SHOWING:  July 1 - July 31  OSO NEGRO CAFE - 604 WARD ST.
cast bronze and aluminum
by JAN FORMBY      potter sculptor painter

This body of work began in 2003. For over four years a visualization kept appearing in meditations which presented the image of a deer and a cougar emerging from the void. They stretched out of each other from a slice in space. This began my contemplation on the bond between prey and predator.. they come from each other and return to each other in perfect balance. This renewed series of “Portal Ambassadors”; door knockers and wall hooks, tells the paradoxical love story of balance in the prey predator relationship.

Another perfect example of balance can be felt and observed in the form and essence of trees. This symbolism is captured in this ancient Celtic tradition described by Mara Freeman, author of Kindling the Celtic Spirit…

When a tribe cleared the land for a settlement in Ireland, they always left a great tree in the middle, known as the crann bethadh (krawn ba-huh), or Tree of Life, as the spiritual focus and source of well-being…able to absorb power from above and below.

The aluminum mirror series finds the story of balance, inter-dependency and symbiosis told in the face ‘you’ see in the “Mirror of Crann Bethadh”.  It absorbs the energies from above and below realizing the magic you see in it’s sacred oval (vesica piscis) centre.

Four bronze masks silently inform the essence of inspiration and creation in a lineage of “Sensing”, “Dreaming”, and “Singing” a “Forest Song”.

There are great variations and divergences in this show from the theme of allegory and alchemy, yet, you are sure to find stories within stories of the morphogenic nature of nature with its infinate embrace of the life-death-life cycle we all live within.

It is my hope that if you look and ponder just a bit, you will hear your story coming from the voice of nature.

More of Formbys work can be found at Red Moon Gallery  724 Herridge Lane
Touchstones Nelson  Ward & Vernon
Hazeldean Gallery  Stanley & Baker