Galleria Leukos Artist Article by Frederico

Sisterhood in no way implies misandry.

According to Corbet, woman is the origin of the world. Without a doubt
Lynn Creighton wouldn’t contradict him. At the very most would she find him a bit faint-hearted, falling far short of the truth. The work of this American artist is entirely vested in the celebration of the feminine principle.

For all that, let us not think that Lynn Creighton is like Egeria (a nymph
advisor to the second legendary king of Rome, Numa Pompilius), a
representative of political feminism, a worshipper of canonical feminism, as a fixed caricature. No, she is an ambassador of femininity in its globalness, its cosmic aspect, its reality as universal vector of the continuity of existence and perhaps also of the continuity of more subtle principles (which still elude our understanding) of the deep reality of appearances.

To say of her that she is a priestess of Demeter, a messenger of Tiran
(island and narrow straits in between the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea),
perpetuator of the cult of Aphrodite, would be dismissive; to convince oneself (of this) it is only necessary to examine her sculptures. Looking them over one soon understands that beyond the representation--often hyperbolic--of physical characteristics that are specifically feminine, she speaks to us above all of the body: not at all searching to flatter the plastic for its own sake, but for the purpose of making us rediscover fundamental principles which centuries of obscurantism--cultural, religious, and social--have desperately tried to destroy, but which have succeeded only in masking them.

Lynn Creighton makes herself a proselyte of that femininity which
ancient cultures, ever since the Aurignacian and its steatopygous Venuses had, through anthropomorphism, transformed into deities named Gaia, Inanna,
Astarte--all incarnations of primordial forces at once ephemeral and immortal, which support the essential energy transmitted along the thread of existence by the omnipotent entity called Life (capable of taking many forms). Complex form, at once universal and unique, of which the ineluctable apoptosis (falling away, like petals and leaves) appears indispensable to subsequent cosmogenesis and which, by some disruptive procedure, slips at the moment of death into the following abstract expression of entity which, by doing this, teaches us that existence is discontinuous but also at the same time eternal Life.

2011 april 9

Celebration of Life exhibit opens at Studio at Channel Islands Art Center in Camarillo

“Celebrating Life” reflects three artists’ interpretations of the potential for life to be a celebration as each person recognizes the gift of who he or she actually is. When all of these blessings are manifest the energy to live fully increases. Life becomes a celebration with the personal strength and wisdom gained by moving through pitfalls, trials, problems and distractions. Loss causes pain that fully infuses the will to live with energy to engage in the whole process. How we use our time and attention, how we focus, how we laugh, sing, dance, play and make love reflect our decision to fully celebrate ourselves and kindle the spark of life within us all."

Lynn

Grandmother Speaks

I am a clay artist finding the form of life as I find form in clay

I am a sculptor making female figures which erupt from the clay, my hands, and my imagination in dynamic pursuit of life as a celebration. 

It is being an artist searching for the truth of who women are that forces me to speak with words as well as the sculptures which express the idea in form.  This sculpture asserts the possibility of common knowledge and allegiance to the truth of women’s creative potential as a gateway to a planet free of abuse, annihilation, and intoxication, lying with impunity, greed, lust, and squandering the gifts.  We must keep this gateway open and draw people to it which now I attempt to do with words.

I will show how my thinking developed and how my voice gained authenticity; how I came to goddess and women’s issues from deep study of Native American traditions. My teacher called himself a Twisted-hair Medicine man, one who weaves together the teachings of many tribes and makes them a new whole thing.  He taught me how to lead the transformational ceremonies that brought many of these insights.

Revealed to me was the recognition that the feminine was not being celebrated in women’s lives as I gradually remembered my own abuse and the predominance of abuse in our land and the huge numbers who are suffering because of the abuse they endured.

Much of this abuse is sexual abuse and it points to our imbalance around our sexual energy and it distorts all aspects of our lives because sexual energy is at the very core of our being.  A fundamental right and blessing of life has been shredded into a torment, a power tool, a mechanism for control.  Abuse and its disruption of sexual energy is a central issue for our society that is not recognized or talked about.  We have been cast away from sexuality’s capacity to provide delight and energy for activity, to raise the human condition to a celebration of life, and to access the core of our own being.   Without orgiastic  connection to our own fundamental nature we function in an imbalanced, untruthful way, out of sync with natural ebb and flow of life, making choices and decisions that are not connected to the truth of ourselves and that do not serve the planet:  dams are built and water diverged without attention to what is being lost; nuclear energy is encouraged with full knowledge that there is no known method to safely dispose of nuclear waste; products are packaged with materials that fill up land-fills; water is sold in containers that harm the drinker and refuse to degrade in land-fills; recycled paper is not finding its way to paper towels and toilet paper; mothers toss disposable diapers on the asphalt in the parking lot and teenagers and grandparents toss their gum wrappers, then their gum, their cigarettes, their coffee cups and beer cans out the window into the blooming lupin; young girls are carried across borders or just down the street to be sold into prostitution.  People smile indifferently at each other without paying any attention.  Words are exchanged without knowledge or understanding being sought or extended.  We continue to expand our cities beyond their boundaries cutting down orange orchards, vineyards, covering rich strawberry-growing soil with track-houses and shopping malls.  The people who buy these homes sit tense and hunched and crawling on the freeways breathing each others fumes and dreaming of seeing their baby’s first steps.  Masturbation is condemned and sexual impropriety in the oval office is easier to talk about as lying and perjury than as inappropriate sexual behavior by a highly respected leader.  Children are left to their own devices while Mom and Dad work two to four jobs to pay for the SUV assault-weapon, the second home computer, and the six-foot TV screen.  Deprived of the full power of our sexual energy, we function inadequately in our lives obviously making poor choices that could be avoided if our minds and bodies were properly tuned by high-level sexuality.  Our unwillingness to talk about sexuality and own it as a fundamental right and blessing containing the energy to activate inner knowing is the other-side of our blind, willy-nilly over-production, over-consumption, and over-weight gross national product.

I believe.....

We haven't heard enough from the women, yet.

It is not enough to be educated, hired, paid, accepted and promoted.

These advances are all with respect to a cultural system that still denies women full access to the truth of who they are, to the full expression of their own voice, to honoring and respect for their difference (to say nothing of the access to wealth).  Women are still faced with the task of accessing their own truth and speaking from their own gut.

After all these years of believing that we are facing up to the difficulty, women still believe that they need a man to be, that they must win the man with the ploys they have practiced, that the man's recognition is what will make them.  Under this belief structure is the mystery of who she would be if she trusted herself, of what she would offer if she were truthful, of what the planet would look and feel like if she were making her own genuine contribution.

This is the reality I have been looking at for many years.  I am searching for the means to bring about full awakening and remembering.