Isle of Ruins returns

Welcome back to the Isle of Ruins, an image of a drawing from 1996 with the usual Prismacolor and Rexel Derwent pencils as the culprits!

jude cowell (c) 1996 - 2008 and beyond...

Wire Art vs Pattillo Armadillo!

>Candle Bower 2003 Look! here's a photo of one of the Candle Bowers created by yours truly as Uranus (lightening; new ideas) traversed my 5th house of Creativity.

This was during my electric art phase, 1995 - 2004...see Cosmic Light Panel below - the photo is a bit fuzzy (from 2000) but it will give you the idea.

Wish I could still shape wire, beads, stones, and prisms into a spun stageset of silver, gold, copper, and brass - a decoration meant for candle enjoyment as well as for lighting purposes - but it's not to be. (Beware the nickel content in silver wire!)

Mirrors reflected candle flames the better to see you with, and here you observe candle's image at the top of the *bower - wish you could see it in evening light where it really glows.

But after 6 years of creating this line of designs, nickel had overly sensitized me and so I gave up creating my line of Wire Art, as I called it then, along with other styles of candle art, plus: mobiles, bead-studded boxes, light-catchers, articulated fish with bellies full of beads, and all manner of sculpturous things which one may invent with wire, whether beaded or no.

Then HG-TV called in 2004 about taping a segment for a new program but it conflicted with a writers' conference coming up where I could work on Pattillo Armadillo and the Dream of Green, my childrens' book. With Pattillo invited to NYC, his story and art had to be completed.

At last Pattillo made The Great Trip to NYC to have his book dummy - or dummybook, if you prefer - scrutinized by big town editors but he didn't 'fit' their list. Not quite up to snuff. So he came home to Georgia where he has remained ever since and as far as I know, has no plans to return to the Big City.

Here's a view of Pattillo from his dummybook cover:



So Pattillo and I are sending Big Thanks to readers of this blog - both of you are very kind to make it to the end of this post!


* concept for Candle Bowers came from bower birds and their amazing, cozy nests.

Night in Celadon Forest

Night in Celadon Forest, a newly completed drawing by jude cowell 2008.

Venus Rising by Jude Cowell; update: Venusian Washington DC

Venus Rising by jude cowell (c) 2008

Update June 10, 2015: Venus, Politics, Presidents, Astrology, Zodiacs, and Washington DC

by Jude Cowell

How curious that I posted Venus Rising in 2008 since I discovered only recently that April 6, 2008 is what some call the first day of the current Venus Cycle. So considering the 8-year cycle of planet #Venus there is hidden significance in America's 2016 Election/s because 2008 + 8 = 2016. And let us not leave out our Founding Fathers' preference for a goddess-worshiping mystery religion. If a woman is elected president in 2016, we will have uplifted once again matriarchal rule after centuries of paternalism.

Although political conservatives and Evangelicals in the US prefer to call them 'Christians', Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, and our other Utopian founders are usually listed as 'Deists' and most people are aware of their secret society connections such as Freemasonry, Illuminism, and Rosicrucianism. Yet the feminine statues and engravings that decorate the city of Washington DC (ex: the Armed Freedom statue on the Capitol Dome, the stars of constellation Virgo so prominent during early Masonic cornerstone layings of DC buildings and highlighted within DC's many Zodiacs and horoscopes) with their Great Mother-Isis-Semiramis-Mary and Virgo/Ceres/Demeter symbolism relates directly to goddess and archetype, Venus, the beautiful and the vengeful.

Of course, Venus is the consort of our country's official and obvious phallic symbol, the Washington Monument which is dedicated to the "Father of Our Country", sterile though George seems to have been (probably due to one of his several childhood diseases. Additionally, George descended from a Star Family of Enochian priests which is one reason his contemporaries idolized him so highly as a cult leader and by other of his brethren immortalized Washington in statue as 'Jupiter-Zeus' and as a transcendent being (ex: the famous painting of his apotheosis into godhood...Enoch translated to heaven? puh!)

Now as you know, a 5-pointed star is a symbol of Venus, too (5 x 8 = 40.) Stars appear on the Washington family crest which was a template for the design of the US flag. And with a few unavoidable exceptions (assassination, resignation), our US presidential inaugurations every 4 years are held based on the Venus Cycle for as you know, much value is typically attached to the concept of a two-term presidential residency (2 x 4 = 8) of the Oval Office, its shape a shout-out to the Cosmic Egg and the fertility of goddess Venus. Plus, have you ever heard Washington DC called the "New Jerusalem"? This is an intriguing Venusian link as well because the word 'Jerusalem' means "place of Venus rising," a good place for the observation of planet Venus at certain times of the year.

And no, yours truly knew very little of these concepts when I visualized, then perpetrated, the above drawing of Venus Rising! jc

Cosmic Light Panel 1999

View of a 1999 Cosmic Light Panel, one of several I created back in the electrified art days leading up to the New Millennium:



Formed upon a wooden frame with fabric, wire, beads, colored electric lights, and mirrors, this Panel sits unobtrusively near me as I type and must be plugged into a wall outlet to see what you're seeing in the photo.

The brightest object--representing Chiron, the Wounded Healer--is actually a small prism hung behind the fabric with a bulb set to spotlight it.

Ahh, the glowiness of 1999!

Neptune's Daughter and friend

Something a bit different for Secret Moon Art...
Neptune's Daughter and friend, by jude cowell (c) 2008

Actually this pencilic rendering is an expression of Mercury's links to the astrological 12th house of the Unconscious and its typical feeling of thoughts floating up from the Unconscious realm which is symbolized in our dreams by Neptune's province, the ocean.

And that includes the Collective Unconscious--as Cetus the Whale and this mer-maid could agree!