Shamanistic Sigils

I was walking the Beaumont walking trail heading south. Just past the Beaumont Post Office, I came across the paintings shown above. If you drive the loop around the Post Office parking lot, they are on your right at the end of the parking lot.

I really like these. IMO, some 14-15 YO in our neighborhood is a real artist (more below). I tweeted this picture and referred to them as "shamanistic glyphs". A glyph is actually a single character in a set - a better description would have been "shamanistic sigils".

The left image is of a white tree with bleeding leaves, enclosed in, an egg penetrated by several sperm??? Or cherries in a pie??? Somehow I am getting "nature distressed".

The central image is where it gets shamanistic. The 4 spirals are self-hypnosis devices - welcome to a shamanistic trance. The central white test pattern is reminiscent of voodoo veves.

The right image I remembered as more mathematical than it is - a contrast to the left image, creating a nature vs technology narrative. On reexamination, it is a single spiral. The 4 ovals can give an impression of depth, to where the spiral is descending into the concrete. I have no clue what the green & white objects in the lower left are. This and the central image also are reminiscent of mandalas.

Ha ha. Of course you know that my interpretations of this art are complete BS.

I was privileged on several occasions to do multi-hour museum tours with my oldest daughter Erica, who is an artist. I remember in particular spending 4-5 hours at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, when she was a senior in high school and was going to spend the next night in an MIT dorm. I also remember several hours at the Met, which I blogged about.

In a small measure, she taught me to see through her artist's eyes. 1 thing I believe I learned is, art is like science fiction - it is all about edge, about making people think new thoughts, get a different take on reality. The, what, urban tribalism of these paintings screamed "art" to me.

But, getting back to BS. This multi-media piece that Erica did in high school has hung in every office I have worked in for close to 20 years. It may or may not be titled "Creation".

I was like, "Erica, I get it! The left is mathematics, the upper right is physics, the lower right is biology! Right?" The response: "No, dad. It's art."

So my analysis is BS, but it was still very pleasant to encounter what I would consider real art in the wild.