With the war still raging in Ukraine, I keep feeling drawn to the imagery in sculptures from my Rosecrans Project, created just after we started the War in Iraq in 2003. I asked the question, “How do we get past War?” of the soldiers who died in our past wars as I sketched alongside their graves during visits to the Rosecrans National Military Cemetery in San Diego.
Interestingly, the Rosecrans sculpture I’ll share with you today did not come from a sketch made at the graves, but I completed it around the same time and included it to fill the kiln when firing the Rosecrans pieces. It later became my “End of Series” piece for the entire project after the naming session revealed its story.
Poseidon’s Ephiphany
At first, the sculpture didn’t seem to have a clear link to moving beyond war, but, in a prescient comment, a young girl attending the naming session suggested that it looked like the Ancient Greek sea god Poseidon. Looking up Poseidon in a mythology book lead us to a story about how the city of Athens was named.
It chronicled a great competition among the gods, all wanting to put their own name on the town. Finally, the other gods decided to pit the two fiercest competitors, Poseidon and Athena, against each other. The winner would get naming rights by creating something of greater worth to humankind than the other. Poseidon created the war horse, an impressive weapon, but he lost out to Athena who created the olive tree, a symbol of peace and a source of food for the people.
I began the Rosecrans Project in support of a readiness expressed around the world at the time to lay down arms and forgo war as a way to solve problems. It saddens me that we still fight on, yet I continue to hold faith that leaders everywhere – of Russia, Ukraine, and beyond – will be blessed with the spiritual insight that their greatest victory for the people and place in history will come when war becomes unnecessary.
The story of this piece continues to unfold. As some of you know, I’ve been working on a book with poet Cheryl Latif of Seattle over this past year. Soon to be published, Reflexions will present 40 of my sculptures accompanied on opposite pages by poems Cheryl wrote with the sculptures as inspiration. Poseidon’s Epiphany is one of the featured sculptures.
Since we’ve reached the final stages of editing and anticipate that our publisher will have books available later this Spring, I’ve decided to give you a taste of what’s soon to come. Here’s Cheryl’s wonderful poem about this piece:
spirit tide
ah, the power of creation
a galloping horse
ready to stand firm on land
serve through life
through war
a gift the gods will surely embrace
suddenly another gift emerges:
a simple olive tree
turns the heads of the gods
roots of life beyond war?
an epiphany of true worth
an epiphany of peace
