They're Baaaack!

BREAKING NEWS! I returned from the studio to find an email from my attorney informing me that the City of Grosse Pointe Park has appealed the decision of Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Bruce U. Morrow. Now the case will proceed to the Michigan Court of Appeals, just two steps away from the United States Supreme Court.

What can one say, but, "Bring it on!"? The First Amendment will ultimately prevail.

Mishipeshu Made Me Do It

I'm clinging to a granite cliff, which bellies out toward a wild, unpredictable and deep blue inland sea.

I have a very narrow foothold on a ledge that slopes sharply toward the ice-cold water, and it is as slippery as a freshly waxed dance floor.

There is no guardrail. The deep lugs of my hiking boots are caked with earth and pine needles and, as sturdy as they are on the trail offer no grip at all on this surface. Above my head writhe fantastic creatures from out of shamans' dreams. The largest has a spiny back, long horns of gleaming copper, and a long tail that lashes the waves and overturns canoes.

It wasn't as though I hadn't been warned.

But the temptation to view ancient pictographs was not to be resisted. Not by a painter.

The pictographs are delicate, easily missed if you cast your gaze much higher than a man can reach.

Painted in red ochre and sturgeon oil for thousands of years, up until just prior to living memory, they were hidden from the world - their exact location known only to a few Natives and fisherman, and mentioned in Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" - until 1958. Winter ice storms and powerful waves have stolen many over the centuries, but some, mostly from the 17th and 18th century, are still visible to us as we pick our way cautiously along the shelf of rock in Agawa Bay, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario.

The most famous painting here is a depiction of the animal manitou, Mishipeshu, the Great Lynx, or Underwater Panther. Although he is always depicted as feline, he possesses reptilian characteristics, such as a spiny, stegosaurus-like back. I think he is very like a dragon. He has horns of copper because he is the guardian of the metal, found in the Lake Superior area. He can be evil, stirring up sudden, violent storms, waves and whirlpools with his tail, cracking ice and upsetting canoes. Many lives have been lost to Mishipeshu. It is best to make an offering of tobacco to him before setting out on a canoe trip of any significant length. The beautiful and fearsome painting of Mishipeshu at Agawa Rock is thought to have been painted by Shingwaukonce, the Ojibwa chief who told his stories to ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft in the early 19th century. It was painted to commemorate a war party after Shingwaukonce fasted and dreamed for four days at the rock.

"Lo! how all things fade and perish!
From the memory of the old men
Pass away the great traditions,
The achievements of the warriors,
The adventures of the hunters,
All the wisdom of the Medas,
All the craft of the Wabenos,
All the marvellous dreams and visions
Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets!"

-from "Song of Hiawatha" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1855

Dreams of Flight

Along the shore of Lake Superior one can find the battered wings of monarch butterflies. The seemingly fragile insect migrates to Michigan from Mexico every spring, but those that make it as far as the southern shore of Superior may truly find the powerful lake storms too much for them. But migration is the natural way of life for these creatures, and one can witness the gathering of huge flocks of these butterflies on sandy beaches all over Michigan and Canada, as they await the perfect time to rise up as one and fly away for the winter. The trees, and then the skies become alive with color and movement during their passage.

I collected a few butterfly wings, and a few delicately patterned blue and white Blue Jay feathers. I added a molded impression in gel medium of a paper wasp's nest, and one of my coffee paintings of an Indian woman, done after an Edward Curtis photograph. The Woman dreams of flight, which is the natural way of life for all the creatures which surround her.

Acrylic on paper with coffee, deerhide, glass beads, garnets, pipestone, pearls, paua shells, amber, feathers and butterfly wings. 28 x 38 cm.

Mona Lisa Smile

I present to you the very sensible opinion of Judge Bruce U. Morrow, who apparently knows how to keep things short and sweet:

Mona Lisa Smile

The Art of Victory

We were having lunch on a remote lakeshore, listening to the sounds of loons. My cell phone suddenly rang with a message from my attorney that we won our four-year-long court case over the display of my paintings in our yard. Judge Bruce Morrow sensibly ruled that the sign ordinance under which my husband had been charged was unconstitutionally vague, and he reversed the guilty verdict of Grosse Pointe Park's Municipal Judge Jarboe. The Municipal Court was ordered to dismiss the charges and to rewrite the sign code to read as clearly constitutional.

Since we have only just this evening rolled into town from the wilds of Canada (even further from the reaches of any cell phone service) I have little energy to report further on this or anything else and look forward only to a glass of wine and a movie. But you can read the first announcement in the Metro Times... here:

The Art of Victory