The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Photos by Sandra Saldanha

Montaigne. - Apology for Raimond Sebond

" And whereas all the other things, wether beast or vessel,

 that enter into the dreadful gulf of his monster's (whale's) mouth,

 are immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires

 into it in a great security, and there sleeps."

Montaigne. - Apology for Raimond Sebond.

Photo and Mixed Media Installation (The Vessel or The Whale) by Sandra Saldanha

Doing and Undoing... by Sandra Saldanha

The rituals of making...
a constant  process of doing and undoing...

, between pain and pleasure... 
privacy and  disclosure...
 fact and fable...

 a never end love affair 
between the artist and object making.

Poem and Photo ( The Pram - 3D Mixed Media Installation) by Sandra Saldanha

Arachne's Myth by Ovid (continues...)

Photos by Sandra Saldanha

Arachne's Myth by Ovid

Arachne

"Minerva, who'd lent an attentive ear to the Muses' narration.

Commended their song and their justified anger against the Pieredes,

Then she said to herself: 'Is praising enough? I also need to be praised in turn. No mortal shall scoff at my power

unpunished.'  She therefore considered how best to dispose of a Lydian

girl called Arachne, who claimed ( so she'd heard) to equal herself

in working with wool.

Arachne's distinction lay not in her birth

or the place that she hailed from but solely her art. Her father , Idmon

of colophon, practised the trade of dyeing wool in Phocaean

purple;her mother was dead but, like her husband had come

 from the people. Their daughter, however had gained a high reputation

throughout the Lydian towns for her work with wool, although

she'd be born in a humble home and lived in a village, Hypaepa.

The nymphs used often to live their haunts, Mount Tmolus' vines

or the banks of the river Pactolus, to gaze on Arachne's amazing

artistry, equally eager to watch her hand in progress

(her skill was so graceful) as much as to look at the finished article.

Perhaps she was forming the first round clumps

 from the wool in its crude state,

shaping the stuff in her fingers  and steadily teasing the cloud-like

fleece into long soft threads. She might have been deftly applying

her thumb to the polished spindle.

Or esle they would watch embroider

 a picture. Whatever she did, you would know Minerva had taught her.

Arachne herself, in indignant pride, denied such a debt.

'Let us hold a contest,' she said. 'If I'm beaten, I'll pay any forfeit.' (...) "

Extract from Metamorphoses by Ovid translated by Denis Feeney

Photos by Sandra Saldanha

Myth and Dream by Joseph Campbell

" (...)  myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of  primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth. (...) "

Extract from  The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Myth and Dream) by Joseph Campbell

Photo by Sandra Saldanha

500 Viewers!!! Thank you for visiting my Blog!

Dear friends,

Thank you all for your support!

I hope to see you again in the next year!

Dance , Music, Art and Poetry 

has inspired me to write and create mixed media works,

, but above all they helped me to look closer within my landscape and appreciate the gifts of life

that are around me.

Now half way through my own journey,

 I start to understand what really matters during my passage in this world .

I am specially thankful for the love of my family and friends.

I would like to wish you all Happy Holidays

and a Very Creative, Prosperous, Loving New Year!

Photo and Text by Sandra Saldanha

Joseph Campbell's on Heros

"The hero . . . discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh."

Text by Joseph Campbell

The Pram ( details ) by Sandra Saldanha

" Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke, with immense velocity."

John Hunter's account of the dissection of a Whale. ( A small sized one.)

From Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville, Extracts xxxi

Photo and Intallation The Pram ( detail ) by Sandra Saldanha

THE Wooden Horse (detail)

"Quick, give me some horsehair."

She scoured the key,

but it would not stop bleeding.

Drop after drop

of pure red blood

issued from the tiny key.

From 'Bluebeard' 

-Women Who Run With the Wolves

by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Photo & Installation by Sandra Saldanha

The Wardrobe ( detail ) by Sandra Saldanha

"How cold I grew", (says Dante) how faint with fearfulness

Ask me not, Reader; I shall not waste breath

Telling what words are powerless to express;

This was not life , and yet it was not death;

                                                      (Ibid., lines 22-25)

From  Dante's The Divine Comedy - Hell

Photo & Installation by Sandra Saldanha

The Wardrobe ( detail ) by Sandra Saldanha

Afterlife

"Like oranges we roll right off the table.
I am lost like a goldfish stuck in sky.
No news of you, but I cry out
and you appear, carrying a photograph


of life tormented trees - how glad we are
to see our old stiff selves released
sucked down, and melting at the seams.
We'll make the mistakes we wished we'd made.


They say the soul might have some choice -
I could for instance be a taste or smell, 
something sharp curled on the tongue.
You and I as leopard breath or song.


From ' Split World'

Poems 1990 - 2005

by Moniza Alvi


Photo e Installation by Sandra Saldanha

The Locket (details) by Sandra Saldanha

"... in those abyss places that are preverbal and primal,

 where psyche and body meet on the borderline,

 where all is timeless and spaceless

 and the patterns of the magical level of consciousness hold."

Text by Sylvia Brinton Perera

 3D Mixed Media Installation by Sandra Saldanha

Totem Poles from the Vancouver Islands @ The British Museum

From the ground,

its startling colour stopped people dead in their tracks,

 from the air, it stood like a beacon and was visible from miles away.

Like much of the surrounding landscape, the tree was incorporated

 into the Haida's vast repertoire of stories, but as far as anyone knows ,

 its the only tree, in what was then an infinity of trees,

ever to be given a name by the Haida's people.

From  The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant

Photos by Sandra Saldanha

The Music Box (details) @ Central Saint Martin Window Gallery

(...) She took the keys outdoors, and from the oven she pressed ashes

onto it, and scrubbed some more. She held it to the heat to sear it. 

She laid cobweb over it to staunch the flow, but nothing could make

 the weeping blood subside.

   "Oh, what am I to do?" she cried. "I know, I'll put the little key

 away. I'll put it in the wardrobe. I'll close the door. This is a bad

 dream. All will be aright. " And this she did do. (...)

From  Women Who Run With the Wolves:

Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

'Bluebeard' by Clarissa P. Estes

Mixed Media Installation by Sandra Saldanha

The Music Box (the wardrobe's detail) @ Central Saint Martin Window Gallery

Midway this way of life we're bound upon,

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

Ay me! how hard to speak of it - that rude

And rough and stubborn forest! the mere breath

Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood

It is so bitter, it goes nigh to death;

Yet there I gained such good, that to convey

The tale, I'll write what else I found therewith.

Poem by Dante from The Divine Comedy I: Hell

Translated by D.L. Sayers

Photo and  Mixed Media Installation by Sandra Saldanha

Untitled (detail) Book Collage

Photo and Book Collage by Sandra Saldanha

Untitled (detail) Book Collage

Photo and Book Collage by Sandra Saldanha

Untitled (detail) Book Collage

Photo and Book Collage by Sandra Saldanha

The Music Box ( detail ) @ Central Saint Martins Window Gallery

3D Mixed Media Installation by Sandra Saldanha