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Bhakti-Shakti Designs - Built in Xara
Raven Calls
Acrylic and metal leaf on panel - 14x11”
My experience of living half a century in Placitas is filtered through the lens of a graduate degree in art history, which
informs my personal iconography.
These soaring black birds are the one consistent presence in my travels around the desert Southwest, through the
Nevada salt flats, over the Sierras and Cascades to the Northwest Coast. I recall the absolute silence at Chaco broken
only by the flapping of raven wings overhead. In the skies above my studio, I often hear their guttural calls.
In Asia and Native America Raven was known as bringer of light (sun, stars, and moon) to a dark world, and much of my
recent work concentrates on this tradition. However, Raven was long associated with other qualities. Ancient near-
eastern ships carried ravens to aid in navigation, a practice continued by the Vikings. In Norse and Germanic myths Odin
depended on his two ravens Huggin (thought) and Munnin (Memory) to bring news of goings-on around his realm. In
Norse mythology ravens carried fallen warriors to Valhalla, while in Ireland, Raven was one of the manifestations of the
Morrigan.
Ravens speak to me now of the eternal mystery, probed by humans for millennia.
Dorothy Bunny Bowen