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| June 4 & 5 Diana Marto and friends (follows SEA CHANGE reception at Bay Model Visitors Center) Bay Model Visitor Center & Dunphy Park Sausalito, CA |
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Shortly after 9/11, the bones of a juvenile humpback whale washed ashore. Some bones were brought on land, near where I was living, and began to inform my waking and sleeping dreams. I began casting sheets of handmade paper over them. To my amazement when I lifted the sculpture off the bones, I felt the aliveness of the whale transferring into the paper. I decided to bring the handmade paper sheets in my backpack to the cove forming them over the whale cranium. After several days of drying amidst the fog and full moon seas, I lifted the paper off the bone and held it up- someone exclaimed, “An Angel!” When I am politically active on behalf of the whales, I am purified. When I dance with the paper sculpture, they purify me. In eastern spiritual practices, handmade paper is imbued with healing and mystical properties. It is in this spirit that I work. I feel their energy penetrating my shoulder blades and spinal column. Similar to the shamans who take on the power of an animal by putting on its skin, I know I am taking on the essence of the whale when I place the whale guardian over my shoulders and head. I am often overcome with the portent of the mission, for each time I seek to fulfill the inexplicable. Linear time ceases, I enter into cosmic stillness, by the end my body is vibrating with the whale body as contained in the paper sculpture.
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