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Shamanic Ravens Roosting in Taos
Visual Storyteller Beth Surdut introduces Listening To
Ravens~ Drawings, Myths and Realities at the Charles
Collins Gallery on the Plaza.
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Walks Like a Man
In my dream, a raven walks like a man.
My friend Cuervo, who grew up in Columbia and
looks like an aging grandee, warned me, “If you
see a really big raven, I mean, one that is just
too big like a dog, it’s a spirit or a brujo,
and not a good one.”
Raven lopes towards me, mouth wide open, but I
can’t tell what he wants, so I wake up.
I draw every feather and shadow until he walks
off the page to tell me why he is here.
Beth Surdut, Visual Storyteller
Santa Fe, New Mexico 2009
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It's been a year since Raven called Beth Surdut to
the high desert of New Mexico to create the art and
story of Listening To Raven, an ongoing exploration of
science and spirit. Raven demands her full attention,
calling to her dancing on her roof and thieving eggs
from the songbird's nest outside her studio, coming to
her in dreams.
"Drawing ravens is an intimate process--- preening each
bird gently into existence until a unique character
emerges from the page to tell me why he is here. These
detailed story drawings, created with pen and pencil,
heart and mind, are a vision quest expanded by paying
attention to small moments," says Surdut.
Throughout history, humans have sought to understand
life by fabricating tales of creation, destruction, and
survival. The character of Raven appears as trickster
and bringer of magic in stories that fly through time
and territory, his cleverness ultimately providing
humans with surprising benefits.
Surdut is known as a seasoned colorist, architectural
art glass designer, painter, and textile artist, and her
work is exhibited in museums and collected
internationally. Moving from the realm of luminous
decorative art, this new medium combines form and fable.
As Raven reveals himself to her, a new mythology and
awareness emerges. Listening To Raven inspires people
who never before looked at a bird with curiosity to now
bring Surdut stories the way a cat proudly sets a mouse
at its owner's feet. This recognition of life heretofore
unexamined develops a personal involvement with nature
that she hopes will set us on a road to saving what is
left of our endangered planet.
Listening to Ravens
http://surdut.blogspot.com/
Art for the mind and body at
www.bethsurdut.com
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