We moved into the new house yesterday. I’ve been unloading all my saints and folk art. I’m not sure where to put everything, so I’m sticking things wherever I find a decent spot for them, just to get them out of the way.
I put one of my carved wood statues from Guatemala in a perfect-sized shelf in our bedroom. The shelf has cubbies for several statues. I was thinking maybe I’d put all my collection in that area.
This particular one I got a long time ago at an auction. I liked how big her eyes were, like maybe you’d just walked in and caught her off guard. Here’s a not very clear picture of her:
This morning when I got up, I noticed she had moved. I fell fast asleep while Jim read in bed. I guess he got to thinking she was a little spooky. Maybe she reminded him of those portraits like my grandma used to have where the eyes followed you all around the room. Maybe Jim started to feel like my wooden saint was staring at him.
Here’s what she looked like when I saw her this morning:
I guess I’m going to have to reconsider where she goes exactly. Or, maybe she can stay in the bedroom with us and spend daytime watching over the room and nighttime staring at the wall. We’ll see.
This was not what I expected. I wasn’t sure how the title fit the story until I read it the third time. Now I get it. This piece made me smile.
This made me think of two things, the title makes me think about organized religion as a whole. My view of organized religion was skewed as a teen when I was forced to deal with the administrative part of the church to the exclusion of the spiritual side. My view became clearer after reading the Dune series where one character creates a religion to control and manipulate entire societies. Although my views today are not as radical I do believe that the secular side of religion often limits and/or cripples the spiritual side. But that is another subject entirely.
The second and more pertinent observation is that taken out of context an event like this will cause each observer to come to his own conclusion. Your observation that your husband probably moved it in the night was the logical conclusion but not the only conclusion. Although I know that 5 people seeing the same thing at the same time will have 5 different accounts of the event, I was surprised that as I read this my mind went to the supernatural instead of the logical (where I live in my job working with computers). I guess the word scary helped to mold my expectations of the outcome.
Thanks for letting me ramble. Sometimes I think too much.
R3
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R3: I had thoughts that are so similar to yours that I find THAT SCARY. I thought of organized religion when I first read the title. Then scrolled down the images (where the eyes kind of scared me). Then when I read (and saw) that the saint had turned from front to back – I first went to the supernatural as an explanation. Then realized there could be many reasons behind it.
I realize part of me wants to know how the saint got turned. And part of me likes the mystery of not knowing. 8) And what is the symbolism of the eyes? I am curious if there is any. My last thoughts went to – hmmm, I wonder how many of these saints she has in her collection (?).
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Very interesting. I have a big smile on my face as I type this, thinking of both your comments. They make me think I’d better ask Jim if he *did* move it. What if he didn’t? Then I might not want her in my room either.
Some of the bultos (carved saints) I see, especially those by NM carvers, have oversized features. Eyes, hands, feet. I love the pieces that are not realistic.
I only have three bultos, and one is quite old. The other two, including the one in the photo here, are both more modern. This one – with the eyes – I got about 20 years ago at an auction. I first started collecting folk art about then. I don’t think she’s very valuable from a collector standpoint, but I’ve always liked her.
BTW, R3, one of the best things about blogging is this: you can think out loud as much as you want and it *will* resonate with someone out there.
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I know that statue. It is a little freaky. And I know Jim. He is a sensitive guy. He’s probably more in tune with that statue that you realize.
And it’s coincidental that you’d make this post today because today in physics class we were covering DeBroglie’s wave theory and it got me thinking (privately) about forces so infinitesimal, yet are experimentally real, and how they might have a link to “supernatural” energy.
Just pondering…
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I LOVE this statue/sculpture — and she is welcome to visit my art collection ANY time. Why would I steal it if I visited this house? Because of the eyes. Check out those eyes. Frightened? Knowing? Both? I’m in love with her.
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Maybe you can post a photo of the other two in your collection at some point. I’m especially interested in seeing the oldest one. How old?
Now that I look at the photos again – I see this one has a vulnerabililty that draws me in. It’s in the eyes…
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Aren’t they the greatest? They’re like those googly eyes that are just a white background with a little black dot in the middle and a bit of plastic over them. You shake them up and down and the black dot moves all around. In her case, the black dot stuck during the shaking.
MM: you’re right. Jim does have special senses. He calls them his “spidy senses” – kind of corny, but he does. I have some masks that a folk artist in Ecuador made just for me. Three big laughing demons with pointy noses and big teeth. I was going to put them in a row down a wall in the bedroom, too, and Jim saw them and said, “You’re not putting those in here, are you?” I guess not.
Oh, gosh, I just had a memory about getting freaked out once myself with a mask in my bedroom after my friend Patrick told me about his sixth senses. I’ve been into Latin American religious art since right after high school, and Latin Americans embrace it all – life and death, good and evil.
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I’ll post others. I have some wild folk art – a skeleton bride and groom at a Day of the Dead wedding, for example. All in good time, missy, all in good time….he he he he he….
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That was a wicked witch impression, btw 🙂
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LOL 8)
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Um, two words:
Frida
Kahlo
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LOL. I don’t think so, but that’s what I’m going to tell Jim tonight.
BTW, I was just reading the comments and when I saw the one I made about the wicket witch impression, I read it as to say something more like, that was wicked (as in wickedly good) impression, which happened to be of a witch. And then I thought, who made a comment and attached my moniker to it??
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