Spirit Boat - 1

This is the beginning of a new 365 Make Something project (aka Morning Pages aka daily creative. Take your pick.) The new theme is Spirit Boat, taken from the old Viking idea of the spirits of the dead heading out on boats. Since the Vikings were all about the sea, most of their analogies involved sea-going vessels in one way or another.

I first become entranced with spirit boats in 1992 while researching artistic concepts for a typography class. I saw a photo of a Viking spirit boat sculpture while leafing through a magazine. There were little primitive figures in the boat to show the dead heading out to the spirit world. I was stunned by the concept of activating and manipulating the spiritual realm through the creation of a physical object. Don't ask me why the Egyptians didn't do this for me. They just didn't.

Seeing the boat sculpture, led me to look at just about any container as a mode for transporting spirit. The designed page (and art) had an intention that could be described as a carrier, or boat, and message expressed through color and form. I played around with what I remembered of plastic space seeing that as the expressive form of spirit.

While meditating today, I focused on the spiritual in my work, which has always been there in one way or another. Indeed, my process is based on inspiration which comes from the moment. To explore spiritual aspects more directly, I will be making at least one spirit boat each day. And I mean boat in the most abstract sense as a carrier or container for spirit(s).

Those of you interested in Viking ships, there's a museum in Denmark where you can learn to make and sail Viking ships.

Sketch from my notebook - 11/1992