Expanse

This work, 'Expanse', was made for  a friend. She is a  midwife. Her vocation inspired the work, a stone carving made with hand tools. Texas Cream Limestone is firm, and yet does not require power tools to carve.The stone does have some fossil presentation to navigate around, through.

I have been fortunate to experience birthing three times, which helped impart the emotions involved in 'Expanse'. The birthing process involves an uninterrupted segment of time that the mother engages with, a bodily engagement of intense passage with involuntary  movement and intrinsic thought, feelings guiding, extending her corporeal self, spreading and contorting her self, expanding her body to allow the emergence of what has been growing within. Birthing is an extension of conception and its development arching, emerging from the body. 'Expanse' shows the inherent process, the fundamental nature of conception and resultant birthing and what is bound between mother and emerging child.

'Expanse' ~ in progress
This work is about the birthing process
Texas Cream Limestone. 8 x 5 x 6 inches

'Expanse' ~ in progress
This work is about the birthing process
Texas Cream Limestone. 8 x 5 x 6 inches

'Expanse' ~ side view
This work is about the birthing process
Texas Cream Limestone. 8 x 5 x 6 inches

'Expanse' ~ back view
This work is about the birthing process
Texas Cream Limestone. 8 x 5 x 6 inches

'Expanse' ~ top view
This work is about the birthing process
Texas Cream Limestone. 8 x 5 x 6 inches

'Expanse' ~ front view
This work is about the birthing process
Texas Cream Limestone. 8 x 5 x 6 inches

Birth of a Girl

She was a blue light, nay a haze
Hovering above a Toronto cross-section
Before she was conceived.

There were tendrils of her need to be in this world
Saturating the space between
Wisps of knowingness
Urging the collaborators to parent her body.

At birth she was observant of her lust for survival,
A spirited gusto for life.
Guzzle and sleep, she saw all, listened well and
Stored the memories for future burgeoning.

Frighteningly early she spoke her name.
She could enjoy the mirth of the ages,
Laughing well, she exploded with the joy of the small,
Largely a wondrous gift to behold.

Walking was a necessity, not an interesting activity.
Her pleasure was the poetry of the Rhyme Time,
Colours and the taste.
Music concentrated her concentric mind.

Within a year of life, she insisted
On sitting on laps...
To see sewing,
To hear reading,
To feel sounds of talking.

And now, in the second decade of her life,
The opera continues,
Moving herself to the foray of sensational places
Where sights, sounds and sensations are plentiful
Where new memories are possible
And pink is passion transitionalized,
Azure sublimates carefulness,
Emerald secures the growth and
Nary is there a day
When the buds do not bloom
Into a canopy of wonder.