17.5″ w x 18″ t x 4″ w
The work is an artistic representation of a 9th century Celtic book shrine. Those were made of a wooden base, covered in metalwork and stones. They served by carrying sacred texts, sometimes into battle, and were often permanently sealed. The Celtic word for the shrine is “Cumdach” and they were dedicated to a saint.
My shrine is a plastic box, manipulated to resemble a book and covered in mulberry papers. It is dedicated to Algonquin/Mohawk saint Kateri Tekakwitha, patron saint of Indigenous people, the Environment and God’s Creation.
Mixed media, clay, leather, deer antler, found objects.
The piece is wired for hanging. However, I endeavored to find an antique Bible holder for it so it could be a standing display more like an antiquity. No such luck.

A part of my contemplative practice is to make space to hear my ancestors speak to me and through me for the work. One part I struggled with was locating the niché for Saint Kateri. I needed just the right size wooden “dish” to float into a hole I would create in the turtle shell. After exhausting usual inspirational outlets (Goodwill, Black Dog, Habitat) my ancestor practice led me to a wooden souvenir coin dish my grandparents brought back from their honeymoon in 1938 at Niagara Falls! I was able to screw through the dish and also create the Kateri figure onto it. This felt like a collaboration with spirit. It was during this trip that my grandparents first learned of Kateri and the hope to have her one day canonized in the Catholic Church (she was canonized 74 years later in 2012). The couple returned with their children, my aunt and Mother, in 1948 and visited the village Kateri was from and the shrine dedicated to her. My fascination with the story drew me to consume all I could about Indigenous spirituality and that also led me to doubt Catholicism, or any organized religion, where dressed up white people alternately sit, stand and kneel, dirging their way through “Faith of Our Fathers”.

I am deeply aware there is a conflict in celebrating Saint Kateri because of the history of the missionary church and schools and the erasure and torture of Indigenous peoples. This quote sums it best:
“Mohawk writer Doug George-Kanentiio further noted the concern that Tekakwitha’s sainthood may be used as way to influence Iroquois away from their Indigenous ancestral values, stating:
[Tekakwitha’s sainthood] should never obscure the best elements of our aboriginal spirituality, nor should Kateri’s personal behaviors, given their extremities [i.e., self-mutilation with whips, thorns, and hot coals], be endorsed as a model for women anywhere. […] Women in particular need not kneel in supplication to any man or any god but to rise to dance and sing in true joy. […] We can never accept any institution which actively suppresses women or qualifies their potential.”

Perhaps it is the Indigenous invitation to “dance and sing in true joy” that sums up what I ache for in spiritual practice with other humans. Perhaps it is the honoring of women and their importance.

I’d like to comment on the illuminated title. I have studied lettering, calligraphy, ancient scripts, Book of Kells. I’ve been obsessed with lettering since I was about 9 when my Mother shared an album her Uncle Phil had illuminated for my grandfather’s birthday. Uncle Phil was a Redemptorist priest, a missionary in Puerto Rico, an avid horseman and a talented artist and singer. I never met him. He died in 1950. I have used that illuminated album as a guidepost. He has been a teacher to me, from spirit, all these many years.

I have reflected earlier on the heightened attention to nature and some of the drama I noticed. The Peregrine falcon swooping away with a mama squirrel’s baby shocked me and at once made me aware of the empathy we should share with Mothers across nationalities and even across species. I included a depiction of the encounter on the title banner.

I’m holding “Art-n-Soul Club” at Villages of Lincoln for elementary and middle school kids. As we were painting outside last week, two kids started screaming bloody murder! It turns out there was a praying mantis beneath the table. They had no idea what it was. I’m excited to tie art in with nature.

Species are counting on us. To stop spraying poison, to stop the deadly march for perfect lawns, to stop bagging leaves! Thus, in a way, they are watching us. I included various animal eyes as gems on the piece. The discovery of the eyes as a secondary “gotcha” by the viewer perhaps could be a “wake up call” to the viewer.

The North American continent is called “Turtle Island” by Indigenous peoples, thus the turtle shell. Some Native tribes ascribe a lunar calendar to the turtle’s shell with 13 moons and 28 day cycle.

There are days I am completely overwhelmed at the sense of loss I feel from the desecration of wildlife. Returning to Roanoke from North Carolina on Rt. 220 last month, we came across a bear – just hit. The small car was off to the left and people stood about. The bear lay in the middle of the right lane. She was a beauty, close to 500 pounds. As I gazed out the passenger window, I looked directly into her coal black eyes. Her spirit was gone. I cursed the drought that likely brought her down the mountain. And I cursed mankind. It was Sunday. Traffic was light. How do you not avoid a 500 pound bear!? But every day, smashed grey carcasses pave our roads. I murmur “wake up my love, wake up” at each one to practice empathy lest I become jaded to the loss.
I counted the monarchs this year, seeing just five.
Most often, when I pray, it is for the animals. Asking St. Francis (patron of animals) or St. Kateri to intercede and protect the groundhog kits along Valley View Blvd as they munch grasses. To steer the Evans Spring deer herd away from Melrose Ave. For the opossum to keep all her kits upon her back.
For that, in a nutshell, is my faith. Childlike. I have no doubt. “For His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.” Matthew 6:25-27

“I am the skin of water the wind plays over; I am petal, feather, stone”

Think about that! “The skin of water”?! We are 60% water!

From my Syllabus for Carillion Healing Arts:
“November 1: “I am sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek. I am really here, alive on the intricate earth under trees.” – Annie Dillard.
“Ancient Egyptians thought the Sycamore the gateway to the Afterlife. As we prepare for our Light Procession at sundown, we will make simple lanterns from glass jars and sycamore bark, lighting the gap between Earth and sky.”

* Sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek, the author considers the idea that one purpose of humanity is to help “hallow” the things of creation. I particularly like this concept and returns me to the question of “what if everything is sacred?”.

To go back to the Bible:
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you.”
—Job 12:7–8

Dillard prays to God through nature and doesn’t entirely trust God, calling him a “maniac”, “ like a monk on the road carrying a hot coal which doesn’t warm him and which he does not need-but with which he won’t part. She trusts nature…but still sees reflected both beauty and terror.
That distrust is something I feel with organized religion and not so much for the Creator. If God bids we go to the very nature that He created for reassurance of His power, majesty, and wisdom-then, it is incumbent upon us to accept the collateral damage within nature as each species pursues survival.
Dillard’s work bids us to observe nature more deeply. I would add to also use an artist’s eye. Sometimes, I remove my glasses to see with my poor vision as the world appears as colorful zygotes in an impressionistic blur. In the moonlight, fireflies gather to blink and celebrate the night, lighting the way for the fae to dance among them. Clouds in the sky morph into one animal after another…deer…bear….fish….a beloved, long deceased, canine companion.

The self-inflicted torture that Kateri Tekakwitha subjected herself to is shocking. Another piece of Catholicism that confuses me is this elevation of self-torture. I think it is unhealthy and likely a trauma response. Nothing about this practice is “self-care”. Perhaps a series that celebrates self-care, but in a church hierarchy. “The Fourteen Stations of Self-care”. My Mother had a kitchen Madonna that depicted Mary in house clothes, a broom in her hand with (blonde-haired🙄) toddler Jesus at her feet reaching up for her. Why not celebrate healthy family patterns rather than the Pieta image of the bloody, dying Jesus in Mary’s arms?

I learned leatherwork is harder than it looks. I learned that applying animal paws to the work makes the work gruesome. I learned (again) that I want to understand my own Indigenous heritage. What did my Irish ancestors do at the time of the Book Shrine. What did the forests look like then?