Calendrical Art

Each year I give my attention to nine calendrical transition points. Solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days, with Samhain holding two passages, an ending and a beginning. Each transition marks a shift from one perceptual threshold to another, and different kinds of attention become available at each point.

I recognise a resonance with the making process itself. Sometimes layers of the work attune with the contracted, inward conditions of deep winter; other layers with the expansive, outward-facing quality of June. Experiencing and working symbolically with the seasons offers a way of becoming familiar with both external and internal patterns of change. Sometimes a correspondence between them can be felt and worked with.

These transition points also relate to certain alchemical operations and to hexagrams from the I Ching, different systems independently mapping something similar about relation and change.

Calendrical Art Chart, Pencil on Graph Paper, 2023.

At each spiral of the year I become more acquainted with its pattern, seeing further into it and finding new openings. I think of the calendar as an orientation system that supports discovery.