SANKOFA POT
In Ghana there is a saying:  “If there’s something in your past worth going back for, go back and get it.”  It’s symbolized by a bird with its neck and head looking backwards.  This symbol has for us come to represent women’s educational journey to learn of our primary role in the earliest of cultures, cultures that originated agriculture, cultures that invented writing and the wheel, cultures void of war (at least, some of them).  Some of these women-led cultures are still alive today, among the Native Americans, in China and in Indonesia.  We’re sure there are more.  We don’t hear much about them, though, because their troubles are few.  And by not engaging in violent conflict, they’re not newsworthy ... 

CEREMONIAL BIRD POT
The Ceremonial Bird Pot series originated with two separate forms, adorned pots and the female bird form, both of which we were working on before our first African trip. Affirmation of our pots came with our first encounter with African storage pots in 1997, made out of clay and earth by the women who used them. They are kitchen utensils and what we enjoyed most was seeing the form, the same form we drew in a sketchbook on the dock at the Pilchuck pond back in '96 and chose to create without really knowing why.

Our female bird form was derived from a 5000-year-old stone sculpture found in Hungary. We have exaggerated her tapered waist and full form. She represents to us women in the warrior stage of life, women like Nehanda of Zimbabwe who worked to right wrong. And though we were working on this form prior to our African travel, we did not know how to properly display her. In Harare, Zimbabwe's capitol, we came upon an adorned pot topped with a sculpted clay female form. The pot was used for divination by the tribal healers.

Four weeks after our journey we envisioned our bird form on our adorned pots. The Ceremonial Bird Pot series was born. Each of our pots tells a story through the bird, her gesture, color and adornment.

TAPESTRY SERIES
Our Tapestry series was born in late 2001, an evolution of a piece we created in 1998, inspired by our first visit to a traditional African healing market in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 1997.

These pieces represent to us nurturing, healing, grace, strength, birth & rebirth, growth, evolution, and abundance. We communicate this through an assemblage of elements, some of glass, some natural, including pods, deity figures, gourds, vessels and birds, suspended and balanced and woven together with beads from Africa and Asia.

To us, each piece is a delicate balance of color, form, texture, line and weight - a symphony, a tapestry - that can only be achieved through hours of arranging and rearranging. We are intrigued by both the positive and negative spaces within each piece and by the relationships between the elements, some intentional, some serendipitous. They continue to inspire us.

MAN AS ART SERIES (Adorned Heads)
We began working on these forms during a fellowship at the Creative Glass Center of America in the winter of 1999. The inspiration for these, however, originated long before the fellowship and our African travel, when we were working on head forms for our female bird form. Our enthusiasm for these head forms was renewed when we witnessed authentic tribal dancing in Zambia during our backpacking journey in 1997. The masked dancers became spirits from another world as they imparted morals and history and folklore stories to their audience.

We attempt to avoid calling these forms masks, as the word mask implies an emptiness within the piece until worn by a human and transformed. We feel our pieces are empowered with energy and spirit before they leave our studio and present themselves to the viewer.

Through the years these pieces have evolved to embody the spirits of women both past and present: woman as mystic, woman as warrior, woman as protectress, woman as healer, woman as leader, woman as visionary, woman as diety, woman as an instrument of change.

HOMAGE SERIES
This was our first collaborative endeavor. The sculpted glass figures were inspired by a suite of pastel drawings, created by our friend, the late John Mark Fleming. Before his passing we discussed transforming his two-dimensional figure into a three-dimensional glass form, the end result, to date, is the Homage Series.

The emphasis of our Homage series is the dialog between the figures, a reverence, an homage to life.

CEREMONIAL SPEARS
We call our spears our Liberation Series. The first set was created about six months after our Zimbabwe travels during which we learned much about the country's revolution against the tyrannical Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia, who seceded from Britain after being reprimanded by the Royal Government for oppressive actions against the native people.

We also learned of Nehanda, a spirit reincarnate who led her people through several liberation attempts, most notoriously against Cecil Rhodes in the 1800s. Alas, she was unsuccessful, tried, found guilty of treason and hanged in 1898. Her reincarnate was discovered in 1970, just before the War of Independence. She served to guide the guerillas through opposition territory successfully. Zimbabwe became an independent nation in 1980. The peoples are not, however, free from oppression.
 

VENUS OF WILLENDORF - OUR MYTHOLOGY

The Venus of Willendorf was carved of stone, found in Austria and dates back to 25,000 B.C. - these are nearly indisputable facts.  The Venus of Willendorf is a fertility figure - that we had trouble digesting. In fact, we had trouble with many of the reference books we had acquired on female imagery in early cultures because they were quick to label all female forms as fertility figures, as if woman before or after her fertile years no longer had a purpose in society. And what of women who chose not to give birth?