Jill Berry Blog

living the creative life

Vahana

Posted on July 26, 2008 - Filed Under Being an Artist

 I just got an email from my friend Deedee who has both taken my classes and hired me to teach for the YMCA. We have been in discussion about trying to define my art, or how to explain what my classes are about. She suggested that for me, books may be a vahana of sorts. She included this passage from Wikipedia. 

Vâhana or a Hindu vehicle, sometimes called a mount, is an animal, mythical entity or chimera (or sometimes a divine attribute) closely associated with a particular deity in Hindu mythology. Sometimes the deity is iconographically depicted riding and/or mounted on the vahana; other times, the vahana is depicted at the deity’s side or symbolically represented as a divine attribute. The vahana may be considered an accoutrement^[1] of the deity: though the vahana may act independently, they are still functionally emblematic or even syntagmatic of their “rider”. 

 Oh I so love this! The image of me riding the books, them keeping me up, acting as a floating foundation of stories, having their own journey.  I am thinking this is a painting I need to do. Again I am grateful for the friends I have, and how exciting their minds are. My latest Vahana is a book I am calling Cathedral del Dia. I started by translating a piece called Poet’s Journal by Wosene Kosrof into my own painting that includes symbols that represent a woman’s day. There are marks for the children, pets, husband, village, sunrise and sunset. This has since turned into a book structure that will be auctioned off at Art Unraveled next week in Phoenix. The money goes to a good cause, and will allow my vahana to carry goodness and generosity out there. And after the auction, someone else will be riding it.

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