Eve
Eve IS the Tree of Knowledge
The Art:
This is a mixed media fiber art piece, layer hand dyed, printed, and painted fabric combined. The face, hands and legs are painted photographs, scanned, manipulated and printed on cotton sateen. The body and garments are applique with stitch for accent.The pomegranate tree is painted and stitched and the open pomegranate is beaded.
Why Eve?
I wanted to place Eve in the larger context of the sacred feminine through time and place. I wanted to represent her as part of an ongoing continuum. We humans have been seeking out to the creative female force since the beginning of human creative expression. My Eve hasn’t just eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge she IS the tree of knowledge. She is rooted, literally, in the sacred feminine deities know and unknown from all over the world. Her feet become roots reaching down into the rich, dark earth. The roots reach and are nourished by ancient feminine and fertility goddesses from traditions all over the world (see list below). The snake is not a tempter of evil but represented on the left as the ancient Egyptian and Greek Ouroboros. With tail in mouth to form a circle this snake is a symbol of death and rebirth in a perpetual cycle of destruction a re-creation. Eve’s hands offer us the pomegranate. A lush, multifaceted fruit that represents abundance, fertility, and mystery that is freely offered to us in two parts, two parts that combined make a whole. When eaten Eve recognizes that we will know the world in all it’s good and evil. We will understand the multifaceted, complicated, juicy nature of human life. We will know love and loss; joy and sadness; success and failure and all the tiny increments of life in between those extremes. Without the knowledge of cold how do we understand warmth? Without the knowledge of emptiness how do we feel sated? It is a complicated gift Eve gives us, her slight smile and direct gaze lets us know she is with us, we can handle it. We can go ahead and live this complicated life informed by the creative feminine spirit in balance and harmony, woven into a fuller understanding of who we are as humans that are made in the image of God.
- Akua Ba (Akan Culture Africa)
- Astarte (Assyrian)
- Coatlicue (Aztec)
- Goddess Lajja Gaui (India)
- Hathor (Egypt)
- Hongshan Culture (Ancient China)
- Ishtar/Lilith (Sumerian Babylonia)
- Minoan Snake Goddess (Ancient Crete)
- Paccmama (Andean)
- Pandora (Greek)
- Spider grandmother – found on Fains Island mound Tennessee (North America)
- Venus of Willendorf, (Ancient European)