Heaven Is for Virgins

size: 7 7/8 x 7 7/8″ (20 x 20cm)
medium: dimensional cut paper

Compared to the mayfly-like lifespans of us puny humans, the stars are infinite. So too is their power to captivate our minds and imaginations. We dream of visiting them and, when we can’t do that, we sit back with a bottle of wine and try to pick out familiar shapes and stories among those uncountable pinpricks of light.

Like the forever chaste Virgo. Except that oops, she’s not that innocent. Turns out that for about a billion years (just a loose estimate), from the ancient Babylonians through the Greeks and Romans, the big V was a fertility goddess. Now, I’m a little rusty on this sort of thing but I’ve never heard of a virginal fertility goddess before. It kind of flies in the face of the job description. It wasn’t until medieval times that she reclaimed her maidenhood (is that even possible?) and became associated with the Virgin Mary.

Much like A Great Ol’ Bear I experimented some with dimensionality here, suspending Virgo in front of the sparkly background paper. The patterns and positive/negative cuts make some interesting shadows in the right light. While I was making this piece, I held it up in front of my desk lamp to examine some of the cuts, and was surprised by how beautiful it was illuminated from behind. Sometime in the future, I’ll have to play around with illumination (kind of like Tim Budden is doing with his work right now). Sometime when I have more resources available to me than one cheap desklamp.