I am very happy to announce that Dundee Heritage Trust are currently hosting a solo exhibition of my work at their gallery space in Verdant Works.  This preserved historical backdrop of industrialised spinning and weaving sets the tone for conversation about the prehistoric matriarchal values threaded in my work.  Spinning and weaving are traditionally feminine practices synonymous with rites and rituals of childbirth in cultures around the world. 

In her book ‘The Woman in the Shaman’s Body - Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine’, Barbara Tedlock explains further:

‘Women's rituals surrounding the weaving of cloth often evoke those performed during childbirth, and the feminine shamanic path addresses both activities, as it equates spinning, knotting and weaving a textile with the development and birth of a fetus.  It’s important to realise that the very processes of spinning and weaving, like those of birth, call for the ability to access the spirit world for the power to create something new.’

P223, The Woman in the Shaman's Body, 2006, Bantam Books

As a mother artist on the path to also becoming a birth doula, my passion for matriarchal culture speaks through the voice of my art.

THE MAKING OF THE WORKS

The three series of framed paintings (fourteen in all) on show, have been re-imagined from only five previous paintings by physically cutting them up with a laser cutter to embody shape, symbol and text.  

The Universe Within series are windows into the cycles of life inherent throughout my work; reflecting my lived experience of the female body menstruating with the moontide, life forming within me, loss through miscarriages, and now the newest phase of my life within the continuum - the menopause.

Formlessness and form; the action is in the in-between.  The creative energy of fusing matter together, the shaping of it and the unravelling of it into energy once more.  

Inner Sanctum series’ reflects the travels of my mind to the far reaches of the galaxy and universe; the gases and liquids colliding together, solidifying into rock, and here on Earth transforming into clay under pressure and movement.  The Universe isn’t so far away. It is a part of us, flowing through us as we are a part of it, tiny nano-particles spiralling through space on the vehicle of the Earth, inseparable.

The ceramic installation is an ongoing development of MoonTrees unique to my practice.  I have honed a technique of throwing closed forms on the wheel.  So they are now made in one sculptural piece. 

The MoonTrees are a comment on matriarchal spirituality integrated into daily life via an easily identifiable medium of ceramics, used daily and usually mass produced within patriarchal culture.  Through their roots, trunks and branches, MoonTrees represent the shamanic, spiritual realm of the under, middle and upper worlds.  The upper world being the cosmos, and represented by the moon.  The middle world is the earth’s surface we live on and the underworld is below the earth’s surface; the caves, chambers and passages of the Earth Mother’s womb.  

The willow MoonTree is a realisation of giant MoonTrees I’ve visualised for a long time.  In fact, I’d love to make a forest of them.  At the start of 2020, I approached Rachel Bower, a local willow weaver in Forfar, Scotland to learn how to make a willow sculpture.  In lockdown, I made the sculpture outside on the sunny days in my garden. Bare feet on the warm grass, with all the time in the world!

Emerging/Receding is a large painting of a cave-like atmosphere, layered with paint and local, wild clay. The cave environment is another theme I work with in my art practice.  As I am painting, I experience it as a womb-like environment.  I could be moving down the birth canal. Or maybe I am receding into the darkness, a comforting darkness.  In any case, I’m content with this transitioning experience within the continuum of the cycles of life..

SUSTAINABILITY AND PRACTICE

Living in the countryside, I’m very aware of the seasons and the moon’s cycles. Matriarchal cultures, what’s left of them, live in peace and harmony with life cycles, consciously honouring the Earth Mother.  Patriarchal society, on the other hand, lives in linear time with death at the end of the line, very far away.  After all, you can’t contribute to the economy if you're dead, so death is to be avoided at all costs.

I consider the environment and sustainability wherever possible: I used up old boards for painting my works on, old acrylic paints, emulsions and unused lining paper for the large hanging painting. An old, manual potters wheel was used which I acquired along with an old kiln from a kind farmer whose farm they had been sitting on for decades.  The kiln needed refurbishing, so I took on the task of re-wiring it, changing parts and getting it firing again. It fires very efficiently. 

The task was as fascinating for me as hearing a member of staff at Verdant Works talk about how he refurbished the piston steam engine. I saw it in motion too with its orbiting sun and planet gear.  It moves beautifully.

I describe my art practice as delving into layers of deep time, earth and sonic pulses.  Deep time refers to archaeological artifacts and cave paintings dated to prehistory.  These finds fascinate me and influence my work heavily. I literally dig the earth for clay from the fields where I live with a hand trowel, collecting the orange clay visible in the furrows after the ground has been ploughed up.

You can’t hear any sonic pulses in the exhibition, but there is evidence of sound I’ve recorded in the past from the digital wave form laser-etched in some of my reimagined pieces. 

SINGLE MOTHERS/CREATIVE WOMEN

Dundee’s women were exploited for maximum profits in the mills.  Women were paid lower wages than men, working long hours.  If they became pregnant, they had to hide the pregnancy till as late as possible so they didn’t lose out on wages.  Because the women were employed for lower wages, there was no abundant work for men.  So the women became the breadwinner of the house and their husbands became known as ‘kettle bilers’ due to having to stay at home and look after the children.  

When I was installing this show, I spoke with a member of staff who said that as a single mum, she had to return to work in the mills six weeks after giving birth.  A low waged single mother artist myself, I know the commitments we make to get enough work - it’s normal for us to hold 3, 4  or even 5 part-time jobs at any one time, be available to nurture our children as they grow up and work unseen, often being invisible as an artist.  

I’m hoping this show makes an impact on creative women and mother artists by giving them a voice, a foothold in a space of equality, inciting inspiration in others through their own lived experience.  I’m hoping today to create an environment for conversation on topics not normally talked about but embedded in my work.  The patriarchal setting amplifies the voice of my art by its contrast.

The above piece is based on an artist’s talk given on 21st January 2023 at Verdant Works.

You can follow Dundee Heritage Trust’s interview with Sarah on further aspects of her work shown at Verdant Works here.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight as a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”   Anais Nin

To pre-order a swallow nest £25 + P&P, DM on Instagram or write a message here.

Creating for the sake of creating is a hard choice.  Making that choice is also a painful process.  We think we need to be good at what we choose to do or see our obligations with work and family as priority.  We put these requirements in front of our desires, passions and yearnings.  Yet, if we allowed time to play with ideas, materials, processes, what would we be making or writing through experimentation and play?  For me, being outdoors, observing nature, feeling the elements and witnessing cyclic time is inspiration to weave a harmonious bridge between my creativity and nature so that all of these aspects become my nature.  I’m currently working on ceramic swallow nests, which give me great pleasure to think that I may be contributing to endangered wildlife habitats whilst being creative, experimental and playing with clay simultaneously.    

Creating, without knowing truly if it will touch others reminds me of a passage I read in ‘Women who Run with the Wolves’:   Storyteller and poet, Clarissa Pinkola Estes uses an eloquent analogy of the creative force as water waiting to flow from deep reservoirs over the terrain of our psyche:  

“Once that great underground river finds its estuaries and branches in our psyches, our creative lives fill and empty, rise and fall in seasons just like a wild river…   Creating one thing at a certain point in the river feeds those who come to the river, feeds creatures far downstream, yet others in the deep…   That is why beholding someone else’s creative word, image, idea, fills us up, inspires us to our own creative work.”  

P298, Women Who Run with the Wolves, 2008, Rider Books.

To be human is to be creative.  If we deny our creativity in whatever form we wish it to be, we are also denying someone, even ourselves, the experience of being inspired or uplifted by what we could be creating.   How can we possibly resist this creative force when it feeds all who tap into it?  Observing the daffodils appear from the darkness underground since December last year slowly…  slowly…  slowly forming and opening, I feel their palpable tension, their hesitancy and anticipate their joy at blossoming to their fullness.  I can transpose those sentiments to my own creative interaction with the world, allowing myself to take up the space that is my place to fill.  Spring is not a time to be a shrinking violet!

Let’s be true to ourselves, bring our talents out, and subdue that critical voice that tells us we aren’t good enough at what we do, or we don’t have time, or we have more important things to do.  What’s more important than feeding your psyche and soul with that underground river that also feeds others further downstream?   Today is the day!

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]]>Sarah RychtarovaMon, 26 Apr 2021 14:48:32 +0000https://www.sarahrychtarova.com/blog/2021/4/28/hormonehellonmotherearth558022cfe4b002c0e72da874:5e9862aa9e859f2ac27e88ae:6086d2c6df5e9a3c6748d863

It’s a lovely spring day and I’m lying on the grass with pen to paper.  If my body hadn’t gone into hibernation these last six months, my mind certainly had.  But today I have something definite to share with you. I have a body of works being shown in two online exhibitions opening May 2021 which express the symptoms I experience as a perimenopausal woman.

My symptoms started in my late 30s and are still ongoing at 51.  I’ve read a lot about the perimenopause and researched the best natural remedies for these debilitating symptoms.  There is no one remedy for every woman because we each experience different symptoms in various ways.  

As you may know, my creativity is based on my own personal experiences of the body, mind and soul within the cycles of life, death and rebirth.  I see this particular experience as encapsulating all three phases of the cycles and am empowered by making art from this life changing event. 

I did an Instagram takeover @disconnect_planet_earth in March 2021 showing the development of my research, ideas and individual works for an exhibition entitled ‘Anthropocene’ with a UK group of artists for May 2021. Click on the poster or here to view the exhibition.

On thinking how I could visually express the wide-ranging; far-reaching; deeply damaging effects of the Anthropocene, I realised I could draw on my own personal experiences which reflect how some of the human race are being affected biologically.  Timely articles appeared in The Guardian in February and March 2021 covering a study just published. 'Count Down' by Shanna H. Swan PhD gives a shocking, fuller picture of evident damage occurring to the reproductive systems of all living creatures on earth due to pollutants in the environment.  

My own experience of the Anthropocene is indicative of xenohormones in the environment affecting hormone production, hence leading to oestrogen dominance within a woman’s body.  Dr. John Lee who wrote ‘What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Premenopause’ was instrumental and pioneering in his research on the subject. By recognising this life stage as pre or perimenopause, which wasn’t apparent in my mother’s generation or before, he found it was definitely experienced by increasing numbers of women within industrialised countries. The body of work I’m submitting for Anthropocene is called ‘Xenohormones of Patriarchy: Hormone Hell on Mother Earth’.

The Time of Her Life is the title of an exhibition for which I recently spotted a call-out for artists to submit work about their experience of the perimenopause.  And I’m delighted to say that I have been selected to show my submitted piece in this online exhibition running throughout May (1st-30th) 2021. My piece is called ‘The Monthly Squeeze’. The format of this exhibition is really novel! You have to check it out at The House Of Smalls.

May is a welcomed, busy month!

Thanks for being around, stay healthy and I hope you're out getting some sun on your face after a long, locked-down winter!

2013 ‘OchreFace’ - Video symbolising the ancient use of red ochre on the female body - live or sculptural - mirroring only the traces left after a passage of time. Performed and filmed by myself.

I realised I had an intrigue with Upper Paleolithic art as soon as I began studying art history. Cave paintings and sculpted figurines have been a fascination for me ever since. Within the caves of France and Spain, chambers were covered with ochres mixed with animal fat to create symbols and images of animals or blown on to the walls as a powder: think of the well known image of the hand silhouette. Finely detailed, diminutive figurines of ivory and clay, usually female shapes denoting different stages in the development of life eg. pubescent, pregnant and possibly menopausal were daubed with red ochre. The Venus of Willendorf, an ivory sculpture was found with traces of red ochre on her body suggesting that she too had been stained completely with the mineral.

An analogy exists between the pigmented earth red ochre and menstrual blood within indigenous cultures around the world. Aboriginal Australian myths tell a story of women travelling and dancing across landscapes, bleeding heavily together as they move creating areas of land rich in red ochre deposits. In Blood Magic: the anthropology of menstruation compiled in 1988, it is noted that ‘Red ochre was used as a symbol of ritual power in Aboriginal Australia and Upper Paleolithic Europe.’ Evidence of mining red ochre in parts of Africa for ritual practices has shown that indigenous peoples respectfully filled in pits from which ochre was extracted. Lyall Watson points out in Lifetide (1979) of this mindful action demonstrating that for thousands of years the earth has been acknowledged as a life giving entity which nourishes the souls and bodies of all who live on her. I created a photographic, menstrual diary (2013-2014) documenting the offering of my life-giving blood to the life-giving earth over thirteen crescent moons, one lunar year: a little ritual carried out each month which has continued until recently as my bleeding months naturally diminish. The diary is now all the more poignant as a result.

What other gift can I offer to nourish the earth as she nourishes me? In the recently published book Braiding Sweet Grass, the author Robin Wall Kimmerer describes beautifully how she grows vegetables called ’The Three Sisters’ in the way known to the First Nations. Maize, beans and squash help and support each other providing ideal growing conditions, warding off pests and enriching the soil they grow in. I have always been drawn to this kind growing - companion planting as it’s known in ‘modern’ western society.

Another way to contribute to the earth, albeit indirectly, is through The Wild Pigment Project. Founder and director Tilke Elkins connects artists with the colourful hues of plants and minerals through shared resources and facilitated learning. A percentage of proceeds from subscriptions to samples which are collected by enthusiasts and professionals around the world, go to land and cultural stewardship organisations which promote equity for all beings. I’m very excited to have subscribed to the project, to contribute to earth stewardship, and make new work with samples of many colours and shades of earth I’ll receive from many parts of the globe.

Thank you for being with me, stay safe, and create a simple gesture of nourishing the earth as you nourish yourself!

2020, ClipChime - Coiled ceramic vessel, rhythm played and recorded by Sarah.

I love rhythm.  It drives me to dance.  It makes us move our bodies to its beat even if we’re just toe-tapping.  It’s instinctual and primordial.  The first sound we hear is our mother’s heartbeat whilst in her womb.  But before we even develop hearing, we feel the vibration of our mother’s blood pulsating through her body.Sound is vibration.  Vibration is all around us and in the cosmos: It shapes the universe according to the Big Bang Theory in astrophysics and it shapes our material world as researched by Dr.Hans Jenny, founder of Cymatics - the study of wave forms and their vibrational effect through matter such as sand and water.  Results of these studies have shown that sound creates symmetrical, sculptural forms.  Cymatics.org inspired by Dr. Jenny’s work shows a gallery with stunning images of studies carried out.
So, does the vibration of our mother’s blood pumping through her heart and into us shape our own bodies?  “We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born.” says Layne Redmond in her book When The Drummers Were Women; a spiritual history of rhythm.  She points out that before being conceived, a part of us existed as an egg in our mother’s ovaries.  A woman carries all of her lifetime eggs in her as a fetus in the womb of her mother.  So we actually begin life on a cellular level in our grandmother’s womb for five months.  Therefore, she developed as an egg in the four month fetus of her mother in the womb of her grandmother.  Yeah, work that one out!
Rhythm affects our brain patterns which can in turn alter our state of consciousness.  This occurs with a synchronisation of the left and right brain hemispheres which usually operate in different wave patterns depending on what we’re doing.  We can synchronise the brain patterns ie. using both left and right hemispheres simultaneously by being creative through art, dancing, percussion, meditation or chanting.   Barbara Tedlock PhD goes into more depth in her book The Woman in the Shaman's Body on the sensory experiences that are unlocked when our brain patterns merge synchronously. 
It’s fascinating to think that rhythm shapes matter.  Rhythm stirs us to move, our brain hemispheres fuse and elevate us to ecstatic or trance-like states.  I can think of times dancing to rhythmic, bassy dance tunes and other times playing repetitive, rhythmic bass lines on my bass guitar which induced ecstatic/mesmeric states.  On the slower end of the scale, it can induce relaxation, therefore creating space for an awareness of inspiration to rise to our consciousness.  Our brain in a state of relaxation resonates at 7.83 hertz.  The earth resonates naturally at 7.83 hertz.  That's another one to think about…

Thanks for your time, stay safe and find a drum to beat to your own rhythm!

I have since moved, just five minutes down the road.  It’s nearer a town and two large farms so I don’t have that same inspiring space to live, play and create.  I now crave a deeper connection I’m missing with the land.  I am coming to understand that again this is an innate stirring, another universal understanding long buried in our post-modern, western lifestyle.  There’s even a word for it in Gaelic used in the old communities of the Highland and Islands of Scotland which intimates that you knew who you were by where you belonged.   Còraichean translates as a right ie. birthright, but it has a richer, deeper meaning which expresses the very concept of people belonging to the land, as mentioned in the insightful book, Love of Country: a Hebridean journey  by Madeleine Bunting.  

Although I don’t feel I belong to where I have come from or was born, I have a yearning to work with a landscape, its climate, its natural resources and observe its wildlife.  In reading David Abram’s book Becoming Animal: an earthly cosmology, something hit a note as Abram describes meeting people of traditional cultures who choose to live on the periphery of human settlements due to their sensitive nature and hear their calling to commune with the natural world.  Seen as the role of a medicine person within their local community, they are maintaining a fluid link ‘between the human and more-than-human worlds’ as Abram succinctly puts it.  I find there’s a power behind a creative’s work which communicates their relationship with nature through the expression of their art.  This is bridge building between the two worlds; the sensitivity of a medicine person in the western world.  Time to find my belonging again…!

Thanks for being around for this one, stay safe, and dance to your heart’s content in your home or garden if you can’t do it on a hill.


  

Imagine you can climb your way up a tree through clouds into deepest space and see stars being born, stars dying, our solar system for light years around and way, way beyond.   Imagine you can go down into the earth through tunnels and caves, between the tree’s roots and fungus filaments, stones and bulbs, animals and their burrows and ancient artifacts of human life and feel you are in the belly of Mother Earth.  Imagine you can glimpse a world within a world just by traversing a tree.

Indiginous cultures are known to journey the levels of not just the middle world (our physical world), but an upper and a lower world that they connect to in their everyday life to help heal others, find answers to problems and stay connected with their ancestors and animal totems.Elen Sentier explains more about each of the three worlds in her book Shaman Pathways - Following the Deer Trods.   

This was a revelation to me when I found out whilst researching for my dissertation.  A deeper universal meaning to the MoonTrees had been realised through reading about shamanic work within ancient, matriarchal cultures.  A ladder in the form of a rope/vine, cosmic serpent or tree spiralling in ascent or descent acts as a bridge linking other dimensions between the depths of the earth and the cosmic sky.  A fascinating and much more in-depth read can be found in The Cosmic Serpent - DNA and the Origins of Knowledge’ by Jeremy Narby.  

I wondered if moontrees existed outside of my own creation.  And, of course, they do.  After all, I have subconsciously been tapping into an ancient, universal structure of life.  There are myths of a sacred tree which produces fruit in the cyclic seasons, and as a symbol of the great goddess of the earth, it represents the opposite poles of existence within these cycles: waxing and waning of the moon; life and death; dark and light.  Being double-sided is another symbol.  Think of roots in both the earth and the sky and branches both in the sky and the earth as clarified in The Great Cosmic Mother - Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth by Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor.

So, when you come across my MoonTrees, you’ll know that they represent a bridge that crosses thousands of earth years and millions of light years, but you will need the magic password to traverse it! 

Thanks for visiting, stay safe, and know that everything is connected.  


    

In my second year of art school 2012, whilst embarking on a new project, a thought process was initiated which started with my dad and ended up somewhere completely different but still connected in a strange way.  My dad was one of the first deep sea divers to work in the oil boom of the North Sea in the early 1970’s.  I thought about him alone in the depths of the cold, turbulent sea with only a life-line of oxygen to support him.  Completely dependent on others up on the surface to keep him alive and safe.  
This thought then led to astronauts who also face death and are reliant on their suits, oxygen supplies and other people to keep them alive and safe whilst working in space.  
Then to the umbilical cord in the form of a man-made safety line for the deep sea diver and the astronaut suited up in their man-made wombs and emmersed in water or space, just as the naturally formed umbilicus and placenta provide an exchange of nutrients and waste in-utero. In the same vulnerable, fragile way the embryo totally relies on its mother to provide oxygen and keep it safe.
Trees, their trunks umbilical cords providing nutrients through the root branches in the earth to the tips of their aerial branches.  And out further to the tips of leaves as their crowns reach up to the sky.  At night, under the magnetic pull of the moon’s phases, the leaves in turn produce oxygen.
It was at this point in my thought train a vision of the MoonTree was formed.  The umbilical trunk the link between the earth and the stars.  A soul bridge. But I didn’t know of the deeper universal meaning ancient cultures had known for thousands of years until a few years later.

To be continued...

Thanks for being here, stay safe and become friends with a tree!

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]]>Support System [click here]Sarah RychtarovaFri, 15 May 2020 17:28:00 +0000https://www.sarahrychtarova.com/blog/2020/5/15/growingamoontree558022cfe4b002c0e72da874:5e9862aa9e859f2ac27e88ae:5ebebbbd4bf55f5bbb22b84aWeaving a Bridge RSS

I have been in lock-down paradise working in my garden, manifesting a dream of a giant MoonTree.  My main medium is ceramics.  Yet, during lock-down I’ve hardly touched clay and instead experimented with a new skill to be able to scale up my work in terms of size. 

At the start of this year, I learned basic weaving and sculptural techniques using willow with a view to making a sculpture in the form of my MoonTrees.  Rachel, my tutor and excellent basket maker @wovenwillowworks, helped me plan the realisation of a long-time ambition to make a MoonTree over six feet in height.  

The intention is for the giant MoonTree to be planted in the ground and act as a skeletal frame for growing beans.  I’ve chosen beans derived from original stocks with an authentic history available from Real Seeds.  The expert gardeners at Real Seeds encourage collecting your own seeds from your plants as they’ve done themselves.  I’m intrigued to see how the seedlings will grow on the frame and eager to see it transform into a living MoonTree! 

There are layered meanings to the MoonTrees.  I’ll delve into it in the next post, but will just say for the moment that they represent a soul bridge: I’ve been weaving a metaphorical bridge into the physical realm, and intend to reinforce it’s meaning by encouraging beanstalks to grow up the frame.  As they take root in the earth, they’ll reach up to the sky making a symbolic connection between the two.

More about the WillowMoonTree project here.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and if you have a cow, sell it for a few beans.  They’ll provide you with food every year!   
 

Big day today for me…weaving a bridge from my inner world of thoughts and experiences to the outer world. A world where the human race is very much at a standstill at the moment. A world where imbalances are balancing out in nature as a result. A world where a lot of humans are increasingly noticing and interacting with their natural environment. My art practice is based on my own experiences with nature and on research into the art and beliefs of ancient cultures who live/d the cycles of nature.

The other day I was looking through recipes I had printed out on scrap paper. On the back of one was printed a rough edit from a chapter page of my undergraduate dissertation from 2014. The title of the chapter? ‘Weaving a Bridge’. This was a poignant moment for me as it described what I was creating in my studio of a garden (I work there a lot) at the time. More on that in the next post. The title of my dissertation was ‘The Feminine Principles of Life, Death and Rebirth: An Exploration of a Visual Culture during the Upper Paleolithic Era (35,000 - 10,000 B.C.). That sums up the direction my art practice has taken since developing it at art school.

Thanks for letting me introduce myself, stay safe and if you have a bit of grass near you, stand on it with your bare feet!