“The heart overflows...”
“Ace of Cups” premieres this Saturday for the ‘A Better View’ group exhibition show at ABV Gallery in Atlanta, GA
An offering to that which supplies you; an abundance of compassion and creativity that is shared in both gratitude and hopefulness of the future. A meditation permeated with optimism and growth, acting as an invitation into the unfurling of self and the discoveries associated within
Acrylic on panel, 24″ x 24″ x 1.5″, 2022
Ala Ebtekar, Thirty-Six Views of the Moon (from the San Jose Museum of Art)
Cyanotype prints on found book pages exposed to moonlight.
Thirty-six Views of the Moon is a collection of night exposures, left from dusk till dawn and exposed by moonlight on book pages from texts referencing the moon and night sky spanning the last ten centuries. Working with photographic negatives of the Moon from the Lick Observatory archives in Northern California and treating each book page with Potassium ferricyanide and Ammonium ferric citrate (cyanotype) to make the surface of the page light-sensitive, the pages are then exposed overnight by the UV-light emitted by the moon. The work takes its cue from a poem by Omar Khayyam that imagines us as the objects of the Moon’s omnipresent gaze and, in response, produces a vignette of windows on the Moon that abstract the typical celestial gaze, merging galaxy with ground to collapse space and time.
(McEvoy Foundation for the Arts)
No but I gotta talk about Medusa for a minute actually.
It's been. A very long time since I read the PJO books so I don't exactly remember how Uncle Rick presents Medusa in the book. But the way the show introduces her myth? Fascinating. For me as a Greek mythology enthusiast, that is.
The show makes Medusa a victim of Athena. Of course, the show is mainly for kids, so they can't exactly say that, hey, kids, Medusa was Athena's priestess and she was raped by Poseidon, YEP, or protagonist's father, IN Athena's temple, nah, that's neither kid-friendly nor does it endears us to Poseidon. Not that Poseidon is very dear to us viewers/readers at this point, our narrator/protagonist can't stand his own dad.
But still what fascinates me is that even though they twisted the myth to ft the narrative they still managed to evoke Athena's curse as being actually a gift, and Medusa not feeling wretched over her condition but blessed.
Which is not a modern reading of the myth, actually. Saying that Athena couldn't punish Poseidon for his transgression and could only punish Medusa, but did so in a way that would give Medusa weapons to defend herself against whoever and whatever would try to harm her again, is a narrative that exists since Antiquity.
My point is that the re-framing of Medusa's myth, departing from the traditional, non-kid-friendly version while still incorporating both classic and modern elements, is a good frame of reference for the series (book and show)' entire approach to mythology. And I guess I'm saying that mostly for the non-book readers who are discovering this world, many of whom might be Greek mythology fans and might have gone "wait, why is Hades AGAIN presented as the bad guy when he's the chillest, most normal, most stable god in this entire pantheon", because that's a conversation the book fandom has been having (over and over again) for more than a decade.
Anyway, yeah. As a long time book fan and a show appreciative, here's my advice to anyone who knows WAY too much about Greek myths and still want to enjoy the ride without going every five minutes "wait, that's not correct": reframe. Contemporary rewritings, modern audiences and Fantasy genre.
SUPERSONIC HORIZONS features artwork by 32 of today's most prodigious artists masterfully shaping the mould and epitome of contemporary landscape art curated by Supersonic Art.
Featuring work by artists:
ADAM HALL • ALEC MONSON • ANDIE TAYLOR • AUSTIN PARKHILL • BEAU BERNIER FRANK • BRADLEY HANKEY • BRIAN DEPAULI • CHRISTOPHER BURK • CRAIG GEORGE • DALIAH AMMAR • DANIELLE WINGER • DANNY HELLER • EDWIN USHIRO • EMILY WALLERSTEIN • ERIC NASH • FRANCIS DIFRONZO • JACK ROWLAND • JAY BAILEY • KAZU SAITO • LUKE ANDERSON • LUKE TUCKER • MARC TRUJILLO • MARK GLEASON • MICHAEL WARD • MICHAEL POLAKOWSKI • NATHAN WALSH • PATRICK OATES • PAUL WHITE • S. JORDAN PALMER • STEPHANIE BUER • TIMUR AKHRIEV • TOM JEAN WEBB