Exhibition Text

Nature of Things is pleased to present the exhibition, 3 Women, featuring ceramics by Gail Blank, oil paintings by Gretta Johnson, and fine ink drawings by Helen Burkhart Mayfield.

Crone welcomes you with her yellow eyes, her expectant nose, her ruddy cheeks.

The cycle begins at the end, the point where the tail has entered the mouth of the dragon.

A storm descends upon the landscape in cylindrical motions, penetrated by a resistant cattail. Death also remains; an animal skull mocks you.

The storm clears, spring arrives miraculously once again. The tree and its fingers grasping upwards, heaven-facing daisies, roots steadied in the earth. A lone cloud awaits on the horizon. Hush the winds.

The wheel of creation bursts forth, thrusting primordial stillness into cyclical motion. Tonal primaries (red, blue, yellow): the prima materia of creation.

Mother Earth! Bounteous spring brings forth nodal growth. Blood veins extend like root systems, pulsing with life.

Three more blossoms: erect, bristled, alert.

An echo pours out of the fallen vessel in shallow water, encircling her nakedness. She has awoken in the womb from a sleep that lasted 309 years. The light-body guides her to the entrance of the cave, the transformation complete, where for 309 years the sun has passed with the moon.

The floating head, hair aflame, converses with the lost highway – the entrance to the abyss. The fallen glass alembic awaits spiritual imbibement.

The siren’s wail ascends softly on the lonesome hunter: Come, come! I miss you, I miss you! Come, come! My nest is near, my nest is near! He wades into the cold river, and she, transformed into her true form, extends feathered wings, and flies off. Eros, nay, owl.

The dream-day light scorches the desert yellow earth. A combustive head falls through the sky, aflame, disturbing the bleached, still climate, and a singular topaz-eyed cloud.

Crone returns, dancing, grasping upwards towards her youthful maiden visage. The spiteful gravity of time descends, snapping at our tail.

The limp bouquet sheds two petals, the devil laughs. Only moments before, the bird, his beautiful bride. Trickster departs with the coveted branch.

A dream last night. I was on stage awash with warm light, and the velvet red curtains parted around me. My limbs were fragmented, suspended around me like a string puppet, and my body became a second stage, within it opened an emerald, green forest, with a cabin in the middle. The door was arched, and a singular light emanated from its outline. The image was held between my feet, and shaped like my head, a sleeping vessel. I awoke.

A nightmare. A face with wilted pink skin and white large lips. Her black tongue hungrily licked me like a dog. The mask falls loose,

I dissolve into vibrating pink atoms with two headlights nearing.

Ribbon-like layers without end, spiraling upwards, spiraling downwards, unraveling time. Energy, as we know it, is eternal delight.