Beginner's Mind

Three sketchbooks:  (L) Eve's Imprint series evolution, (R) Africa and My
Ancestral Journey, and (B) one for Ancient Near East begun in 2013.

When I completed my Pilgrimage series of paintings in 2009, I felt ready to do a series about something that had long been on my mind - Our One Black Mother. I started by doing my own DNA test with National Geographic's Genographic Project to discover my maternal ancestral journey out of East Africa. I asked a brother to do a DNA test so I could get my paternal ancestral journey. 

Over the past seven years, I have created two dimensional and three dimensional pieces for four of the twelve sections I have envisioned for Eve's Imprint: African Origins, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, and My Ancestral Journey. The further I go, the more the parameters for Eve's Imprint evolve. This month I embraced my procrastination and began to work on the Ancient Near East, the last of our maiden migrations out of Africa. 

As I return to yet another beginning, I find myself having to embrace both having a history and the need for a beginner's mind. I am going to attempt to share something I have never attempted before - my process of conceptualization. 

(L) Binder of research articles and images, (R) Global Atlas, (BR) book on our human
journey, (BC) catalogue from a show of artifacts from the Ancient Near East,
and (BL) blown up map of the region.

I have binders of research materials for all twelve of the projected sections of Eve's Imprint. I had actually begun to work on this region back in 2013, but found it too overwhelming so turned instead to Southwest Asia because I had lived in India for two years and had a feel for the region. It was helpful to rehearse what I set out as guidelines at the start of this journey: use maps in unusual ways, use earth tones and texture for environmental effects, and have three dimensional elements.

Initial sketch for a 3D piece for Ancient Near East.

In reviewing my earlier Near East work, I realized that I had wanted to somehow use a wheel for this region since it was the birthplace of the wheel, the potters' wheel, the archimedes (water) wheel, as well as the chariot. I did an initial sketch for this section based somewhat on the wheel idea. In my Eve's Imprint series evolution sketchbook, I found an image I had cut out of a three dimensional spoke-like sculpture. I am now beginning to figure out how I might make this piece. 

I blew up a section of a map 16 times to reach the size I wanted.

In each of the completed sections, I have used maps in a different way. This time I decided to give each large contemporary country its own board and to put the smaller nations that compose what was once known as The Levant on one board. But I also decided that only the northern sections of Egypt and the Arabian peninsula would be on those boards since only those sections were part of the migration 50,000 years ago from East Africa into the Ancient Near East.

Upon reflection, I changed the size and depth of some of my boards and then
 prepped them for painting with coats of gesso.

Because clay bricks, pottery, and cuneiform tablets were created in this region, I have decided that I will use Paper Clay on all of the boards. I may use it differently on each board, I'm still trying to figure that out. Once I had my sizes set and my maps ready to trace onto the boards, I began to meditate on what images each board will have. I went after more reference materials.

Books from my personal library and the Eugene Public Library.

In Ancient Egypt I found a fabulous image of the Nile Delta that will be the primary image for the Egypt board and will be made in Paper Clay. The Prehistoric Art book is rich with images for several of my Eve sections and yielded a fabulous image of shell beads found in Turkey. I returned to a book in my library, After the Ice, which has the best descriptions of what life was like for hunter gathering peoples. 

My ideas begin to take form and I begin making preliminary sketches.

After I had a sense for the Egypt board, I moved on to Mesopotamia (Iraq) and The Levant (Jordan, Syria, Israel, Palestine) Here the prehistoric (and pre-agriculture) material is vast and it is difficult to choose images. I did decide to use a stone female figurine for The Levant because so few people actually realize that female deity figures preceded male gods. Somewhere on the Iraq board will be cuneiform writing in clay since it is important to remember that Western history began there. I will use a stone etching of nested arcs to join the Levant and Iraq boards since there was so much interaction between these ancient places.

Many of my images are still gestating as I continue to read resource material.

As I read, I make notes of things that impact me. I usually make these on scraps of paper that I then insert in my sketchbooks with Hold It so I can move them around. Even though I already had pages of notes and images in my Ancient Near East sketchbook, I decided to set up a separate section for each of the six boards for the Ancient Near East alcove. 

First page in the Turkey section of my Ancient Near East sketchbook. 

I'm at the stage of trying to figure out Turkey (Anatolia). I know I want to use the bull from a cave painting as it symbolizes the transition from female to male deities. But I have not decided if the bull will be under the map, on top of the map, or inside the map.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out Iran and Arabia because I included them in Southwest Asia since their southern regions were involved in the first coastal migration out of Africa 75,000 years ago. I may repeat something from the other panels to show the geographic connections. Because I am not very familiar with working in Paper Clay, I feel that I need to have some baseline images for all of the boards before I actually begin the work.