Goddess Works
Then following a great crowd of the Goddess’s initiates, men and women of all classes and in every age, their pure linen clothes shining brightly. The women wore their hair tied up in glossy coils under gauze head-dresses; the men’s heads were completely shaven, representing the Goddess’s bright earthly stare, and they carried rattles of brass, silver and even gold, which kept up a shrill and ceaseless tinkling.
Apuleius, The Golden Ass, Robert Graves translation.
The Temple of Isis grew out of a long series of dreams, long before I visited the site of the Temple of Isis in Pompeii.
Dream I
A temple to Isis is being unearthed and rebuilt. A field of pillars and stones will be reconstructed to include a rotunda. A silver-clad woman comes up to me and hands me an unknown instrument. She is wearing a peplos. The instrument is bronze and looks ancient.
Temple of Isis: Pompeii
1987
Pencil on paper on canvas
9 by 15 ft. 7 inches
Isis Processional
1988
Bronze and lead
19 x 11 by 75 Inches
Altar I
1989
Cast bronze, lead and wood
54” by 28” by 4 ft.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Altar II
1989
Cast bronze, lead and wood
54” by 28” by 6 ft.
Votive Box with Deer, Sistrum, and Eggs
1984
Cast bronze
7 ½ by 16 ½ by 3 7/8 inches
One day I found a brochure from an Egyptology shop in my neighborhood. I called for a n appointment. Entering the shop, I saw a sistrum from the 26th Dynasty in a case and bought it. The sistrum is the only instrument associated with Isis worship, the Egyptians believed that the rattle of the sistrum caused the Nile to rise and fall.
Dream II
I am with a group of Archeologists working on the restoration of a temple. My guide around the temple precinct is a draped woman whose veil hides her face. As we speak, she bends down and lifts her skirts to expose her legs, which are covered with fish scales- rainbow colored like those of a tropical fish. I find myself both fascinated and repelled. She turns her head and I realize that on her neck are gill slits. Fins protrude from behind her ears. As the fish goddess and I are speaking, a radiant child enters the precinct in a procession. On the ground are vials containing fetuses.
Kore
1986
Pencil on paper on canvas
9 by 14 ft.
Installation at La Jolla Museum of Art
In 1990 when I returned from Rome I had the following dream:
Dream III
I am in Santa Martia Minerva, attending a mass. All of the priests are stuffed like baked potatoes in jackets. I think of the Capuchin Fathers catacombs with the dead priests in vestments. During the mass a Black Madonna and child begin to float up over the altar.
