24 hours to meet the muses
so friday june 19-saturday 20, 2020 was the metropolitan art council’s annual event: flat out under pressure! (a.k.a. #foup2020 if you want to go snooping on instagram!!)
it’s been a couple years since i’ve been in town for this event. i’m usually traveling to a festival or somewhere, but thanks to (?!) lock-down, a record number (133 participants!) of greenville artists were in town and simultaneously creating during this 24 hour art-making marathon!
usually, we’d all head to the MAC offices on friday morning, get our canvas or paper stamped with the date and time, and return within 24 hours and allll of our sleep-deprived work would be hanging for a grand ol’ party saturday nite. (the top 8 wish cash prizes and get their work displayed on the recycle bins on our famous downtown main street for the year!)
alas, now that we’re on covid-hotspot alert, so we texted and emailed proof of our blank surfaces with our own time & date stamps to dear alice at the MAC offices.
if you were following along in my instagram stories yesterday (@halthegal_storyart) you saw a lot of the process— and there’s a video for that.
but i wanted to take a few minutes to let you know how i got here. to 2020’s FOUP piece!! ;D
it’s been said that creativity is an intelligence. and sometimes for me that means TOO MANY ideas. and by the time i edit them down, or reduce them to communicate them visually, i’ve tried to mush it all together and i don’t know if it makes sense anymore. but i hope it looks like art even if you don’t know the story or impetus behind it. maybe that’s just my process. and art is always open to the viewer’s interpretation. which is the pure beauty of all of it. but here are all the thoughts that went into my piece:
for the weeks leading up to this annual event, since i knew i was going to be in town, i was pondering the year of a maelstrom that has been 2020. and my muses to keep going being the tattoo i’ve always wanted: faith, hope, and love. represented (in my imaginary tattoo) as an anchor (faith; i’m also a navy brat), hope (a star; see my fave verse) and love (a heart with an exclamation point). and of course according to i corinthians 13 in the new testament, the greatest of these is love. so i wanted the love figure central.
i also happened to recently acquire stephen fry’s gorgeous book MYTHOS. i haven’t read it all yet, but i did flip through last weekend looking for info on the muses.
and i decided on three of the nine (hey! lookie there prime, magical, holy trinity of a number!) to represent faith, hope, and love.
they are polyhymnia, thalia, and urania.
i’ll tell you why in a minute.
6 hours in.
our three muses.
work in progress…
i ALSO wanted to incorporate some sign language. so many voices are crying out to be heard in 2020. the sick. the oppressed. the scared. and wisdom in knowing when to speak and when to stay silent. so i wanted to give visual voice to that. since the ASL for “faith” is a movement, i have the faith figure (polyhymnia, you recall) on the left just giving the alphabet letter sign for “F.” which of course also resembles the “okay” sign. we’re gonna make it, friends. hope (thalia) on the right, is doing the sign for hope (also a movement sign, but that’s how it ends). and love (urania) is crossing her arms as is the sign for love. which also happens to look like wonder woman standing STRONG to me. we will all prevail in love.
12 hours in.
almost there...
still needs some sparkle.
so why those three muses? here’s what stephen fry says about the three i chose:
polyhymnia: hymns is greek for “praise,” and polyhymnia was the muse of hymns, of sacred music, dance, poetry, and rhetoric as well as— slightly randomly one might think— agriculture, pantomime, geometry, and meditation. i suppose today we would call her “the muse of mindfulness.” she is usually portrayed as a rather serious figure, finger held pensively to her mouth in an attitude of solemn rumination. she is another contender, along with calliope, for the mother of the hero orpheus.
for polyhymnia, i used my anglican pastor’s daughter as a reference model. serious and lovely. with a transparent stole signifying faith. and all shall be well. we have FAITH.
thalia: the finest, funniest, friendliest muse of all, thalia supervised the comic arts and idyllic poetry. her name derives from the greek verb for “to flourish.” like her tragic counterpart melpomene she sports actors’ boots and mask (hers being the cheerful smiling one of course), but she is wreathed in ivy and carries a bugle and a trumpet.
for thalia, my hope, i used another young friend from church. witty and smart, she is always greeting one with a full smile that lights her face, and like her older sister, always on trend for fashion. i gave her a laurel wreath and a bugle necklace. and of course a smile that cannot be denied. and wings. because HOPE is a thing with feathers, no?
urania: urania derives her name from ouranos, the primal god of the heavens (and a great-grandfather of the nine sisters); she is the muse who presides over astronomy and the stars. she is also considered a figure of universal love, a kind of greek version of the Paraclete, or Holy Spirit.
for urania, my love, i combined the likenesses of two sisters from my church. strong, gorgeous young black women. strong and brave. standing tall and standing united in love. reflecting the Light of the cosmos and the Spirit that unites us all. (we also just happened to celebrate Pentecost, when Christ sends the Holy Spirit. so there was some liturgical timing there even as the world reforms itself.) so we stand with LOVE.
flat out under pressure 2020 winners will be announced monday (6/22) afternoon. and the show will be virtual with all works available for purchase on the mac website july 1. i’ll link it all here when available! we artists HOPE you continue to stand strong, and stay well—and we thank you for your support!
“the muses were nine in number, the daughters of zeus and mnemosyne, memory. at first, like the graces, they were not distinguished from each other. “they are all,” hesiod says, “of one mind, their hearts are set upon song and their spirit is free from care. he is happy whom the muses love. for though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. such is the holy gift of the muses to men.””
you can read more about my faerie tale and story-inspired paintings throughout this website, halthegal.art
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