps, rising acidity and temperatures of bodies of water, vastly increased flooding problems and stronger natural disasters.
The warning water signs are all there for us, and what we're now hearing from the whole scientific community is that climate change is escalating in a much faster rate than expected, even in "An Inconvenient Truth." We have to stop denying that climate change is caused by us or that it even exists. No, it's not going to be inexpensive to save the Earth, but what good will the money do you, when you're dead?
We have to vote for healing changes, but we also can't wait for politicians to do it all. We have to each make the changes in our lifestyles that will help, from tiny little changes to big ones. Use less water, in every aspect of your water use possible. And keep on those politicians and those businesses and manufacturers, to become resposnible for the Earth.
This isn't just a topic for Earth Day. We have to work together now, and we have to save our planet NOW.
Here's my Facebook photo album of my sketches and then painting this piece.
And here's my Facebook album of the actual finished piece, Water Signs.
I'm sorry that FB is not offering a special link now, guaranteed to be viewable to non-FB people. So I don't know if these links will work, but I have all my photos marked as Public for viewing, so let's hope!
Thanks for reading this, Lucky, Oct 10, 2012, in Wooster, Ohio, where I hope to put some new photos from Turtle Art Camps into my Turtle Art Camp page on this site yet today, as I've just made up my 2013 camp schedule! Maybe next year will be when you can come here to study with me!!
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