Une Envie de Sel

"The animated figures stand
Adorning every public street
And seem to breathe in stone, or
move their marble feet."

- Pindar

 I know I have been slow with the photos this week....less prolific than usual with the blog posts.

But here's the thing: I'm consumed.

 There is something so entirely addictive about the process of making dolls. From Pygmalion to Daedalus to Santa's magic workshop, mythology about this sort of creative process abounds. And it goes deeper. 

I found this interesting passage on Creation Moments: 

The examples of the first man, and sometimes the first woman, being molded from clay by the deity are worldwide. The Babylonian account has a man molded from earth mixed with the blood of the god Bel (p. 6); Prometheus of Greek legend molded a man out of clay at Panopeus in Phocis (Greece, p. 6); Khnoumou, the father of the gods in Egyptian mythology, molded men out of clay on a potter's wheel (p. 6; the Dyaks of Sakarran, Borneo, have the first man molded from damp earth by their god Salampandai (p. 14); the Nias of Sumatra believe their god, Luo Zaho, did the same thing (p. 15). The Cheremiss of Russia, a Finnish people, believe the Creator molded a man out of clay (p. 22); the god Juok of the Shilluks of the White Nile molded a man from different colored clays, thus ingeniously explaining the origin of white, red and black races (p.22); the Ewe-speaking tribes of Togoland, in West Africa think that God still makes men out of clay, using good clay and bad clay for good and bad people respectively (p. 23); finally, the Peruvian Indians of Tiahuanaco believe that the Creator restored men after the great Flood by molding them from clay (p. 28).

So I suppose there are deep roots in the human urge to form creatures from clay - something springing from our ancient history as a species, something embedded in the limbic brain, that sets a spark to the process of creating things from clay. This is not an original urge, certainly, but something rooted deep in tradition, myth, and the essence of being.

And so here I remain, hands coated in clay to the wrists, hair askew, surrounded by tiny, pallid limbs, ensconced in  the process of creating my own miniature mythology.