VAPOR

Vapor

1. moisture or some other matter visible in the air as mist, clouds, fumes or smoke; 2. (archaic) without material existence or permanence; 3. a fanciful idea.


“She is sitting in a bathtub with a laptop and a lot of messy clothes around.” You are hearing this loud comment through the door as you sit in the tub with your laptop intent on bringing the significance of the messy clothes to your computer screen. You cannot see this male figure. He is behind you. You are not facing the street but the wall where water is being projected as strings of light. On the other wall is the labyrinth with the Virgin at the center and now we are on the beach where the strings appear over the horizon. It is just after six and this is the perfect time because the light is fading outside the gallery, which makes the projections more, pronounced on the wall before you. You can feel the kundalini at the base of your spine, perhaps it is the Iron Maiden igniting it, for iron is the element of the first chakra, the fire element and how grand to be firmly rooted as the images of water come and go before your eyes, like vapor. Yesterday the clothes were like lily pads. Today they are messy, reflecting the progression of the Solutio, the disintegration of the ego into the narrative. And this is what took place this afternoon when John Knowles came with his camera to discuss the installation. You began by talking about alchemy and he stopped you and said: “I wasn’t looking for a lecture but your interaction with the materials.” So, you took him on the journey through the clothing, picking up whatever caught your eye. You change your outfit. Off comes the Selma Karaca original painted spiral skirt with the Cupid Couture T-shirt and on comes an item you have located after an extensive search: a purple satin slip dress that used to be too big and fits you snugly now that you have the big body necessary to contain the energy of the Goddess. You hold up one dress after another and enter the Solutio to deliver a memory of the passage. You always knew that you would be here one day, in a gallery tying the material of your art to the threads of life. The emerald sea foam gown with the beaded bodice you wore to the real life manifestation of the sacred marriage on a lake in North Salem. The memory returned. You purchased with the black lace gown worn to Le Bal Masque at an estate sale in Cape Cod the summer that you photographed La Parca on the beach at sunrise. And beside the pink chiffon party dress is the Claude Montana dress given to you by your patron in Paris who went into a spontaneous past life regression when you met and told you that you were the woman arising out of the chalice in the desert in her painting and promptly gifted not only the painting but an amethyst ring and clothing to transform you into a stylish Parisian. As Heyo, the shaman that inspired you to join him in the misty City of Light used to say: Paris is the finishing school.” In Paris you would mold a fashionable persona to the female identity that vaporized in the sweat lodge when water was poured on the hot coals. The raw feminine that the Red Road of the Native Americans lead you through was fated to be refined in Paris through gifts of perfume, jewelry and clothing. In Paris, Heyo took you to meet your patron who bought you the Claude Montana linen dress slit up to here and down to there. No mind that it took years to assume the destiny woven the black fabric; fate was encoded in its winged structure. Your eye catches the glimmer of a shiny satin party dress shimmering violet and gold that you wore for the Saturday night dance at the historic 1997 Psyche & Symbols conference in San Francisco that brought scientists and astrologers together for the first time. It was there that you confronted James Hillman about his referring to Venus as Aphrodite, as if the pre-patriarchal Venus, the Sumerian Inanna, Queen of Heaven & Earth, never existed. Ha! The burning in the base of your spine informs you differently. The kundalini is firmly rooting you to the Iron Maiden, the crucible of this experiment to bring the feminine into form. You are well anchored for the immersion into Solutio. You need it. You are on the second day of your fast and Mars, your ruler, is approaching your Moon at 26 degrees Pisces. In yet another extraordinary cosmological line-up that maintains you on your path, Mars and the Moon meet this year on your moon at 26 Pisces, the extremely sensitive point of the solar eclipse on March 18. It was the day after Saint Patrick’s Day and you participated in a ritual where you drew your wishes on shamrocks. You wished for the Beloved, who had been vapor until now. The alchemical experiment integrates the private star with the universal star of the Aquarian Age, the six pointed star that appeared on your solar return in 1997. You have positioned yourself in a dialogue with the public in order to call in the magic that will deliver you to your Beloved, and therefore complete the narrative in which La Parca led you to your destiny. You had long been the homeless wanderer, the bride in search of the Beloved, who appeared and disappeared like vapor, enticing you further along your path but never showing his true face. With La Parca you finally had a companion for the narrative you have formed with your journey into the collective consciousness. For the first time in history a private person has the means to make their story public without having to pass through the gatekeepers. This is because of the Internet. You don’t even need to be an artist. You don’t even have to tell your story in words. You can tell it in images. The Internet allows anyone to communicate through images. You are walking in the midst of torn up pages from Webster’s Dictionary. For this reason you left journalism behind to make art with symbols. The tyranny of the word! You defy the tyranny of conceptualism in the art world with you symbolic art. Art created from images you projected on your journey. And here they are. The Goddess dresses purchased at a West Hollywood boutique called Polka Dots & Moonbeams that you wore with combat boots. The purple velvet mini dress you wore on your first date with the superstar artist who brought you into the art world even as his uncanny instinct guided you more deeply into your myth. So many memories in these threads, all objects of a grail search. Ever since you traveled alone through Europe at the age of 19 without a backpack, you have been in search of the perfect dress that you could wear at any time, for any occasion, the garment that always looked great even if you threw it on the floor or tossed it in a bag. It would have to be a magician’s outfit that could change in accordance with the environment, structured in a manner that sculpts the body. You have finally found this dress in a genius fashion designer from Turkey, who fell in love with La Parca as she resurrected her with her wizardry. You asked your mother if there was any family lace lying around in the home in Connecticut and she went into a closet and withdrew a white box. Inside there was beige colored lace that meshed perfectly with La Parca. Two sleeves of different lengths and covering the shoulders – precisely what you needed to hold the fraying fabric of the dress up! Ahhh, the universe provides, you cried. The universe, she said, it is your mother! Yes, the mother and the universe are one. Selma loves La Parca. You visited her in her studio and she got to work sewing the resurrection. Afterwards, she laid La Parca on the floor and asked she asked if she could have a piece of La Parca. The alchemists believed that spirit was contained in matter. Everything in the universe is alive and affected by our energies. And the intent of the alchemist is to transform energy so the universe may be transformed. You showed John the altar you created with FEDERICO’s crucible with the copper coil and the flat pieces of copper he transforms with fire. You explain how FEDERICO created the image of the Aquarian Goddess by going outside during the conjunction of Venus with the Moon last month and set the copper into the flames and shot the transformation with his camera, depicting the transformation of Venus as she arrived at the Sixth Gate, the heart chakra. which radiates green like the new movement to save the planet. This is the energy of universal love, the Aquarian Age icon of heaven and earth. At the end of the journey you arrived at the outfit that you entered the gallery in, your Selma Karaca spiral skirt made from a painting and the bright yellow T-shirt with the pink symbol and lettering declaring Cupid Couture across your breast. And you put hot pink fishnet socks on your feet and slipped them into your golden slippers with the hot pink neon bow and the green coat from Colette's closet and here you were hit with a fashion statement perfectly in sinc with your art theory – the unity of the figurative with the abstract, the objective with the subjective, the conscious with the unconscious.




He pointed the camera to the alchemical triangle you created with the three heavenly substances -- the pile of Sulfur (the masculine), the Salt (the feminine) and Mercury, represented by your writing instrument, the computer notebook which you scribed so much of the journey. Sulfur is represented by passion and will, associated with the fermentation process. Salt is associated with the Stone, the Ourobors, the astral body, representing the action of thought on matter, be it the One Mind acting on the one thing of the universe, or the alchemist meditating in her tub. On top of the Sulfur you placed your sunstone and on top of the Salt you placed your moonstone and there you have it -- the sacred wedding represented in your journey projected on the wall by the lunar eclipse following La Parca’s sojourn into the Mexican desert with the rose, a symbol of Eros, placed on a cactus. You got a single image before you were attacked by the bird of prey that swooped down on your, grabbing at your back. You fought him off with your tripod but your camera was on top of it and by some miracle it managed to take photos of the lunar eclipse because the next day it was broken. Here is red water with yellow centers. Like flowers. Water takes on the color of what is projected onto it and what contains it. Oh now the Mexican flag comes up and you get the significance -- the serpent on the flag as a symbol of transformation -- the winged serpent is the male manifestation of the ancient love goddess of Sumer, the self-declared Queen of Heaven and Earth. You placed La Parca on the steps of Quetzalcoatl as a form of ritual -- an injection of the energy of the sacred marriage into the bride. The Iron Maiden is making you feel so sexual. A booming voice through the window: “How are ya doing??” A group of guys have picked up on the energy outside the door. You are not embodied in La Parca tonight but she is right beside you. It feels right to have your fashion image of abstract/figurative together with the spiritual image of La Parca. You were tempted to take her to the red carpet last night. Up the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and past that most extraordinary bouquet of roses you have ever seen. You were walking the red carpet to the press preview yesterday but La Parca wanted to appear at the gala in the evening. You called the press office to see if you could get access anywhere near the red carpet and learned that you would need a permit, issued long ago. Holly was here in the gallery saying that to appear on the steps of the Met on the evening of the Costume Gala would mean making a fashion statement but you declared that you have no interest in making a fashion statement and the other steps suddenly came to you. You knew what steps had to be walked in order to bring the energy of Quetzacoatl to New York City. You knew where but not when and how and this to be revealed to you by the dew that appears on the ground in the morning and collected by alchemists to complete the Great Work. The Dew leads to the Fountain that completes the Water phase of the experiment. And Vapor, the stuff that dreams are made of, makes it all possible. For without the Beloved luring us towards our fate, how could we embrace our destiny? Without surrendering to the imagination, how could we manifest our dreams? The garments strewn around La Parca once served as new identities on the path, stepping stones to make the fanciful real. Now they serve as pieces of art from which a narrative of the return of the feminine from exile sprouts and takes form.