In Chinese society during the Qing (CHING) dynasty major life events like a marriage followed exacting rituals that included what the bride wore. Virtually every bit of ornamentation on the bonnet has a symbolic, auspicious meaning. You can see some of these details close up in the "Details" section. Filling a wedding hat with symbols for good wishes made it likely the bride and groom would have happy lives.
Government officials and members of the imperial court were entitled to wear dragon robes. Designs and colors were regulated by rank; for example, only the emperor, the heir apparent, empress, and empress dowager could wear yellow robes. Only the imperial family and high-ranking princes were allowed to wear robes with nine dragons. Only the upper echelons were allowed to wear dragons with five claws; the lower orders wore four-clawed dragons.
Artist’s Statement on Mud Woman Rolls On, written by Roxanne Swentzell:
I propose creating a piece that is made from different forms of “mud.” A large female figure holds a few smaller figures (her children). This style of figure is known as a Storyteller. Pueblo Storytellers are about how knowledge is passed down through generations.
This piece is telling us a story; a story about generations and our connection to the Earth.
In 1954 Kirkland began painting what he called his “Energy in Space Abstractions.” At the time, much remained unknown about the conditions and quality of outer space, which left Kirkland free to depict space any way he could imagine: “My idea of trying to visualize all the things that have been happening in space over 25 billion years gives me the freedom of imagination without being tied down to any exact image of reporting nature. It may come from nature but it’s not the nature we are sure of. It’s a guess kind of nature.
The Wind River Range is part of the Rocky Mountains, located in western Wyoming. Bierstadt identified the river here as the Sweetwater River, and the prominent mountain as Fremont’s Peak, known today as Temple Peak. Bierstadt liked the Wind River area enough to return there after he left the Lander expedition. As one of America’s early artist-explorers, he was looking for personal adventure and hoping to establish his artistic “territory.” The Wind River area is the subject of many of his works.
This painting is based on a Greek mythological story called the “Flood of Deucalion,” which comes from the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. The story goes: After the Greek god Zeus witnessed human arrogance and impiety, he decided to destroy the entire human race with an immense flood. Deucalion [do-KAY-lee-on] was warned by his father, the god Prometheus, of the imminent doom and was told to build an ark, which he and his wife Pyrrha [PEER-uh] floated upon for nine days before settling safely on Mount Parnassus.
In Fox Games, viewers are physically immersed in the work of art as they are able to wander through the installation. "I use familiar spaces… and elements like furniture to take viewers out of the museum and place them in… a place that feels familiar to them. Then I interfere with that reality by changing the elements, changing them in terms of materials," Skoglund says. Her artworks often take the ordinary and make it into an almost dreamlike fantasy.
Hennings was drawn to both the landscape and the people of the Taos area. The bright sunlight of New Mexico inspired his colorful palette. He commented in his later years, “I have been working in Taos many years and I think that should prove that I like it here; the country, the mountains with their canyons and streams, the sage beneath the clouded skies, the adobe village with its Spanish people and of course the Taos Pueblo with its Indians. Their life—domestic and agricultural—with all the color and romance of their dress and history.”
