"What the audience saw when a dancer looked through the eyes of the mask was the Goddess Herself, ancient and yet contemporary, looking across time, across the miles." ...............Diane Darling
I, Lauren Raine, can take credit for making the masks in the Masks of the Goddess collection, but the Project belonged to many people who wrote the stories, performed, created rituals, danced, and prayed. Any work of art, especially a long collective work of art, is like a window into another universe.
And a great work of art breaks that window, and reveals something that goes on far beyond the picture plane. That's how I feel about this collective work of art - the Goddesses have come alive in the lives and telling of so many women, and as those women aspected the "face of the Goddess" She touched their lives as Her ancient stories became contemporary and personal. And as these communities invoked the Goddess through the medium of masks, She planted seeds for others as well. The work continues on beyond the picture plane.
Photos below are from the Archive of performances by Lauren Raine and Collaborators 1999 - 2019. To read Excerpts from the Archives about each Goddess, including mythology, interviews, performance scripts, poems, stories, and other contributions by participants, please follow the link from each Mask in the Mask section below.
Photographs are by: Jerri Jo Idarius, Ileya Stewart, Thomas Lux, Peter Hughes, Ann Beam and Lauren Raine
I, Lauren Raine, can take credit for making the masks in the Masks of the Goddess collection, but the Project belonged to many people who wrote the stories, performed, created rituals, danced, and prayed. Any work of art, especially a long collective work of art, is like a window into another universe.
And a great work of art breaks that window, and reveals something that goes on far beyond the picture plane. That's how I feel about this collective work of art - the Goddesses have come alive in the lives and telling of so many women, and as those women aspected the "face of the Goddess" She touched their lives as Her ancient stories became contemporary and personal. And as these communities invoked the Goddess through the medium of masks, She planted seeds for others as well. The work continues on beyond the picture plane.
Photos below are from the Archive of performances by Lauren Raine and Collaborators 1999 - 2019. To read Excerpts from the Archives about each Goddess, including mythology, interviews, performance scripts, poems, stories, and other contributions by participants, please follow the link from each Mask in the Mask section below.
Photographs are by: Jerri Jo Idarius, Ileya Stewart, Thomas Lux, Peter Hughes, Ann Beam and Lauren Raine
PERFORMANCES: