My Birthday Month!

Yes that means we get to celebrate my birthday for a whole 31 days, I like to make the most out of these sorts of things. I started celebrating a little bit early this year by buying myself a ticket to Scotland and in doing so I decided to take a little look at the role constellations play in Celtic folklore. I found the story of Arianrhod the Celtic Moon Goddess who like the Greek Goddess Ariadne is associated with the constellation Corona Borealis.  Here is an excerpt from an article "Under a Celtic Sky: The lesser-known stories of the stars"In this article they make reference to Arianrhod and many other Celtic lore connected to the constellations.

The upper crest of stars
that spans the arms is
Corona Borealis

"To the Welsh, Perseus represents their hero Llew Llaw Gyffes, who was the child of Arianrhod (herself represented by the constellation Coronae Borealis). He was killed by his treacherous wife and her lover but, at the moment of his death, his soul turned into an eagle: Gwalchmai or the “hawk of May”. His uncle Gwydion searched for him and found him as the constellation Aquila after traversing Sarn Gwydion>, the Milky Way, and eventually restored him to life again. This story ties in with religious beliefs regarding the birth, death and re-birth of the sun from Celtic legends."




Corona Borealis is also referred to as Arianrhod's Castle as many references say that she herself was the moon and Corona Borealis was her palace also known as purgatory because it was there with her attendants that she decides the fate of the dead. She was the Goddess of childbirth, the moon, fertility and fate. 

The dog days of summer

I woke up this morning and found my "Constellation Cancer" was featured in a beautiful summer treasury.



I am so happy it is finally feeling like summer here in Oregon. I love warm evenings where you can sit outside and watch the stars appear in the sky, although the clouds have settled in today so there will be no star gazing tonight.

Exciting News

The wonderful Astrologer Amy Herring has agreed to be a contributing author on the project. I met Amy a couple of years ago right before the release of her book Astrology of the Moon she was looking for a photographer to do her head shots and I got to be that lucky photographer! I always find photographing people to be fascinating, you get to learn so much about them and I learned that not only was Amy a wealth of astrological knowledge, but that she really loved her job. People who have a passion for what they do draw me in and make me want to know more about what they do. I had the opportunity after the shoot to get a reading from her, where I got a first hand look a exactly what it is she does. I learned that astrology is way beyond just the horoscope you find in the back of a magazine, and whether you believe in astrology or not the whole process was extremely interesting.

Of course when I started thinking about including an author to help add some interesting facts on the zodiac to the calendar, Amy was top of my list. We are still working out the exact details of what her part in the project is going to be, but I can guarantee what we come up with will be well worth reading. Keep an eye out in the near future for an author profile where you can get to know Amy a little bit better and learn more about her style of astrology. 

How It All Began

I thought it might be fun to give a little history on how this whole concept came about. It all started one dark and stormy night, wait no sorry that was just me channeling my inner mad scientist. Really it all started one long sleep deprived night during my 3D art course. The studio this class was held in a large warehouse style building on the edge of campus where the photography studio, darkroom and printing studio were also located. I am pretty sure I spent more time in that building than I spent at home, I am not even sure why I had an apartment I could have set up a cot in the art building and saved myself $400 a month.

During this time there was a small group of us that you could count on being in the 3D art studio all night the day before critique which lead to many crazy nighttime adventures, that often consisted of us loudly singing songs from the 80s and dancing around on the long studio tables. The tables also made very good catwalks. I swear we were being productive it was all a part of the creative process. I was also doing a lot of stargazing, probably because I was up at all hours of the night. I had tons of charts for viewing different constellations and planets, I was fascinated with the night sky.

Constellations Corona Australis and Corona Borealis.

I think you can all see where this is going, it was during one of theses crazy sessions, amidst the chaos while I was slathering Mod Podge over a particularly hideous project, I came up with the seemingly brilliant idea of painting constellations on to women's bodies. Luckily the two girls who where also in the studio with me were clearly as just as sleep deprived, because not only did they think it was a good idea they volunteered to be my model and help me paint. Thus the first conceptions of this idea formed.