Evolution/Emergence
The Hopi Origin Myth and the People's Emergence into the Fourth World.
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IN 2014 at a residency in Quedlinburg, Germany, I was given an unusual space in which to create new work. The space was a wine cellar in a 500-year-old house and cultural center belonging to Dr. Meredith McClain, who invited me to this medieval town near the Harz mountains. The wine cellar as a space was dark, cool and stony, reminiscent more of a kiva than a cave, and it brought back vivid memories of the way I worked in Berlin with Smoke in the Mask, and so I took the same tack of exhibiting in the dark. The subject was mine to choose, and the Hopi Origin Myth inspired a cycle of five paintings representing the creation and migration of the People. The paintings were shown on the floor, evocative of the sand paintings on the floors of Hopi Kivas. The place took on a deliberate air of a gathering place, and visitors to the house lingered over these. Almost every person knelt down to touch the work. The work is on view at Hohestrasse 8 in Quedlinburg for the remainder of the summer.
The story is this. When Tawa the Sun Spirit first creates them they are something like insects, living deep under the ground. The Sun Spirit finds them uninteresting and so sends Spider Grandmother to lead them upward to another world, still in the deep darkness.
The journey is long and on the way they change into animals with fur and claws and webbed feet, it is said something like coyotes and bears. But they still fight and kill each other and have no understanding. Again Tawa sends Spider Grandmother to lead them out of the Second World and into the Third World.
The journey is very long and by the time they arrive they have changed into people. Spider Grandmother and other spirit animals teach them how to survive, but it is still cold and dark. The people fall into wicked ways and forget the things Tawa taught them about what it means to be human. Society falls apart. Parents drink and gamble and sleep around while their children are neither watched over nor cared for. The crops are carelessly tended and they begin to die. Men begin stealing from each other instead of making things themselves. The elderly are shunned and disrespected.
There are still good people following the way of life Tawa taught them, and they want to escape this evil world. They spy a doorway in the sky and determine that a new world is up there, with more light and warmth and many lands. Spider Grandmother helps them plant a reed and instructs them to sing. As they sing, the reed grows and grows until it reaches the hole in the sky.
Then the arduous journey commences. All the people climb the reed and it takes a very, very long time for them all to come up. The evil ones try to come up as well, but they are warned away by the good people. The bad people persist in climbing. The Twin War Gods, Spider Grandmother's grandsons, uproot the stalk and shake it so that all the bad people fall and must remain in the darkness of the Third World. However, a single sorceress does manage to get through the door and so that is why evil still exists in the world.
All images copyright 2014 Paula Billups
The story is this. When Tawa the Sun Spirit first creates them they are something like insects, living deep under the ground. The Sun Spirit finds them uninteresting and so sends Spider Grandmother to lead them upward to another world, still in the deep darkness.
The journey is long and on the way they change into animals with fur and claws and webbed feet, it is said something like coyotes and bears. But they still fight and kill each other and have no understanding. Again Tawa sends Spider Grandmother to lead them out of the Second World and into the Third World.
The journey is very long and by the time they arrive they have changed into people. Spider Grandmother and other spirit animals teach them how to survive, but it is still cold and dark. The people fall into wicked ways and forget the things Tawa taught them about what it means to be human. Society falls apart. Parents drink and gamble and sleep around while their children are neither watched over nor cared for. The crops are carelessly tended and they begin to die. Men begin stealing from each other instead of making things themselves. The elderly are shunned and disrespected.
There are still good people following the way of life Tawa taught them, and they want to escape this evil world. They spy a doorway in the sky and determine that a new world is up there, with more light and warmth and many lands. Spider Grandmother helps them plant a reed and instructs them to sing. As they sing, the reed grows and grows until it reaches the hole in the sky.
Then the arduous journey commences. All the people climb the reed and it takes a very, very long time for them all to come up. The evil ones try to come up as well, but they are warned away by the good people. The bad people persist in climbing. The Twin War Gods, Spider Grandmother's grandsons, uproot the stalk and shake it so that all the bad people fall and must remain in the darkness of the Third World. However, a single sorceress does manage to get through the door and so that is why evil still exists in the world.
All images copyright 2014 Paula Billups