Ever since I had my Flying Vulva Decals made by the company Sticker Mule, they’ve been sending me deals on stickers and pins that I can’t resist.
Their lastest is 50 dye cut stickers for $19. I love putting stickers with my own images on the packages I send out. The other reason I do it is that Sticker Mule makes it ridiculously easy to create a sticker from my photos.
So this is the sticker that will be on my packages soon. It comes from one of my Shekinah Potholders that I made a while ago. I also made a fabric painting using the same image.
I really do like this stylized vulva image, so I’m glad to be able to put it out into the world again in another way.
I just posted the three Shekinah Potholders, I still have available, in my Etsy Shop. I sold three of them over the weekend.
The image came was a part of a drawing I did around Christmas. Then I used it in my Shekinah fabric painting. I think it stands on its own, a symbol of the regenerative power of nature and the fecund world of the Divine Feminine.
Shekinah is the goddess in the Kabbalah who is a fierce protector of Mother Nature.
Each of my Shekinah Potholders is individually stitched and no two are exactly alike. They’re $25 each with a flat rate shipping of $5. You can see them and buy them here.
These are the Skekinah Potholders that I mentioned in yesterday’s post All About Vulva’s .
The design originally came from a drawing I did, then I used it on my Shekinah fabric painting. This is a variation of that original design. I hope to have the potholders ready to sell in my Etsy Shop early next week.
These are about the regenerative power of nature and the fecund world of the Divine Feminine.
I’ve been working on my fabric painting for the past week but haven’t been posting pictures with the progress that I’ve made.
Usually I love sharing that process step by step.
But last week, as I was working, I was reluctant to share how I was finishing the piece. With each step I took pictures as I often do, but then when it came time to post them on my blog, I just couldn’t get myself to do it.
So I decided to trust what I was feeling, believing that for some reason the timing wasn’t right. I just kept working till I got it all done.
This morning I sewed the last bead on Shekinah.
This is what has happened since I last wrote about it….
After finishing up the 102 House of Representative horseshoe shapes, aka the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dissent Collars, I saw how clearly the original appliquéd tulip not only had a vulva shape, but also looked like the phases of the moon.
There were four of the circular flowers still on the old quilt, evenly spaced around the center pubic triangle.
The one behind the giraffe’s heads had always been a sun in my mind, so I removed the other three. Keeping one whole, for the full moon, I cut the others to become the phases of the moon, from waxing to waining.
It was Sabina’s comment on my blog that helped crystalize the next step. The outline of the tulip on the upper left of the quilt, called out to me.
I immediately thought of the article that Sabina sent me about the West Coast Button Blankets. These are ceremonial blankets made by Native Americans mostly from the West Coast of Canada. They use shiny shell buttons to decorate the blankets with Family Crests.
I kept thinking of the circle left by the tulip appliqué as the New Moon. Filling it in with shiny shell and plastic buttons seemed only natural.
The “stem” of the tulip, which is appliquéd using white fabric, hung from the red border reaching down to the flower like a descending snake. Using green thread, I hand stitched the outline of the stem then following the creases and puckers in the fabric of the stem, I stitched around the puckered shapes that had emerged over time.
I colored the shapes in with permanent marker. Then I outlined the calyx around the flower with green beads.
Then I knew Shekinah was finished.
Between yesterday and today, I put on a backing and tacked it with a tiny sprinkling of beads.
I’ve written on my blog about the different parts of this fabric painting as I was creating it. All the parts come together to represent my idea of Shekinah, the Divine Feminine in the Kabbalah. It’s the Shekinah who fiercely protects Mother Earth and the Divine Feminine of the women today who are standing up for themselves and each other and speaking their truth.
It is the ancient and the contemporary. It is us, seeking the wisdom of the feminine in our lives right now.
The old quilt that is the beginnings of Shekinah came from a Victorian home, in San Francisco, that had been in the same family for many years.
Most likely it was a woman who hand stitched this quilt. Over the years it has become worn and torn. Whenever I use an old piece of fabric that someone else made, I always think of that woman, even though I don’t know who is was. I try to imagine her life and think about how much more freedom I have to create my art than she did when she was alive.
Linda sent the quilt to me with the hope that I could use it somehow. I do wonder what the woman who made it would think if she could see it. I do hope she would be able to appreciate it, but I would understand if she couldn’t.
Shekinah is sold. for sale and I have a few people who are already interested in it. If it isn’t right for them, I will be posting it for sale on my blog. It’s 38 1/2″ x 43″ and is $500 + shipping.
The first time I saw the horseshoe graphic of the House of the Representatives and the orange dots representing the one hundred and two women who are now in it, I knew I wanted to use it somewhere on my fabric painting.
I wasn’t sure how it would work, but there was something about the horseshoe shape and the dots that grabbed me.
So this morning I went into my studio with the intention of finding just how and where the image would work on my fabric painting.
I walked up to the old quilt, that I’m now calling Shekinah, hanging on my wall and there it was, right in front of me.
Two hand quilted flowers, cut in half by the red border, creating a shape close to a horseshoe, facing not the House of Representative way, but with the prongs of the horse shoe up. The way old horseshoes are hung for good luck.
Using purple thread I hand stitched over the old quilting and outlined the flower/horseshoe shape. Then, with green thread, I sewed 102 buttons inside each shape.
This is what Shekinah looked like at the end of the day. Not yet finished, I don’t think, but close.
Yesterday I couldn’t make anything work on my fabric painting. This morning it all fell into place easily.
First I stitched designs on the leaves around the pubic triangle at the center of the painting. The I filled them in with permanent marker…
Next it as time to figure out the heart flowers on the ends of the vines. I knew just what to do. I would make one of the original quilt flowers into a smaller heart flower.
Says ago I had removed one of the original appliquéd flowers from the quilt to make room for the triangle. Now I cut it in half and with my seam ripper, removed the outer red fabric.
I rounded the top edges on the outer peach colored fabric then pinned it inside the lines of the heart flower….
I folded the red center on itself creating a vulva-like shape at the center of the flower and basted it down. Then I stitched around the outer edge using my sewing machine.
This is what it looked like when it was done.
I now know this fabric painting is about Shekinah, the divine feminine in the Kabbalah.
Shekinah was a great environmentalist. She would send cherubs to “smite” anyone who polluted Mother Earth. She also berated God for not taking responsibility for humans, his flawed creation.
This is what my fabric painting looks like so far. I do have an idea for what I’ll do next, but I don’t know what it will look like yet.
My Shekinah Potholder is in good company in Nancy’s home. I love seeing her with the other spiritual symbols on Nancy’s doorway. And the symbolism of the doorway makes it even more special.
My Etsy Shop is full, there’s potholders, postcards, pins, photos posters and a pillow.
As I did last year, for the next two weeks from today through December 20th I’ll have free shipping on my potholders. Actually there are just a few pieces in my Etsy Shop that don’t have free shipping.
I also have a few specials…
I’ve reduced the price of my Naiad With The Moon, Goddess of the Spring pillow to $65. You can read about her here.
I also have three of Jon’s photos for sale for $50. including shipping (see them below). These are photos that I have in stock, so they won’t take the usual two weeks to get to you. They’ll take only 1-3 days to ship, just like the rest of the work in my shop.
And there are more of Jon’s Photos at the regular price in my Etsy Shop too.
And since I just got my new Shekinah stickers and want to share the, along with a bookmark, I’ll include a sticker in every order.
If you’re not into, interested in, or curious about Vulva’s you can probably skip reading this post, because it’s all about Vuvla’s.
Although even if you think there’s nothing for you in a vulva, you might at least get a laugh out of one vulva story. It’s about a student who got stuck in Pi-Chacan, a sculpture of a giant vulva. The fire department had to get him out, head first of course.
Ever since I made my Flying Vulva’s and began writing about them, people have been sending me articles about vulva’s. They seem to be popping up all over the place. In the past week I’ve gotten more than a few really interesting ones and took it as a message to share them with all of you all.
Dale sent me the article about Sheela na gig. I’ve written about her before, even had a version of her in one of my wallhangings.
She’s the ancient goddess, found on churches in England and Ireland, pulling back her labia for all to see.
From the first time I saw her, I assumed she was all about fertility. But as you might expect, with a woman exposing herself in this way, there’s lots of debate and little consensus on her real meaning. She doesn’t really fit in to the Christian belief system that I’m familiar with, so the question is, why is she on these churches?
I’ve heard that many of the pagan goddesses were incorporated into the Christian faith in the early years of the Church to help draw people in to it. That would explain why how Sheela na gig found herself on these early churches. There’s even a tradition where “In some places, brides were required to look at and perhaps touch the sheela before weddings, which seems to suggest their role in fertility rites.”
In keeping with the Christian theme, it makes sense to write about the Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber and her Vuvla Sculpture made from purity rings, next.
I heard an interview with the Pastor a few years ago on On Being and was truly impressed. I had never heard of a pastor like her before. She founded House For All Sinners And Saints, a church that welcomes all people no matter what their sexual orientation.
Bolz-Weber asked women to send her their purity rings, which are rings some evangelical churches gave to girls as “symbols of an abstinence pledge” and their stories about them.
Then with the help of artist Nancy Anderson she melted them down and recast them into a sculpture of a Vulva. For many people the rings were harmful because they made them feel shame about their sexuality.
Bolz-Weber said “It’s actually part of the tradition, that we can take objects that have harmed us and turn them into objects that help heal and sustain us”
Dale also sent me the last article about photographer Laura Dodsworth who took portraits of 100 vulva’s.
Until I began thinking about vulva’s I didn’t know how different vulva’s could be. I just assumed they were all pretty similar.
Now that I think about it, like any other part of our body, of course vulva’s come in all different sizes, shapes and colors. And for many women there’s the added shame of being told that their vulva isn’t normal.
Dodsworth began taking portraits of vulva’s when she read about Female Genital Mutilation and about young girls wanting labiaplasty, a cosmetic surgery that reshapes the vulva. It is her way of helping women overcome the shame they feel around their vulva’s.
Well, that’s all I have for now. But I was working on some Shekinah Potholders today. Not vulva’s but a symbolic pubic triangle. Similar to the one in my Shekinah Fabric Painting. I’ll post some pictures of them tomorrow.