Ceremonial

Ceremonial Bowl

The Ceremonial Bowl is used for my Hair Harvest Ceremonies.  Like the emanating rings that ripple throughout a log, the length of my hair is a physical record of passed time.  My hair cycles begin right after I have shaved. My bald head (and/or face) represents a freshly plowed field ready to be inseminated with new ideas.  At the beginning of the hair cycle, I look deep beyond the protective shielding of my soul, into my youth where my stargazing dreams still sit looking upward.  Motivated by those dreams, I set new goals with deadlines that range 6 months in duration upto 7 years.  Once I reach the deadline, I perform the Hair Harvest Ceremony where I shave all of hair (and/or beard) and examine my failures and successes.  During this ceremony, I awaken the Ceremonial Bowl from its slumber.

The Ceremonial Bowl is created from the wood of MasterTreeIII (a linden tree), entirely handcrafted and finished with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  By their nature, Hair Ceremonies exist at the threshold of a singular decision and the unknown.  For example, the Hair Ceremony on July 8 2017 marked the end of my six year journey through the singular task of finishing the PhD program.  This is represented by the one concentrated focal point (the ending on the left, top image) that branches into the vast unknown of an unrealized destiny (the branched two endings on the right).  After six months of exploration and free fall into the unconscious abyss of destiny, I will have another Hair ceremony to mark the transition from the unknown into a singular path (right to left in the top image).

I made the inner bowl into a vaginal shape to represent the entrance into the womb and the outer shape into a phallus; together they represent rebirth.  During the ceremony, the inner bowl is filled with water that is rich with a placenta-like destiny.  As my hair is cut, the water from the bowl is poured onto my head using the Ceremonial Spoon. On the head of the bowl, is a naturally formed crack, and at the end of the ceremony, the leftover water is ejaculated through the crack into the Earth that represents the field of my destiny and dreams. The red lines occur naturally and were excavated when carving the wood, they represent jet streams in turbulent winds of destiny.  I left the bark on the entire backside of the bowl because I wanted it to be rooted in the Earth (bottom image). From this view, it is a feral animal from the wildness of humanity (the eye is towards the upper right and the mouth is the cracked bark and towards the left is the snout). 

The top of the Ceremonial bowl is made to look like my balding head with a mullet (a style I usually  have every 6-7 years) and engraved with celestial paths (left picture). The bottom of the bowl (right), looks like the eyes of a creature forever watching me. 

Ceremonial Spoon

During the Hair Harvest Ceremony, I stand next to one of my sacred trees and the womb-shaped Ceremonial Bowl is filled with water that represents the placenta in which new ideas are sustained.  As locks of my hair and beard are cut by each person in the ceremony, another uses the Ceremonial Spoon to pour water from the Ceremonial Bowl onto me while I am in my Symbolic Nastypose.  The water represents rebirth.  Like the bowl, the Ceremonial Spoon is entirely handcrafted from the wood of MasterTreeIII (a linden tree) and bathed in Extra Virgin Olive Oil before the Hair Harvest Ceremony. 

The naturally occurring red line on the back of the spoon represents humanity's umbilical connection with Mother Earth which remains severed, which is why the red line is unable to reach the womb-like area to the right.  However, our severed connection to Mother Earth is not permanent and that story is written on the other side of the spoon (described below). 

The red line which represents the severed umbilical cord between Mother Earth and humanity reappears in the front (left picture).  This umbilical cord separates life from death, the two moments when we are closest to Mother Earth.  The circular loops to the left represent life and the dark circular loops to the right represent death (left picture). They are dark because of a process known as spalting when the climbing hands of fungus partially rot the wood. 

The top of the spoon (right picture) represents the stratified orbits of celestial bodies dancing throughout the darkness of outer space and the glistening gashes remind me of falling comets. 

This was the first spoon that I had ever made and the collage above shows some of the steps that I took, starting initially from a block of wood that I cleaved and then used a hatchet to further shape into a spoon.  I used a spoke-shave to form the handle and used a hook knife to scoop the bowl of the spoon. 

The Ceremonial Mask

Perhaps hundreds of years old, MasterTreeIII's canopy was a kingdom and when the wind would gallop through, the leaves would shimmer and I would be so happy.  From the outside, MasterTreeIII was vibrantly healthy, but hidden deep within its Y-shaped body, was a large vein of scarred and rotten wood, which one day could no longer hold on to half the tree.  After the death of MasterTreeIII, we plunged a living chainsaw into the heart of the scarred wood (pictured below)...it angered me and I felt hatred for it...I wanted to destroy it in a fire.  But as dreams brought some healing, I felt the breath of the cycles of life and death and decided to turn the scarred wood into artwork....into a mask that would transform me into a different creature during my ceremony.