A Gift of Art

Shaman Fan by Ruth Scarlott

At last, I am back to my computer.  It has been a very long week. 

Today I wanted to blog about a gift I received from my step-father.  It is a beautiful and interesting piece entitled Shaman Fan.  This is a beautiful piece by Ruth Scarlott;  born in Reidsville, North Carolina in 10/27/1922  deceased in Norfolk, Virginia on 9/23/2010. 

Ruth was a self-taught artist working in Norfolk, Virginia.  She was a member of the Tidewater Art Alliance.  According to the information I found about her on line, she usually showed her work in local museums and regional shows rather than having her work in galleries.

Ruth Scarlott worked in handmade paper and mixed media collage.  At the time that she began working with these materials, she was the only one in Norfolk using them for several years.  She began making handmade papers because she could not find what she wanted for her work in the range of commercial papers available.  Her need for special paper caused her to study Japanese paper making techniques.

The Shaman Fan is a wonderful example of her work.  The work is made of paper, twigs, vine, bone, thread, and shark's teeth.  Some of the paper you would swear is leather.  I had a very visceral reaction to the work when I first saw it.  You have the feeling that you are viewing something primal, dark, and mysterious.  The work has an energy to it that draws you in and allows you to imagine that a shaman might really have owned this fan at one time.  You wonder what type of person this really was, and how this fan might have come into being.

My step-father gave this piece to me after seeing my are piece:  Shaman Staff.  I had never seen Shaman Fan before creating my own art piece.  Like so many people that collect beautiful and interesting objects, there was not enough space to display everything at once.  My step-father is a photographer and artist.  He has a true eye for art with beauty and energy.  I feel very privileged that he has passed this piece of art to me.

On another subject, I am still working on the rebuild of the downstairs after the plumbing disaster.  We have almost reached another milestone.  We have finished laying the new flooring in the large bedroom.  This weekend the baseboard and trim will be put in.  After that, we will move the furniture back into that room. Yea!  After thirteen weeks we are finally able to move back into our bedroom.  A bed at last.  Sleeping on the floor on an air mattress long term is not very comfortable.  If we had actually understood that it was going to take this long when we started, we would have done something else.  However, by the time we understood that, we were already so far into it that it was pointless in trying to dig the furniture out from the back of the place where it was stored.

After we move the furniture back into the bedroom, we still have one more bedroom to go.  It has to have the old flooring taken up.  After that, we will wash walls, paint, and put in the new flooring and trim.  Only a few more weekends of work and we will have that room completed also.  Then we need to finish putting the furniture back in place in the den and we are done.  It has taken us from the late part of winter through spring to finish the rebuild.  I'm definitely ready to do something else for a while.

Next blog post will be about a contest that may be of interest to my readers.