Good thing I'm down with it... folk magic. I've been asked to make a bottle tree in trade with Rob Damman, a painter artist. I let loose and built up from a car part base incorporating a blue bottles into the structure. Rather than direct weld smaller branches to larger branches I worked out a triangular vocabulary of connections. With some more filling out of branches, the structure will be complete and I can start working on a patina. But also there is the magic...
All I know about bottle trees is that people put them in their yard as folk art. Thinking about it I considered that they might have magical properties, folk art and folk magic are intertwined. I would think that a bottle tree would trap a spirit or haint like it would a bug. Insects don't tend to get the up trap, down freedom concept either. Djinn are trapped in bottles. Cobalt blue tends to be thought warding away the evil eye magic. The bottle tree seems like it would also function like a Cherokee dream catcher, catch the bad spirits who haunt dreams. (I might need a bigger bottle. There are lot's of bad dreams nowadays.) Most Southern folk magic comes from the African traditions. I've had friends who are wary not to cross those traditions. Bad gris gris is bad gris gris.
Here are two articles for some background research.
I like the thought of sculpture to ease the mind and repel bad things. I think for me this separates the fabrication work I do, to make just to make, from the work I do to spark a reaction. An example of this is riding my funky chopper bike and having the old black men sitting in the heat stand up, point and laugh. The message I tend to want to produce is "cheer up, there is plenty of weird wonderful and untamed things." Evil spirits begone!
Bottle tree to be posted later.
Later thought: Obviously I'm into the demon capture aspects of this art. It would be cool to draw modern demons and pre-capture them into bottles. I was thinking of Lynda Barry's 100 Demons graphic novel.
Bumblemoth writes about the bottle trees and the connection to African people warding away the very tangible evil from the world they were kidnapped too. That evil was physical, but also psyche staining and fear creeping.
"This hate is attracted to beauty, to grace, to mystery, to love- those are the evolved qualities that hate seeks to destroy. And so at night it crawls up inside to see what it can destroy. But it’s trapped inside by the reflections and refractions, and in the darkness can’t find its way out.
When the sun rises and illuminates the bottle, the hate is destroyed.
Bottle trees not only testify to a belief that hate can be lured, trapped, contained and destroyed – they also say we can take an active role in hunting it.
A good bottle tree makes a fence – a protective barrier that traps evil before it can get any further. Like in your back door with a burning cross, or a pointy white hood, or a flaming stick thrown through your child’s window.
Symbolic or literal, it is a shout out into the universe: NO. Bottle trees are a sign of war: we will not sit idly by"
This reminds me of when I really started making art while living in DC during the Bush wars. To me, it was sanity making and a small antidote against a psychologically toxic environment. I understand the seriousness of this magic art. I started the my bottle tree playfully, but it really is deadly serious and should be treated as such. It's too easy to minimize or misrepresent.
Bumblemoth also writes:
"One kind of Southerner passes by a bottle tree, knows what it is, and utters an empty homily about folk art, an adage about the limitations of superstition, or an admonition to take that cheap-ass trash to the dump.
The other kind of Southerner passes by a bottle tree, knows what it is, and the ceiling of the world opens up: they say a prayer, or shake their heads in compassionate sorrow. But they go to a very deep place inside the blood where only iron dwells."
When I read this passage, I feel the shivers in my blood. I hope to be that kind of man always... one who goes where the iron dwells.
Bottles starting to cluster on trees. Hannah will arrange the bottles to her specs. It's more personal for her that way. + they're her demons.
The blue bottle tree base. This was the trickiest part. The blue bottle is welded in there. If it breaks there is no going back.
The base: I tried not to be too geometrical with the structure, but I followed a repetition of threes.
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