Hello friends -
The October 2015 image is inspired by the work of a Hopi potter named Rainy Naha.
She follows in the tradition of the legendary Nampeyo, who, in the late 1800's, single-handedly resurrected an ancient style of Hopi pottery when she discovered patterns in potsherds excavated at a prehistoric ruin on First Mesa. Nampeyo revived the lost techniques of pottery firing, using sheep bones to make the fire hotter and the pots whiter, and incorporated the designs of her ancestors, using a palette that became known as Hano Polychrome, a distinct combination of beautifully muted earth tones.
Nampeyo achieved international recognition for her work and became one of the most widely photographed ceramic artists in the Southwest, with pictures of her taken by Edward S. Curtis, Adam Clark Vroman, William Henry Jackson, and the pioneering Kate Cory - an courageous artist herself, who lived among the Hopi from 1905 until 1912. Cory writes that Nampeyo also "smoothed the fired pots with a plant with a red blossom" - another technique of ancient Tewa origin.
At left is a beautiful portrait of Nampeyo from Edward S. Curtis, taken in 1900, owned by the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
Also striking is the image at right, taken in 1875 by William Henry Jackon. Here we see the young Nampeyo wearing the characteristic Hopi hairstyle indicating her status as a marriageable woman, having competed her moon initiation. What a rare find this is! I was delighted to excavate it!
There is plenty about Nampeyo on the Web, and she is well worth the investigation.
About Rainy
The work of modern-day potter Rainy Naha uses a similar palette, and her ceramics are absolutely magnificent. Like Nampeyo, her daughters are also potters with extraordinary skill, and sign their pottery with the feather glyph of their grandmother, Rainy's mother, known as Feather Woman.
Here is Rainy's 'Tumbling Parrots' Jar.
The precision and the impeccable balance of her color and design is simply extraordinary, not to mention the soul-full love for her subject that radiates from the piece.
And how about this one? Her SOLSTICE jar, from 2002.
Breath-taking!
Breath-taking!
Do an image search for Rainy and be astounded by the grace and beauty in her work. She shows us a sacred perspective.
Bucket List Item: own a pot by Rainy Naha, and give her a huge hug of gratitude for the blessings she gives to humanity through her art.
There have not been any recent posts to this blog because I've been heavily invested in creating the new calendar files for 2016.
Last year, I followed the advice of a tech consultant, who recommended that I make smaller files to accommodate display on mobile devices. That is why the Lunar Calendars for 2015 consist only of the 'month grid', without any of the accompanying panels that I refer to as 'sidecars'. Basically, I cut the files in half.
But I really missed the sidecars. The original sidecar for October 2015 (before I took the consultant's advice and pared down the images) is shown above.
The tech consultant disappeared from the project when his father became ill. Naturally, I completely respected his priorities since I myself had cancelled most of my typical activities during the period when my own mother was ill.
But as I began work on the 2016 files, I felt compelled to bring the sidecars back, and also to incorporate the logo into the design of the calendars. So this has been a real birthing, a labor that has taken on the dimension of a divine obsession, and has required my complete attention for the last few months.
I am very excited to present these new images to you, which I will do in the very near future, as I am attempting to not only get them in print, but also make them widely available in e-book formats. For every month's calendar, I will also provide a commentary here on the blog,
Thank you all for your continued interest in the MoonTimer Calendars. And by the way, I am available to present workshops to your group on how to synchronize your cycle. I love to talk with women about the elegant system of our ancestral grandmothers, who invented the world's simplest method for regulating the cycle.
The science that validates MoonTiming - which has been denigrated as superstition - only became available in the last century. That's how long it has taken science to catch up with what the grandmothers knew 25,000 years ago, when they first began charting the moon's path through the sky and pegged the menstrual cycle to it. This was done out of necessity, in order to insure the safety and survival of mothers and children, by being able to accurately forecast the birth of a baby.
Please contact me at rubiconmoon@gmail if you are interested in learning Everything That No One Ever Told You about the menstrual cycle -- a revelatory experience!
Go with the Flow,
Kathryn
