Contact Dale Harris for more information poetdale@yahoo.com
PRESS RELEASE
WRITTEN IN SAND Genesis in Pictographs & Petroglyphs June 5 - 26, 2008
Harwood Art Center Albuquerque, New Mexico
1114 7th Street NW 505 242 6367
Arts Crawl Reception Friday, June 6, 5:00 to 8:30 Performance 6:30
Gallery Talk/Conversations in Response to the Art Friday, June 20, 6:30
More about the Artists:
Peggy Powell Dobbins Ph.D. is a veteran of the Women's Rights Movement and a retired sociologist. In 2001 she attended an international social sciences conference in Kunming, China, capital of the southwest province of Yunnan, where the majestic Himalayan Mountains begin and on the road to Tibet. There she became interested in the Naxi, an indigenous people famous for their preservation of Dongba, the world's only surviving hieroglyphic writing system, and the Na (or Musuo as they are called by outsiders)who had no writing but are equally famous for their unbroken practice of matrilineal marriage and property traditions known as Azhu. Some contemporary ethnographers believe the Na and the Naxi have common ancient ancestors. Some do not.
As part of her explorations, Dobbins met Gao Feng, an extraordinary calligrapher who after retiring as a high school principal mastered Dongba writing and through his own art has fomented curiosity, among other Han(the majority ethnic group of China) like himself and also ethnographers and artists worldwide, about Naxi myths and wisdoms contained in over 10,000 ancient, obscure manuscripts. Dobbins was captivated by Gao's art, brush and black ink on rice paper, which she did not recognize as related to the colorful bark paintings of Yunnan's "living treasures" the Dongba who practice and teach their traditional writing. "But," she said, "it bore no resemblance to any other Chinese calligraphy I'd ever seen. It looks more like cels of a giant's cartoon strip awaiting animation." Eventually Dobbins arranged to have one of the series of Naxi myths Gao has interpreted, brought to the U.S. for a series of exhibits. She chose Worship Heaven, because one of the pictures Gao described as "how Naxi people learned to make babies" and because she suspects it offers insight into the transition from a non-literate society without fathers or husbands* to one with writing, state, and census of father headed households. Worship Heaven was first exhibited in the U.S. in 2005 at the Texas State Museum of Asian Cultures in Corpus Christi and continues with the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico in June 5-26, 2008. Gao Feng and Peggy Dobbins are both contributors to the upcoming 16th World Anthropology & Ethnology Meeting held in Kunming, China July 15-23, 2008.
Dobbins was inspired by Gao Feng's work to make art fomented by her curiosity about the natives who lived where she does on the coast of Texas and the Europeans who transferred their culture to her generation. Karawankas were an affiliation of non-nomadic native tribes that lived along the Gulf of Mexico, first discovered by Spanish explorers in 1528. Raised to believe they were extinct and naked illiterate cannibals, Dobbins' artist statement describes her visit to a private library in Paris to receive a box containing pictograms, notes in Arabic, and letters tracing their provenance back through Martha Gellhorn, Frances Wright, and Jean Louis Berlandier to the Mexican nun Sor Juana and Marie Madeleine Talon, whose family landed with LaSalle in 1685. The pictograms are believed copies of Karankawan pictographs written in sand and reproduced from memory by Talon for interpretation by Sor Juana. In 1688 Spanish soldiers found the French girl living with Karankawans and took her to Mexico. There she lived with the Viceroy's wife, whose good friend Sor Juana is known to have been familiar with Arabic.
The result is "...dwelling in tents" Genesis 25-27, an installation covered with pictographs and Arabic text running at the bottom. With bold and cheerful artistic license, Dobbins cuts across cultures and time zones to tell a dynamic, non-linear story about the origins of human society. In her performance piece, she is by turns a woman in nun's robes and bourka, a veritable dervish of words. Viewers are invited to enter the tent and the experience! "...dwelling in tents" has been exhibited in New Orleans, Atlanta, Birmingham, Hiroshima and Tokyo, Japan, Goliad, Beaumont, and Austin, Texas and Telluride, Colorado, with a planned finale at Christie's Auction in Dubai where it will be sold in time for the Hajj 2009.
Dale Harris and Peggy Dobbins met in Telluride at the 2007 Talking Gourds Poetry Festival where Peggy performed her dramatic narrative and "...dwelling in tents" was exhibited. The poetry and life patterns of both made them instant friends. Dale was an activist in the Women's Liberation Movement as well, and is an artist with a background in Chinese watercolor and printmaking. She easily sold Peggy on the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque as her next venue for "...dwelling in tents" and Gao Feng's Worship Heaven. When Dale commented, "All you need to complete this is some Southwestern petroglyphs", Peggy replied "Fine, you do it!" and so their collaboration began. Dale frequents petroglyph sites in New Mexico and goes rock scrambling after them whenever she travels through neighboring states. Awesome, powerful, they may be physically accessible but are whole worlds away in meaning. Perfect subjects for art and spiritual journeying.
* cf. Cai Hua on the Na People: A Society without Fathers or Husbands translated by Asti HJusstvedt, précis from Claude Levi-Strauss, Zone Books, NY, 200l
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