Metafiction, Myth and Language: A World in Words (and Pictures)

  Having not been home the last couple of days, I needed to get back into some of the 'heavy' work and managed to bash out this rather 'primitive' and 'amateur' rendering of the main character of the epic poem - evidently carved by a friend or colleague of hers, whether a fellow member of Greyfair clan or even one of the other characters mentioned in the text. I used a much wider chisel (in truth a ground-down screwdriver) and hammer, eschewing fine lines and going straight for the memorialization aspect, whilst encapsulating the essence of the character. Rustic, basic but inherently honest in its intentions - perhaps the essence of 'folk art'. I like how the thick, simple lines are also suggestive of the English chalk hill figures: The Cerne Abbas Giant and the Wilmington Long Man - hill figures which have fascinated me for over 30 years This was my first attempt at writing actual Gyldish runes, namely her name and title: "Womba Wislig" (Womba

 Another nice afternoon (at least meterologically) allowed me to get outside again and do more engraving - this time, tackling the 27kg slab of sandstone which will be the 'lunar stone', depicting the lunner goddess Mægtha and her hermaphrodite consort, Hretha. Mægtha is the goddess of the full moon while her pendant also depicts the lunar phases - crescents, gibbous and full. This was the first part of the work: And the point at which I left it, about an hour and a half later: Only the sickle remains to be outlined thicker, and then it'll just be a case of deepening the grooves and thoroughly washing it all so it doesn't look too fresh. I decided to improvise a bit by turning er right breast into a spiral to create a vertical sequence running down the body. The straight lines and the spiral motifs have just made me think of the work of Richard Long ( A Line Made by Walking ) and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. The line/spiral designs look like they could be aids to