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10/22/2002 "more on goddess worship"

A long time a go 1981-82, I bought a book of art by Mayumi Oda. She does prints of Goddesses. That is a theme she has worked on for the last 20 years.

Now if you know me, you know I think the goddess worship thing is totally bad as once again it makes a religion out of wicca. I believe wicca was never a religion but was an attempt to understand and celebrate and use natural law. That study was a craft not a religion until Gardner. With the best of intentions the perversion of the craft is not something that has moved us forward. Both religion and the practice of "worship" are antithetical to natural law. On the other hand, perhaps it is necessary to go through the religion to get beyond it. Many paths.

Additionally, nothing disgusted me more, than female artists portraying women with the same emphasis of men-two ice cream cones that were actually breasts with cherry nipples is the one "sculpture" that sticks out in my memory.

But mostly, the disgust was generated by the allegedly feminist, women's magazines about goddesses, wicca and politics with endless steams of representations of naked barbie dolls on their covers, some involved in sexual acts.

This we were told, was art that celebrated womanhood. Yeah right-well then Playboy celebrates womanhood also. They presented women only as sexual objects as if that was the sum total of the activity of the gender. The art was dead drawings of naked anatomically impossible women all who seemed to be under 23 years of age.

Having said that-there are woman artist who do use female anatomy in their art but who do it so intelligently that it does actually get to what all these other projects give lip service to-and I feel that two such artist are Judy Chicago and Mayumi Oda.

Well, the Utne Reader just did an article about Mayumi so I found a website with her work and I must say, the use of space and line is so interesting to me that I just am fascinated. And when I get over the relationships of form she establishes on a piece of paper and do look at the "goddesses" I am filled with joy because they capture that feeling.

The thing she calls "goddess" is portrayals of that high feeling of exultation, that is so rare; but when you do feel it - it transcends the flesh. And the goddesses are doing the sorts of things that will give the flesh that feeling.

She is right-when you are in that state-you are God and can do anything. I would like to own wallfulls of her works. The women are not sexual objects but are experiencing universal feelings which are immediately recognizable to the viewer. Done with such a perfect understanding and skill that the viewer feels the experience portrayed in their body as well as their mind.

Peppered with vivid stories and lush prints, Mayumi Oda's most recent book, I Opened the Gate, Laughing: An Inner Journey (Chronicle Books, 2002), tells the story of how her creativity was renewed through the sacred space of a garden.

I have links to Judy Chicago on an entry dated earlier. In their work, both of these women express the spirituality that I am moving toward becoming as do Bonard, DeStahl and Rothko and others.

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