Artist’s Talk

Thank you all for being here. My intention for this presentation is to talk about my art and also to listen to your thoughts and impressions of the work. Thanks to BBam! Gallery for hosting this event as part of my ongoing show N I G H T G A R D E N.

You can see the paintings on the walls that make up the show. What is laid out on this table here is a series of paintings that I made this spring at a pivotal moment in my life as I was finishing the coursework for the MA through the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax as well as reaching a breaking point in my work life doing spiritual care in a hospital setting.

By the way, Thank you to those who are watching the stream of this event live on the internet and those who will watch the replay later. I will also mention that all of my coursework was done online and assignments submitted electronically, so it is a real treat to be sitting around a table with real-life humans to discuss this work. Thank you, humans!

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When I say that I was at a breaking point in my spiritual care work, I do not mean that the task of doing spiritual care broke me because work itself is illuminating, energizing, active and creative. I was part of the multidisciplinary team and I helped patients by accompanying them through their hospital journeys. I will never get tired of listening deeply to the patients, sitting in rounds with the doctors, nurses and other professionals, collaborating with the teams on each unit to help make plans for care and programming. I love this vocation so much. It is my calling!

What broke me earlier this year was how I was treated by my superior and religious colleagues, by the system itself. I can’t give details about this because there are processes at work to seek justice for what happened and I don’t want to compromise those, but I can share that I was impacted on many levels – physical, emotional, spiritual.

I might be able to talk about the reactions from my teachers and fellow theology students in my classes, which did bear some resemblance to what I endured at work and by some strange synchronicity, were all happening at once. One of my teachers told me and the class that I am arrogant for thinking that I have something to contribute to the scholarship.

While studying the book of Revelation, the apocalypse at the end of the Bible, as I was exploring goddess imagery in first century ancient Greece both without and within the ancient Jewish traditions that the text emerged from. I was also questioning whether the Christ figure in the text was truly the revelation of an historical person or if He was constructed from the ancient messiah motifs already present in the tradition in the Hebrew Bible or what Christians call the Old Testament. I felt that the attacks on the goddess were a product of the misogyny of the subculture that the author of Revelation was a part of and that the links to the gospels were tenuous. Of course, as has happened more than once in my life, when I try to point out a problem, I, in return, am given that label.

Luckily, in my previous research while I studied information science, I had come across the concept of “problem finding” which is when a solution comes about to a hithertofore unknown question. In this case, I found my feelings.

I had spent a lot of time over the past couple of years listening to patients, feeling empathy as they felt their feelings. Through this project I was able to offer the gift of conscious presence to myself.

The basic recipe of these paintings is to do a body scan, to check in with seven parts of my body. Although I spent a couple of decades practicing yoga and am familiar with the chakra system, I chose to explore a diffuse version of my body, starting with “mind” and moving down through “voice”, “heart”, “belly”, “sex”, “knees” and “feet”.

The paintings were made quickly, spontaneously, one at a time and I challenged myself to let go of concepts, theories and stories; to simply feel. As I was painting, I reminded myself: “I am feeling the feelings of my mind” or “I am feeling the feelings of my belly” or ” I am feeling the feelings of my feet” over and over, concentrating on the attempt to express these feelings through paint.

It is very appropriate that these paintings are displayed on tables because that is the way they were painted. I would lay out the cloth on the table, feel the feelings of the part of my body that I was focusing on that day and then wait for the paint to dry before moving on to the next part. All in all the process took about a week.

So here is my body…I guess you could call this a self-portrait. In art, the body has been presented in many ways, most often from the outside looking AT, as in the famous “male gaze” that we see in so many nudes and which has been subverted by many amazing artists who have turned the lens on themselves. When I was in art school (20 years ago) I did a project called “Clothes without Bodies” where I tried to erase the body from the image, leaving floating ghost clothes to represent the forms.

Here is another attempt to circumvent the questions and realities of existing in a body. I have dissected my own body through abstraction and feeling tone. Whether I have made great art or not is a matter of taste. I feel thankful for what this process gave me: a chance to lay down my burdens and just feel.

I would very much like to know what you think and there will be time for questions and comments in a few minutes but first I would love for us to feel. So I invite you to listen as my friend reads a little excerpt from Eugene Gendlin’s book Focusing and then I will lead us through a quick body scan. Feel free to close your eyes if that feels right or to get up and move around the room if you need to, but not both at the same time…that would be dangerous!

Solstice Eve Discussion

Alison: Now we can open it up for discussion and conversation with you.

JH: Yeah, does anybody have any questions?

Alison: Well I just wanted to say Thank you for opening up so much and how what you are living you are bringing into what you are pursuing for your thesis and how you’re incorporating it and not being so removed from what you’re presenting. Like, you’re really in it and it’s interesting how sometimes you would ask a question or present something and instead of people going let’s be interested in this and let’s be curious they labelled you the thing that you had presented…what did you say?

JH: Problem finding. Oh, like I’m the problem. If I say “this is the problem, they say no you’re the problem!”

Alison: They labelled you what you brought up, which I guess is a lot of times why people don’t speak up, right? Because there’s so much that people want to shut it down and attack, which I don’t understand that part of being human, but you’re still being really brave and presenting it through your art and I just think it’s really powerful. I think you’re opening up, I think you’ll start seeing more of this in our society. You’re the pioneer. You’re kind of out there, by yourself.

JH: Thanks for saying that but I’m not the pioneer and there is a whole field of this already, which I didn’t mention in my speech, which is called research-creation, which I didn’t even know about until I was studying theology! It’s when people try to find out information through their practices. So there are people who are already doing this and have been doing this through dance and art and music, accessing the information through whatever their practice is. I think the reason I didn’t know about this is because I went to art school 20 years ago and that was when the field started to emerge but one of my theology teachers is a poet and she was like you need to look into research creation and you need to find out where the schools are and what they do at school when people are studying it. So when I started looking into that I found out that Montreal is the freaking epicentre of research creation, it’s happening at Concordia and UQAM, I didn’t realize it’s just the water that I was swimming in these past 20 years of living here. So when I started to look into it and see the different approaches of the scholars like Nathalie Loveless and other scholars that followed along with that whole way of thinking about things, in the programs that came out of it, which are now huge, like there are now Interdisciplinary masters and phD programs at a lot of schools which I would love to do at some point…but the masters that I am doing is a theology degree. This is an art project that I am able to do for my theology thesis. So I have to write like 80 pages about what the heck I have done and mention by name all of the scholars that have been doing this kind of work. It is part of something that I now know is called research-creation.

Alison: I love it.

DB: Can I just make a comment. It feels like… I look around and there are all these things that feel like a kind of tunnel you’re going through and this Covid and everything has been this liminal time of a what-the-fuck’s going on space where we’re just going through some fucking tunnel. But it’s all..there’s so much stuff that just looks like tunnels, and this is like the inside of a tunnel. It’s all moving, it’s like a birth tunnel or whatever. This is kind like a somatic visceral processing of like you challenge authority and part of this throwing off of colonialism, this throwing off armies and invading places…we’re throwing off so much stuff right now and you’re taking it into this really, pulling it out of your intestines, this full-on body space through your work. It’s very powerful and lovely how you go right through everything. It’s not like you’re holding back part of you. It’s all coming into the process of you trying to make sense of the world and the fucked up patriarchy bullshit and really challenging things. Going, you can’t just do that! This doesn’t exist! How dare you! And you’re like, we’re in this tunnel. Are you coming in this tunnel with me or are you going to pretend there’s no tunnel there. From my point of view this is a really generous invitation for us all to see your art as a kind of invitation for everyone to not refuse the liminal tunnel thing and actually take care of each other going through this, whatever stuff we’re going through. The shedding and the unlearning, grieve whatever our bodies are going through right now. It’s hard work and it’s probably why they push against it. Because it’s so like…it’s alive and that terrifies them. So thank you.

JH: Thank you! 

Alison: It’s so quiet.

JH: Well, I didn’t know how big it was going to be because initially when I planned on doing this project, I thought I was going to do something very heady. I thought I was going to do an illuminated manuscript because I love doing intricate geometric things and I wanted to do it on vellum because I wanted to relate to the history of illuminated manuscripts because I study theology and I love Hildegard of Bingen and I love looking at all of these ancient and medieval objects that are so beautiful and crafted. So, I had one and a half done. I started with my head but it looked so awful. It was like this big and it just felt really bad. I couldn’t do it at the pace that I needed to. I thought that I was going to finish this project last year and I thought how am I even going to finish it before the deadline and it was all wrong. It just didn’t feel right. I didn’t even bring it today. I thought maybe I should show them my horrible first attempt but then I didn’t even bring it. It’s so bad. It’s like a golden kite because Hildegard in one of her manuscripts talks about a golden kite so I did a self-portrait of my face as a kite and it looked so creepy and really bad!

(people are laughing)

When I quit my job last spring and everything was shaking out and school was going weird I just took an old drop cloth actually. This whole thing is made out of one old drop cloth that I ripped into seven pieces and it had this like plastic coating on it. So I probably spent more time peeling the plastic coating off than painting the paintings that are on it but I spent some time peeling away the coating so that I would have this loosely woven material that is kind of plastic. You can feel it. This really is an old drop cloth. Yeah, so it felt more natural to be at this scale, so I’m inside of it, I’m inside of each part that I’m doing and then I leave it. It’s just acrylic paint so it would dry. I was at my old studio in NDG so I had all my materials that I needed to make stuff so I wasn’t thinking too much about stuff, like that each one had to look the same or what it would look like when they were all together. I was just doing it one at a time and I was hanging it up because there were these metal wire things protecting you on the balcony. And I didn’t really see it all at once til I brought them up to the woods. I live in the Laurentians a lot of the time. So I have a big studio up there that is circular .I did a whole other project before this one…that lasted a few years. But yeah, I brought these there and laid them out on the ground and I was like wow my body is BIG! It’s like 20 feet!

DB: Can i ask about this: Your voice is not part of your body. So it’s like this is not physically part of your body. It’s the energy that comes from the throat, the head, the resonance of the head that runs in space through the throat. I’m just interested because it’s…

Alison: And it’s also an infinity sign but I always thought that one stood out too but you’ve just articulated it better than me, but it didn’t seem the same as the others. That’s interesting yeah

JH: Yeah, it’s true, I mean, thank you for saying that. This is why I need all of you here as sacred mirrors so that I can see this properly because I can’t see these things myself and I don’t know how to explain that. I guess, my voice is something that I hide, I would say. Even though I talk a lot! I am secretly a singer songwriter, some of you know this already but I really hide that part of myself and I’m scared of it. Even though I do say a lot, there are many things that I don’t say, that I’m scared to say, that I hide in silence but I do feel like my voice is where my power comes from. It is an infinite source…If I was going to locate my Self. If you look in the Upanishads they say that the soul is like this thumb-sized thing that is hanging out at your centre but I don’t know, for me maybe my soul is ferclemped and it’s all up in here somehow (grabs throat, people laughing). Yeah, I feel like whatever these little bones are though, it’s all in here.

Courtney: What about the belly though, like I see everything there and it’s streamlined and it’s coming out but I see all this energy and turmoil in there. It’s interesting because I’m always kind of drawn to eyeballs for some reason. I was thinking about the original version of an angel. It’s described in the Bible like this mass with all of these various eyes, like they are quite creepy. The voice, it’s too much for human ears to hear. SO that theory and energy kind of existing here and yeah, maybe trying to find a way to come out that is pleasing or mystic or pleasing for people who are hearing. I definitely see a connection with those two.

Robbie: I wonder if I might ask…

JH: Yes, philosopher?

Robbie: I’m just going to ask some easy questions! So this is not necessarily corporeal but like so then, we’re supposed to take your Sex as just the physical part of your body that is the sexual organ? Or sex is something bigger or much bigger than the physical part of your body? But really my question is quite simple. I’m just wondering about the sequence of the colour schemes, like why is this blue and why is this whatever colour that is? And does it represent, I think, I don’t know very much about it, but I think the chakras are associated with certain colours. So is that a colour scheme that is underneath this? Or is this just, that’s the colour that spoke to me when I was thinking about that part of the body?

JH: Thank you for that question, for those questions. The colour scheme…I am really familiar with the chakra system and I spent a lot of time looking at that in previous chapters of my life but sort of on purpose, or it’s really more like the last thing that you said, like I’m in the feeling I am picking the colour of the feeling. I am picking the colour more intuitively grabbing what seems right in the moment for this part of me because it doesn’t align with the chakra system. Like, if you go thorugh the chakras it would be more like the colour of the Sex one would be more like the crown or the heart would more like it can be pink and green depending on which systems you are looking at. So they are not aligned with the chakra system and I wanted to be careful not to just take that system and redo it here because it’s more complex. It has symbols and animal associations and sacred sounds and it’s a very beautiful system also but I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t relying on a concept or something that I had learned. I wanted to just be inside of what I was feeling at this time.

And it’s interesting the labelling of it. The words came to me before the paintings. The words were part of the original thing that I was going to make that was like an illuminated manuscript and I specifically picked words for the parts of my body that weren’t chakra-y that were not necessarily the physical thing. So mind, I didn’t think of as my brain necessarily. I thought of something that is located here (hand on head). Voice is located here (hand on throat). My heart is in my middle and yes we have an organ that is called a heart but also there are many things that are hearts. Being heart centred doesn’t necessarily mean being centred on the organ that controls the flow of blood through my body and pumps the blood so that I remain alive and that ceases to function when I die. My belly, that could be a lot of different organs but that’s kind of my middle place. Sex, that’s a complicated area, you know. So I tried to pick something that isn’t genital that also wasn’t necessarily gender that is just kind of my nether regions. I have complicated relationships with this topic, I know a lot of people do to so I’m not alone in that I know but, you know, I wanted to just kind of zoom in to how that part of me felt. And as I was getting toward the bottom. I was like, this is getting a little forced because what am I going to call my knees and my feet? And I realized that I just want to come back to earth, that’s the place where I want to tether this experience to the body to the earth where I really am. Feet, you can talk about the foot of a table or a statue or whatever so it’s not necessarily the physical parts of me that have toes! And knees too, there are all kinds of metaphors that go along with that like being weak in the knees but yeah when i was picking those words it wasn’t necessarily related to the physical body. I wanted to feel my feelings. I guess i could say that this is my feeling body.

Courtney: You said you did these pieces here in NDG and some of thes other ones out in the Laurentians. Do you find the environment, when you are doing these meditations and trying to connect is there a difference in how that affects you as well? Is there a a city energy that affects your work differently than in the woods?

JH: Yeah, and some of these were done in NDG, like these circle ones, those are listening paintings. They are a very similar process to what I was doing here, so instead of listening to my body I was listening to music . So those ones I was listening to an old record, they are called the Ventures, it kind of sounds like movir scores or something, like horse riding almost.

Robbie: surf music!

JH: Exactly, so those I made in NDG and I guess most of these other ones I made up in the woods. So this one, for example, it’s called ‘Stump Kingdom” and I had taken a picture of an old stump that was growing in the forest that had lots of stuff growing on it. I thought I was going to do a whole series. This is the problem when you have these ideas and try to execute like a recipe, oh I could do ten that are exactly like this. Anyway this one I started many years ago, I left it in a barn, the barn collapsed then I pulled it out, It was carted around to a bunch of other studios that I had since and it ended up back in the woods so like this chunky bit at the bottom, that’s just dirt from when it was in the barn. But this I feel like this one has more like the energy of the forest because it really is taken from that place. But then there are other ones like this one back there I think it’s called the Cave, the one that they used for the invite. That’s really recent and it was made up in the woods. That one, that has these feely weepy things, it’s called Feelers, that one went through a couple different versions of itself; one where it was really pale, like that for years. The trouble is if you keep paintings around they’re going to change. If nobody buys them there is a risk that they’re not going to be the same painting anymore because I’ll just pick them up and change them. So I turned the lights off when I repainted it, and this one and the butterfly one, like they are in a space that I call “rainbow lightspace”. So this tunnel thing that Damaris is talking about, it’s rainbow lightspace, for sure! It’s a space that it energetic, it doesn’t have to do with bodies at all. It’s like you’re floating. I don’t know if it’s big, I don’t know if it’s under a microscope, I don’t know what it is exactly but it’s rainbow lightspace. So yeah, the place itself…I think that rainbow lightspace is accessible to us anywhere. You know, inside, outside, it’s a place that is locationless, let’s say. It can be in the forest. Forest is maybe an easy place for that but I think that it’s accessible in the city too. It’s a good question, though.

I don’t know how much I should talk about the other project that I did. There was a huge project that I did from 2016-2019 that was called ‘the Altars to the Directions’ and I did it up in the woods. I built a studio in the woods off grid because I wanted to experience nature in that kind of non-electric, non-plugged in way and it nearly drove me crazy and I ended up moving the whole project back to the city and being with my friends because what I really needed was being around people. I couldn’t do being in the woods by myself. It’s not really safe. Unless you’re in a container where like there are people feeding you and monks to talk to, being in a retreat for three years by yourself in the forest is a dangerous activity. So, trying to do that and having a weird added twist of the person who had commissioned that project also commissioning someone to film the project. So having to be self-reporting to a video camera – that was not something they had asked me to do, I just thought well if we have to film it I should be documenting this and so I was documenting it and they were sending people to document it. That was a process of self-reflection I had already gone through and a process of painting that I had already gone through because the paintings themselves were really complicated. They were the most intricate paintings that I have made. There were four of them, each was 6 feet by 12 feet. They are these giant triptychs. Those are beautiful paintings and I’m extremely proud of those paintings but I had like already done that. So once I was going to get back to painting again, these paintings that are up onthe walls are what has come since. They are like fragments. Instead of being like a really planned out gigantic thing, they are little skits or sketches but you know, they are finished products. They’re all for sale, by the way! They are my paintings that I have done after I had done a big other thing. So THIS, this thing that happened, for it to be so loose and about my feelings, that’s why I call it problem-finding, where you find the problem and the solution at the same time. If you told me ten years ago to paint my feelings, I would have been like ‘no way, that is a really cheesy bad idea and I am not going to do that’. Now I am feeling thankful that I got to feel my feelings! It’s hard to feel my feelings.

(doorbell rings) 

Hey Robert! Come on in!

Robert: No disrespect Jen, I had to work!

JH: No worries, come on in! You are seated at my feet!

Robert: Perfect! Couldn’t be better!

Alison: Can I say something. What’s interesting…I also think that the art, the whole spectrum of it pulls people together. Ralph works with the band, the Damn Truth and they’ve been here a lot. People have been picking up stuff and there was a woman here this week. What’s great is that I get to live with the collection, with your art and over time experience it in different ways in different conversations with people so someone that came in to pick up something from the band, she’s some kind of scientist, I don’t know what type and she really loves the exhibition, she spent a long time, and she said that your imagery is like when you go micro micro micro into a microscope and you’re looking at cells. These are the shapes and patterns that you see in our body, in our cells on a cellular level. You created your self-portrait, your body of feelings but then these came about and got defined after.

JH: Yeah! (aha moment) 

Alison: Also too, I remember you saying that you got your canvas and you just started painting. You don’t have a defined …it’s very meditative and then you get going and the shapes, the colours they emerge from that. So you’re tapping into something that is there and maybe you don’t visualize it in your mind but you tap into something that exists and you bring it through. There are connections. Do you have to make sense of it? I don’t know. Working with you and being a viewer, it’s a great journey to to go on with you.

JH: Thank you! Thank you for saying that because you are making me realize that these happened in the spring, right? I quit my job on March 27. They happened in the spring. Then I moved to Wakefield so a lot of this stuff was with me in Wakefield, like those ones I had already made and then that job didn’t work out and I ended up moving everything back to the woods. So most of the paintings that you see on the walls were finished after these. So it’s like doing these ones helped me finish these other paintings.

(doorbell) Hi! Welcome! Come on in!

But I’m curious about Robert’s opinion. Maybe we could just move the papers and the bells off of this. Because Robert you weren’t here for any of the explanations so I’m curious to get your like cold read on what are you seeing. So take all the papers and all the bells off this table. You are sitting at my Feet. The next one is my Knees. That big circle is Sex. The next one is Belly , this is Heart. This Infinity sign is called Voice and this is Mind.

Robert: Wow. I am seeing basically something very holisitic. Basically, like all configuring it, they come together. Like it’s symmetrical. They’re different. I see everything basically everything like one collage. I guess parts of our personalities, like I see everythings just different variety but unity, is what comes to my mind.

JH: Thank you!

Robbie: That’s a good point!

Robert: I don’t know if it makes any sense, that is what I feel.

Alison: Variety and Unity, I like that.

Robbie: I like the point but I’m thinking about these divisions that you’ve made. Because obviously it is a wholistic, it is a whole. But do you see conflicts? What kinds of conflicts? What kinds of frictions between these different parts. Like, do you think about that at all when looking at it? Or does anybody else maybe? Your belly isn’t always in synch with your mind. Your sex isn’t always in synch with your feet. You know, I’m being funny but you know what I’m trying to say. If you’re going to divide it up this way then you have to have some story of how they work together and how they sometimes don’t work together. It sounds like you’ve had a lot of conflict.

JH. Hm. I mean it’s kind of like a turtle without a shell, let’s say. It’s a soft thing. I did notice when I was looking at it, I have this loft bed thing in my studio and I climbed up to try to see the whole thing at once and it’s not the proportions of a body. Like, if you are in fashion design there are a certain amount of heads you use to draw the body and if you are actually drawing a body that is proportionate there is a more accurate way of drawing it. But this is not a fashion design body, it’s not an anatomical body. My belly is closer to my feet than it is in real life. So I would say, the scale is one of the ways that it is out of synch, if we’re talking about that. But that is a good question and I have to think on that for a little while, like which parts of me are…I mean, I guess you could say that there are some parts that are fleshed out more, like the Mind, the Heart and the Belly have something in common. To me, the Voice and the Sex and the Knees have something in common to each other, just in the way that I painted them. Then also the Knees and the Feet have something in common because they are both kind of separated like that so yeah, it’s probably a good point of reflection to think about. I don’t have a good answer for you , sorry.

Robbie: that was a good answer.

JH: What about you guys, does it make you think about your bodies?

Guest: I wanted to ask you how did you feel your feelings of these body parts? Were you feeling them differently than through your mind? I don’t know if that makes sense.

JH: I was using my mind to try to remind myself to feel my feelings. So I was really honestly saying the same words as I said when we did the body scan . So I was saying “I am feeling the feelings of my mind” I was feeling the feelings and I was directing myself to feel the feelings so I was using my mind to try to make it happen. Sometimes it’s hard to be in my body, you know. I was trying to figure this out. I was trying to see afterwards, what was I feeling at this time? Because it was a time when I was not in myself, I was so thrown about by the things that were happening that I wasn’t fully embodied, I would say. I keep journals and I have been working in a place that is really boring, there is nothing to do. So I have been bringing my journals to work and transcribing my journals. So, this is a lot of information but when I go to bed at night I write down what happened during the day. Then I write the next day’s date and I pick tarot cards for the next day and I write down the tarot cards so I have like an archetypal weather forecast for the next day. And then when I wake up in the morning if I had a dream that I remember I write that down. So when I go to bed that night I’m writing the day underneath the dream. So as I have been going through this, transcribing these journals, and I have been doing this for so many years now, this process coming about at a particular time, it’s after a long practice of doing that. So I was trying to go back and transcribe all the journals. I would love to publish this at some point. It’s going to be called ‘How to Be a Priest in a World Without Religion’. That’s my title, you can’t have it! But i was trying to figure out what was I feeling at this time? So I don’t think I have finished the process of figuring that out. I think there is information in my dreams, for example, so once I’ve finished…I have done most of it and it did help me see some of the themes and definitely helped me realize how much my dreams have information in them about what is happening at that time that I couldn’t really see when I was doing it. But if I took just the dreams even, don’t even worry about the facts of the day, I think there’s an emotional content in my dream body that I can relate to these paintings and that’s something that I can explore. Because Eugene Gendlin who wrote the book called Focusing, which one of my teacher’s had recommended to me…Oh, shout out to Jody Clarke and Alyda Faber from the Atlantic School of Theology who helped me be pointed in this direction! So Jody had told me about Heuristic Research, which is kind of like a granddaddy let’s say of this research-creation stuff and in the books I was reading about that they were mentioning Eugene Gendlin, but I already had a copy of that book because I practice Buddhism and my teacher who is a monk who is up in the woods had recommended this book a while back and he had also recommended his book ‘Let your Body Interpret your Dreams’ so there is a lot of information to be mined from the dreams. What I would love to do in writing my thesis which is due in March, look at the feeling-tone. Try to understand the feeling tone. It is fun to play games with the mind but feelings change too! This self portrait, this is my feeling-tone of a particular time. I can’t say that I still feel exactly this way. At this point I made the paintings, I have the journals, I’m trying to untangle it. That’s one of the questions I’m now trying to answer as I reflect on this process. What was I feeling at this time? Is it reflected in these paintings? What was going on so that I was this messy in my belly? You know, there were physical feelings that I was feeling that were symptoms that were not pleasant. But thanks for that question.

Guest: I was just wondering if there is a connection between this and the book of Revelation. I see there are seven heads and the sevens are all around that book.

JH: Yes, and I love the book of Revelation so much. It’s a crazy, messy, weird book. There are many sevens, there are seven bowls, seven lampstands, all kinds of sevens. That’s one of the reasons that I picked seven and yeah…so in the book of Revelation, there is Babylon, there’s a woman, there are figures of women in the Bible; they are in the book of Revelation. The person who wrote the book of Revelation was on the island of Patmos and on that island there are inscriptions of a temple to Artemis. Artemis was a goddess and there were temples all over the ancient world to Artemis. She was a very popular goddess and some of them were very big, like one of the seven wonders of the ancient world was a Temple of Artemis and so I was imagining this guy just being in prison, so mad that he was stuck on this island and there was this enormous woman goddess who is omnipresent because everybody is praying to her. She’s the state religion, you know. So I think there is probably a relationship where I am taking on this fallen goddess, you know what I mean? I have this will to speak for this goddess who no longer gets to be in the world as much anymore because there are patriarchal religions that have taken over so she doesn’t get to speak. There are many religions where women are not allowed to be priests. That was part of my troubles in my work! Yeah, I mean, I think you’re on to something. The whore of Babylon, she’s got this mark on her forehead, he’s making fun of her. She’s like a charicature of a woman or a caricature of a goddess. So in this way I’m like, this is what a woman’s body looks like, this is what my body looks like. This could be this scale. This is how much space I’m taking up right now.

Robbie: Is this a kind of last supper then. Like here, eat my body, drink my blood. Are you a little worried about the narcissistic tension there? Like, here I am look at me, I replacing the goddess?

JH: This is my body, which I have given up for you! (laughter) Well, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for being here and participating. I love this process so much and I encourage you to stick around a little bit if you want to but I know that there are people who have lives and things to tend to as well so I really appreciate your presence. I just want us to ring our bells one more time so.. Blessed Solstice! May you go in peace!

(ringing bells)

Alison: Lastly, I don’t believe in accidents, I feel that this is probably fated. There are a lot of people here who don’t know one another but in some realm we do know one another. So thank you again! Happy winter solstice and you know, the days are going to get longer! There is more sunshine after today! Today was the least amount of sunshine and now we get to have more and more and more! Thank you!