"Tipping Point: 4 of Paring Knives (swords) in the Kitchen Tarot."
by Susan Shie Contact me
"Tipping Point: 4 of Paring Knives (swords) in the Kitchen Tarot."
©Susan Shie 2016. 79.5"h x 60"w. inventory #494. Peace Cozy #70.
Began 9-15-16. Finished 9-30-16. Many large detail images follow this artist's statement.
Materials: White kona-like cotton from Test Fabrics, airbrush paint, fabric paint, Aurifil cotton machine thread, Artfabrik variegated hand dyed perle cotton embroidery thread, one Green Temple Buddha Boy bead. Nature-fil bamboo and organic cotton batting. Various commercial batiks and prints in backing/border.
Techniques: Whole cloth painting. Black line freehand drawing and color areas painted with Aztek double action airbrush and airbrush paint. Small, black writing and drawing lines made with Silkpaint.com’s Airpen, using black fabric paint. Mostly machine sewn, with one row of hand stitching of perle cotton thread (on the border's outside edge.)
Statement:
I was really aching to make a major piece about the standoff between the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota this summer. When the Water Protectors were maced and attacked by security guards with attack dogs on September 3, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, I knew I had to do something fast. I thought it was going to be a really well researched drawing for my online class, but I knew I'd want a lot more space to work in than the 14 x 22" of my large hardbound sketchbook's double page spreads.
Tben on Sept 15 (this year) I finally noticed a call for entries for an exhibition of art quilts, called Layered Voices. As soon as I read that title, I know the basic look of the piece I would make; that it would be structured in four layers stacking up like strata in the Earth, and that it would start with Climate disasters at the bottom of my painting, go up through heroes of the eco movement; the Paris Climate Convention last December; and end in the Standing Rock v DAPL at the top.
Then I read that the show had been annouonced a year before, and that its entry would close on Sept 30 at midnight. I had 15 days to make a large piece I might normally spend 2 moths in creating. The show would open in Apri, 2017 at the IQSCM - the International Quilt Study Center and Museum, so if my work gets in, it will be seen fairly soon in an exibition. AND SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) saiid in their call for entries, that they encourage the artists to share their in-progress works online, so there was no rule about not showing it ahead of time. And this show tours for 2 years. I decided I had to try my very best to make a strong piece about #NoDAPL.
I strongly feel that the Tipping Point for the Climate Movement is now, with the Native People taking the lead and teaching us all to connect with Spirit in our struggle to save the planet. Between the connections being made all over the world, thanks to the internet and groups like 350.org, every time a group uses passive resistance to stop a project that will hurt the world, we know about it, and it encourages us all to do more, to work harder to take care of the Earth. I think the time is NOW, now that we know Big Oil has been buying scientists' opinions since the early 70s, to get them to say Climate Change isn't real, we must stop this pipeline and all new pipelines and all new schemes to get more fossil fuels out of the ground.
350.org now says we have to demand ZERO new fossil fuel projects - NO MORE oil, gas, and coal coming out of the ground in new projects. No more. So I made my piece, and I wrote all over it, about what's been going on, what IS NOW going on. And there's so much more!
This piece is also a Kitchen Tarot card: the 4 of Paring Knives, which are Swords in a regular Tarot deck. Fours are stability and determination, and Swords are weapons, but Paring Knives are useful tools for making food. They are constructive, rather than destructive. The 4 of Parking Knives is a card about stabilizing the Earth's climate by using all the peaceful tools at our disposal. This is also the suit of ideas and communication, and the Climate Movement can now combine the ideas and communications of the Internet with those of the Native / Earth Spirit teachings. It's time for all of us to listen to Chief Seattle, who spoke so eloquently in the 1800s, to the White leaders of our country, trying to tell them way back then, to learn how to care for the Earth, not destroy it with their greed.
I changed the traditional Tarot suits in my Kitchen Tarot deck to the following Kitchen-appropriate themes: Coins are Potholders; Cups are Pyrex Cups; Wands are Wooden Spoons; and Swords are Paring Knives. Each of the 56 Minor Arcana cards in a Tarot deck are in one of these four suits, while the 22 Major Arcana cards are each stories about life traits and situations on our life journey, and they are not in a particular suit. I made my Major Cards from 1998 to 2008 and got them published with author Dennis Fairchild, by Hay House Publishing in 2010. I started making the 56 minor cards at the end of 2008, and have 19 art quilts left to make. I have 59 of the 78 cards in the full Kitchen Tarot deck finished, since 1998. There is light at the end of the tunnel!!!
The Tipping Point for Climate Change and the 4 of Paring Knives in the Kitchen Tarot deck are my two main focus themes for this piece, and with all that settled, it was time to start working! I sketched from Sept 15 to 16. Then I cut a big piece of white cotton fabric, 80 x 60", pinned it to my work wall, and freehand drew with my airbrush and black fabric paint, then colored it in with my airbrush and colors of fabric paint, from Sept 16 to 18. I did two big heat settings: after drawing the whole piece in black paint, and after adding all the colors. Then I began writing on it with my airpen, with the piece lying flat on my main studio table, putting black fabric paint through my airpen. Here are topics I covered in my entries in this piece's writing, from Sept 19 - 30:
9-19: Wrote the meaning of the tarot card, all along the very bottom of the piece, where the 4 paring knives are drawn and painted. The meaning is Rest, recovery, withdrawal. To me, this is about stopping use of fossil fuels and keeping them in the ground asap! We will move on to Renewable Energy: Wind and Sunlight. The #NoDAPL (No Dakota Access Pipeline) efforts can be what glues the movement together to demand the halting of fossil fuel's new projects. We need NO new pipelines, and in fact, we need to get rid of the old ones. We need to get all stockholders in fossil fuel companies to sell off their stocks, like the movement against Apartheid in South Africa did in the early 1990s. Money talks. Let's listen to the Native People and let them lead us away from the mess we've made of our beautiful Earth! I wrote on the bottom layer of this painting: Fossil Fuel Disasters, abut the big Oil Spills of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on 3-24-89 and about the British Petroleum Oil Spill of the Deepwater Horizon well in April, 2010, and how they're both still making our environment suffer, after causing so much destruction in the world.
9-20: President George HW Bush just endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, over his own party's candidate, Donald Trump. As President, Trump would finish off our planet in no time flat, with his mentality of caring about profits and not the Earth. I wrote about other eco-disasters in this bottom layer on the piece: how hydraulic fracking for gas and oil causes earthquakes and ruins our precious water; how we have such extremes in our storms now and such record temperatures, both highs and lows. But our records now show that every year, the Earth is heating up more and more. Our Earth is changing, because of the pollution and heating. Sea levels continue to rise; oceans keep losing their saltiness and getting warmer; and with the glaciers melting away at an ever-increasing rate, our air currents and ocean currents are shifting, which circles back to how our weather is changeing, being affected by the currents. Everything is connected, and all actions have consequences.
Jumping up to the Paris Climate talks layer, I wrote about Trump telling the NY Times that if elected, he will cancel our part in the Accords signed in Dec, 2015. This was in a speech he gave to ... the North Dakota Petroleum Council.
9-21: Back on the bottom layer of Disasters, I wrote about how glacier melting is now causing tsunamis and earthquake, when huge banks of ice crash off all at once. On the center glacier, I wrote of being at Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada, in 2009, and seeing that its glacier was melted significantly, 7 years ago. On the glacier on the right side, I wrote from an article by Truthout.org, called "Are We Looking at a Mass-Extinction Event?" from 8-4-16. I wrote lots of terrifying statistics about how the gases in the atomsphere and the carbons trapped in the melting ice and permafrost and ocean floors will take us well past the point of no return with Climate Change. The Earth will be here, but we won't. I quoted NOAA's State of the Climate Report of 2015. NOAA pays a LOT of attention to Climate Change, as does NASA, and as does CNN. And the many sources I quoted in this bottom layer of the quilt are telling pretty scary and pretty agreeing stories. We have to stop Climate destruction NOW. And guess what. All not-paid-off scientists agree that it's ALL humanity's fault.
9-21. On Earth Mother (Sacagawea's) dress, I wrote the entire letter that Chief Seattle wrote to President Pierce in 1852, since the Whites wanted to buy his tribe's land. I've never really studied that document before, but it is well worth all of our reading and honoring. Seattle was both stern and poetic about how we all have to protect the precious Earth. And he connected the Earth and all the people to each other with Spirit. I was almost weeping as I wrote his teachings on that dress.
9-22: Under Chief Seattle's letter, still on Sacagawea's dress, I wrote about how a huge boat of migrants trying to escape the tragic wars in Syria, sank off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. With 600 or so people packed into that ship, at least 50 died, and how everyone would be held in detention, later to be returned to their homes, which are non-existent, because they are bombed out. Obama is pushing to take in many more Syrian War refugess to the US now.
Moving to the layer of Heroes and Sheroes of the Climate Movement, I wrote about Rachel Carson, Annie Leonard, and Al Gore, who all have had such a big influence on the eco-movement. I wrote about today being the first day of Autumn, and that the planet Mercury went Direct today, too. Then I wrote on the other side, about the other Eco-heroes here: Chief Seattle, Wangari Maathai, Bill McKibben, Wendell Berry, and Michael Moore. Today I got my rejection email from Quilt National (which made me really sad, but I have had works in 13 QN shows, with my first entry earning Best of Show in 1987, and my work as the cover of QN's 2007 catalog, and have only gotten 3 rejections in all these years.) Also today, my retired yoga teacher Mary Nicholls and my dear friend Rene, who quit coming to yoga, both came today! We were all so happy to have them there, along with our wonderful new yoga teacher Lyn Shoots, recovering from leg surgery.
9-23: I finished writing on Wendell Berry in the Heroes layer, about his environmental writing and passive resistance work. His most recent book "Our Only World - Ten Essays" came out in 2015. I think Wendell Berry and Chief Seattle were/are a lot alike! This was the day I added a little ink drawing of Michael Moore to the Heroes and Sheroes layer. I found a pic of him that I really liked, held it up on my phone, and drew it with my airpen, freehand, of course. That's the only way I draw.
On the UN's Paris Agreement layer, around the human chain on the left side, I wrote about what the Agreement gave us. Basically it limits Earth's temperature rise to 2ºC over pre-Industrial Revolution rate, but suggests we should really push for 1.5"C, not 2º, for the second half of the 21st Century. Also, the Agreement aims at 0% manmade greenhouse gas emissions between 2030 and 2050. (Can that ever happen, as long as we use all these fossil fuels? NO! We have to switch to renewable energy now!)
On the right side of this layer, I wrote about the Nov 13, 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris (in which 130 victims and 7 attackers died, and many more injured.) And there were the attacks in Paris on January 7 and 8, 2015, where the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery were attacked, with 17 murdered and 22 more injured. Paris was in shock in January and then again in November, so they just didn't know how to handle the UN Climate Summit. The fear of more attacks almost made the UN cancel its world meeting of 196 countries, out of fear of more terrorism.
But instead, Paris banned demontrations in the city. So that's why they made the 2 mile long human chain that I drew here. They were not collected in one spot, so they were legal. Meanwhile, at the Palaise de la Republique, 10,000 pairs of shoes were placed out, intsead of all the people who were not allowed to rally there in favor of Climate Control. Many world leaders, including President Obama, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, and the Dalai Lama all sent their shoes. All the shoes were being donated to groups aiding homeless people. The meetings of UN representatives and environmentalists from all over the world were intense and went into overtime, with the Agreement finally being signed by all the countries on Dec 14, 2015. This is the only time every country was able to agree, with this 21st attempt, that started with the meetings in Kyoto way back in 1992.
9-24: On the right side of the Paris Climate layer, I wrote that the Accord was finally signed on Dec 14, in the nick of time before all the UN delegates went back to their own countries. Everyone was pretty much in shock, that they pulled it off, finally!!! Now to meet those very serious requirements and enforce them!
On the left side of the Paris layer, to the left of Sacagawea's face, I wrote about going to the StoweGood concert last night with my YaYa friends Pat and Rita, at Pat's Unity Church in Medina, OH. To the right of Sacagawea's face, I wrote about deciding to make this piece, only on Sept 15, 8 days ago. I'm most likely crazy, but I'm glad I'm pushing this hard to make the show deadline for "Layered Voices."
In the little wedge between the Paris and #NoDAPL layers, on the right side, I wrote about who this big central woman figure is. She was Sacagawea, then Mother Earth. Now she is all women of the Earth, every day, healing her together.
Then I went to the top layer, about the #NoNAPL protest at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers, at the Sacred Stone Camp, where a few native people began praying for the water and the Earth on April 1. I started writing there on the left side, in the middle and wrote the history of this situation.
9-25: I started writing on the right side of the #NoNAPL, top layer of this piece. I wrote quotes from Native people, around Sacagawea's left hand. I recorded in my notes, a bunch of slogans from the protests, that I thought I'd write on the tipis later (but I never used them. Got a better idea at the last minute, later!)
I wrote about the Black Snake prophecy of the Sioux: That when the Black Snake comes out of the ground, our world will end. Everyone sees the pipeline as that black snake, or at least the oil that's been pumped out of North Dakota for the last 10 years or so, with this pipeline being a new escalation.
I found an article in the Guardian, in which a guy named Lesca American Horse says that in our agreeents with the Native nations, all treaties are to override laws. But the US governnent has broken every treaty ever made with the Native Peoples. In 1958, for instance, the US government took from the Standing Rock Sioux Nation the land that the DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) is planned to go through, so they can't say it's on their reservation, but many holy places and burial grounds of theirs ARE on that land.
On Sept 20, 2016 David Archambault, the Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux gave a speech in Geneva, Switzerland, to the UN Human Rights Council. He told them all about what's going with the pipeline, and about the guard dogs and pepper spray on Sept 3, and asked for them to do something about this violation of their human rights, to condemn the actions of the oil companies and to protect the Indians. He pointed out that all the actions going on there are violations of the treaties of 1851 and 1868, and told them that the US courts have not helped them. He wore a dress suit and a big eagle feather bonnet. He was very dignified.
The next day, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, the Standing Rock Sioux' historian and founder of the Sacred Stone Camp, where all the people are gathering to protest the pipeline and protect the water, was interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now, an internet news service, which had made the video of the attacks on the People protesting the destruction of Native holy places on Sept 3. Since North Dakota put out an arrest warrant on Amy Goodman, she won't be going back to the protest site anytime soon, so they brought LaDonna to New York, to tell the world what's going on there now. Which is that the state called in the National Guard to keep the protesters either out of the way or arrested. And they are keeping the media away from the work site. Even though the Obama Administration asked the oil people to not work within 20 miles on either side of the site in this controversey, they are still building the pipeline, not waiting for the government to decide if they are doing a good thing for the environment and the Sioux or not. Since they had moved the pipeline to where it's at now, because Bismarck didn't want it that close to where it could ruin the city's water, why is it ok to ruin the tribe's water, if it leaks? (The pipeline will go UNDER the Missouri River, a half mile north of where the tribe takes out their water.
They asked LaDonna if the oil people are anticipating that the People will leave their protest site when winter comes, she said they might, but she thinks that the People will stay. There are thousands of them there now, and they will stay. She said the Grandmothers will be the last to leave, because they need to protect the Earth for their grandchildren. She said her son is buried on that land, and she will stay. By the way, this reservation is where Sitting Bull is buried, and almost at the end of making my piece, I found out that Standing Rock also is one of three places that claims Sacagawea is buried there.
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard was in New York at a Black Lives Matter rally the day before she was on Democracy Now. After I watched her interview on Democracy Now, I decided to see if she has a website and went there. She's also the bureau of tourism for the reservation, and on that site, I found out about Sacagawea being buried there. This really amazed me, since I had originally drawn the big woman figure to be Sacagawea, but then I backed off, because I didn't think Sacagawea had anything to do with this Sioux group or their pipeline problems. i got chills, realizing that she most certainly DID have everything to do with the Standing Rock Sioux, whom she had guided Lewis and Clark to 14 times in the Corps of Discovery's adventures. I felt then, and I feel now, very attuned to this piece through her coming into my head when I was just starting to make sketches for this piece, even though I had no idea why she came to me. Now I know: that place and this situation mean a lot to Sacagawea. And so, that big Native woman figure connecting all the layers together in my piece IS Sacagawea. I had just enough room left to write on my big painting right at the very top, where the title is, all about what I just told you.
9-26: This is when I started to turn my big painting into an art quilt. I heat set the writing on the piece, and then I created the backing fabrics panel and sandwiched that layer, the batting, and the painting together.
9-27: I spent the day pinning the quilt layers together, listening to the Hillary Clinton book "Living History" for hours and hours. The next day was my 66th birthday, and I didn't work on the quilt building much at all, but I did start the machine sewing and the hand sewn border edge.
9-28 - 30: I sewed like mad any time I could on my birthday and the next two days. I found twitter posts from #sacredstonecamp, and wrote them into the #NoDAPL layer, and finally decided what to write on the tipis in that layer: Laura Nyro's song "Save the Country," only I changed some lyrics in the last couple of tipis, to keep them relevant to this issue. I wrote about my birthday's events: going to Daisy's dad's funeral in Wooster with my daughter Gretchen, because Daisy is her best friend; and going down to visit my birthday sister Jane and her sister Nancy, with Jimmy and Victoria. It was a great birthday, though I had to keep sewing in every speck of spare time, to handle the midnight, Sept 30 deadline for the show I was making this piece for.
9-30: On the place on the bottom right of this piece, where my signature will go, but I can't have it there now, because the show rules say if you have a signature on the front, cover it up to photo it for the jury process, I wrote instead about the pipeline they're fighting now, and about the Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama stopped finally, and about the Rover Pipeline they're trying to put through Ohio, right through our county. It's even much bigger around than the Dakota Access Pipeline. Everyone is fighting it, too. And there are lots and lots more pipelines they want to put in, but 350.org says we shouldn't put in one new fossil fuel project in the world, if we want to keep from destroying our planet. Remember our pledges at the Paris Accords in December???? One planet left. No more chances.
I wrote on Sacagewea's face that we need to pray for saving the Earth and do it. (I hadn't decided til then, whether I was going to write on her face, but had to decide, and I'm glad I did it then, since I'd realized she really IS Sacagawea!) I wrote Bird Woman on her feathers, because I found out that that's what Sacagawea means. I wrote on Wangari Maathai, in the Heroes of the Climate Movement layer, that Jimmy's Aunt Waunita Mae died at 81, on my birthday. I didn't have anyplace else to write that, unless I put her on the back, and I wanted her on the front. I sewed the Peace Cozy (#70) onto the first tipi on the left, sending peace to the Standing Rock Sioux and their efforts to Save the Water for all of us. I sewed that little green temple buddha bead down in the right bottom corner, like I do on all of my works since 2003, when I discovered those great little beads in the store BEADS in Santa Barbara.
I did one more heat set of the whole thing, this time ironing on the front with a press cloth between the iron and the quilt's painting, wearing my respirator and running the exhaust fan, like I always do. Then I put the piece up on the wall where I phtoo my work and did a photo shoot, getting too close to the midnight deadline to feel easy about it now! I edited my pix, wrote my statement, etc, and with 7 minutes to spare, I got my entry in online. I collapsed in relief!
10-1 and 2: I did all the stuff on the back, making the rod casing for the top and sewing it on. Drawing Sacagawea on the back, where I found a smudge of black paint (of mine) on the yellow cloth. I knew I couldn't scrub that off, without making a big mess. So I drew Sacagawea there, too, again with her hands and face raised to the skies in prayer to save the Earth. I wrote "Water is Life" above her. I wrote out the label on more of the yellow cloth at the bottom right back. When this page is all done, I'll be done making this piece. That will be good, because now I wnat to start a piece about Hillary Clinton, with the Presidential Election coming up fast, on Nov 8.
You can view my album about this piece in progress, on Facebook. And here's my album there, of it as a finished piece, with lots of detail shots.
Many thanks for actually reading all this way! There are a lot of detail shots below here, so keep scrolling down!
If you want to take a Lucky Drawing online class with me, please look on my Susan Shie Turtle Moon Studios facebook page. I teach 4-week sessions with 2 week breaks in between them. Most of my students consider my class to be like taking a yoga class: You just keep going with the group. You can find info about my online drawing classes on my website's front page, too.
If you are interested in studying with me in person, please check out my Turtle Art Camps, which I teach here at my home and studios, as well as my online drawing classes, my private art lessons in my home, and the classes that I teach around the US and sometimes in other countries, as all are listed on the main page of my website, Turtle Moon Studios
If you want to have me come teach at your place, phone or text me at 330-317-2167. I love to "teach out."
Read all about my Turtle Art Camp - how it works for your weeklong artmaking experience here in Wooster, Ohio, and see the changes I've made to the agenda. I have many large photos on the Turtle Art Camp page, to show what's going on at this biosphere-like art experience. The emphasis in this adult students' art camp is on drawing and painting, mostly on paper in a large, hardbound sketchbook. I want the in-person camps to be like my online Lucky Drawing classes now. I want my art camp to help you become more open to letting your art flow out, in whatever medium you want it to be in. I have even had students over the years who are mainly writers, not visual artists. I started my Turtle Art Camps in 1994 and they're going strong. See my 2016 TAC schedule on the main page ot Turtle Moon, along with a link to my current online Lucky Drawing class enrollment info.
I have really, really passionatel enjoyed making this art piece about this really important event in our Climate history. I truly believe this is the tipping point, when we get enough people worldwide, to know we have to change our ways NOW. May it be so. No more money-driven arguments against the truth. We have to stop raping our planet and nurse her back to health. Please do something every day to bring about the many changes we need. Let's all follow the lead of the Standing Rock Sioux now. Before it's too late.
Many thanks, Lucky / Susan Shie, in Wooster, Ohio.10-6-16. Now please enjoy all the detail images of this piece, below.
PS. March 2, 2017: “Tipping Point” didn’t get into the show I was working so hard to make it so fast for! But it’s in other shows. I want to keep it out in front of the public. I made the Hillary Clinton piece, too, finishing it Jan 7, 2017, well after she lost the election to Trump. By then I was getting ready to go to Washington on Jan 21, for the Women’s March. That will be in the next big art quilt, about the Resistance, which we must keep up, until Russiagate is exposed completely, and Trump and his kind are gone, and and we are able to bring people into the Presidency and the Cabinet, who really care about America and the world again. Peace to you.
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