Glass vessels were objects of containment in medieval alchemy. The glass containers in which an alchemist conducted their operations using the transformative heat of alchemical fire were critical to the magnum opus and in securing the golden treasure of the “philosopher’s stone.” The goal of alchemy, on both physical and psychic levels, was to free the spirit trapped in matter. Thus, the vessel in alchemical process, can be understood as an object that both contains and disperses, and was a space where experimentation on prima materia took place to produce material changes in states of matter and psycho-spiritual shifts in oneself. From a depth psychological perspective, psyche appears to be only what it contains. In this sense, the alchemist herself becomes the vessel or container in which psychological operations and spiritual growth take place amidst the many external changes occurring in experimentations with physical matter in the alchemist’s laboratory. Archetypal Psychologist James Hillman emphasizes the elemental, spiritual, material, and psychological link between glass, psyche, and vessel in Archetypal Psychology, which serves as source of inspiration for the conceptual explorations on time, memory, space, and consciousness in What I Really Needed Was A Vessel. “Glass: like air, like water, made of earth, made in fire. Glass: like psyche, is the medium by which we see into, see through. Glass: the physical embodiment of insight. Glass: the vessel of inside revelation.”

Mirror of Alcyone is the result of a collaboration with the 2019 life event of totaling my Subaru and my 2020 viewing of M45 with C14HD in the Mojave Desert.

Messier (M45) is an open star cluster made up of thousands of stars that are loosely bound by gravity, but visually dominated by a handful of its brightest members called The Pleiades, or The Seven Sisters: Maia, Alcyone, Asterope, Celaeno, Taygete, Electra, and Merope. Like fireworks illuminating dark clouds at night, the star’s light reflects off the surface of pitch-black clouds of cold gas laced with dust and produces a reflection nebula.

M45 is located nearly 400 light-years away, and the stars of the Pleiades are thought to be hundreds of times more luminous than the sun. In Mayan and Aztec culture, the Pleiades-sun alignment is recognized in the architectural calculations of archaeological complexes Teotihuacan and Chichen Itza, and the star cluster has a direct connection with the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. Quetzalcoatl is related to gods of the wind, the planet Venus, and the arts. Pyramidologists working in Egypt in the last twelve years have found pyramidal texts that suggest the Egyptians revered the Pleiades as a higher divine star system, especially Alcyone, its brightest star, and singled out the Pleiades as the goddess Hathor, who carried the seeds of life. Humankind has always looked up to the Pleiades star constellation for guidance. Sailors have relied on the stars for navigation, and farmers for when to sow and harvest their crops. The Pleiades in Japanese culture is known as “Subaru,” which translates to ‘unite’ or ‘unity’.

A Photon’s Flight references meditations on holocosmology, inspirations from personal encounters with meteorological phenomena, and draws upon recent arts-based research on perceptual reality, consciousness, and the ways in which matter and energy shape our understanding of the universe.

A shimmering arch of prismatic raindrops; touching earth, yet unearthly; the optical phenomenon of the rainbow is formed when sunlight or moonlight strikes a matrix of raindrops, drizzle, or fog. The droplets act as a prism, refracting and reflecting the white light of the sun. To an observer positioned between the sun and the rain, an ephemeral kaleidoscopic arc of brilliant translucent color appears. For many, the rainbow represents renewal and is a luminous unifier of chaos and order, an elemental talisman symbolic of the imaginal bridge linking the visible known world with all that is invisible and unknown. A Photon’s Flight reveals and reinforces the notion that psyche and nature are inextricably interwoven.

The age-old recital “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust,” reveals not only our illusions of existence and time, but also our deceptions around the connection between humans and Nature, matter and spirit.

Ash is what remains after living matter has been touched by fire and burned to its primary essence. Ash is the final extract of a life cycle, the raw residue which can undergo no further elemental breakdown. We know from an ecological and scientific perspective, and from our observations of cycles in Nature, that ash is also a fertilizer for soil and the prima materia, or primal state of material and psychological transformation. Ash is the origin of new life, the catalyst for the phoenix of rebirth, and fuels the biological fecundity of creative and environmental landscapes.

Graveyard Dust is a simultaneous emergence of luminous veils of light and a return to origin, materialized in diffraction patterns of light, and is rooted in meditations on death, iridescence, memory, and the invisible.