Sacred Clowns & the Corn Mother

In her rich narrative description of the Corn Mother mural, Pola Lopez writes:

On either side of the mural are placed two Heyoka, or Koshari, Sacred clowns, who are watching this all unfold and are Medicine Men who teach us that we are all mirrors of each other, that we take ourselves too seriously as in our egos, and that we need to practice more respect. 

In close association with the clowns, we find images of the key regional foods:

Wrapped around the curved lines at either end are members of the Three Sisters, our main substance, the squash, the beans and of course corn in the center.

There is not much to add, or perhaps too much to say about clowns and the stories of past, present and future. When I first started to act seriously, in college, my first role was playing the title clown in J.M. Barrie's PANTALOON, an homage to the dwindling Pantomimes in the early 20th C. 

 

Charles Dickens loved clowns, fairy tales and the 1001 tales of the Arabian Nights. He was a devoted fan of the great 19th C. clown, Joseph Grimaldi, and often wrote about the power of his performances. In A Christmas Carol, he makes clear his debt to fairy tales as a tool for focusing on the terrible ways we treat children. His original assignment was to write a parliamentary pamphlet on the Plight of the Poor Man's Child.  That project merged with a 5 year long obsession with mesmerism (originally a medical movement to heal the patient by loosening the bonds of Past, Present and Future), and a close friend had a very sick young son. That political pamphlet turned into a timeless ghost story about what happens when money grows more important than the care and education children.

One of my favorite movies is Fellini's I Clowns.  You can watch it by clicking that link. Another favorite is Charlie Chaplin's Limelight. Here is an article about the difficulties in making that movie. It took 20 years to get it released in the USA. That's how terrified USA was of Chaplin's clowning during the McCarthy era.

Clowns can arouse laughter, fear and anger, but in the sacred traditions of the Pueblo Clowns, all of those possibilities have a shamanistic function. They are a full frontal assault on your ego, a signal to pay attention to something bigger than your little worries and fears. Pola says that a common feeling that they arouse can be, "If you see a Clown, RUN!" 

The Corn Mother Storyteller

 The Corn Mother Storyteller is rising, as if from the dust of the Agua Fria, in New Mexico.

On Wednesday, June 13, I took the Rail Runner from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, to spend the afternoon with Pola Lopez, and to see the Corn Mother Storyteller Mural she's working on there, supported by Three Sisters Collective. Tara Trudell, poet and artist, and Autumn Dawn Gomez (co-founder of Three Sisters) joined up with Pola and helped her paint. 

The Corn Mother is the heart of the whole mural. Many themes and meanings converge with her at the center. She is a storyteller. As you can see, there are children in her lap. Sometimes, she is shown with 100 children, all of them as hungry for stories as they are for food.   

I took these photos as the artists worked. They also shared with me some of the meanings hidden in the work, and a few of the stories held by each "pottery shard" that is placed within the larger mural. 

The colors of the traditional ceramic pottery fragments found in this area are black and white. That accounts for the brilliant contrasts of red, black and white you see at work here.

Corn Mother tells many stories in this mural. It was an honor and a blessing to see and hear some of the stories buried in the past, and emerging back to life in this specific neighborhood of Santa Fe, New Mexico. There is much loss and pain, many hopes and dreams, and astounding beauty living within these vibrant colors, electric geometries and potent symbols.
There is much to learn, more to be experienced, and much to DO, or STOP doing.  

Looking at this, what do you see, hear, and feel?

Click here to track the details of the Three Sisters Mural Narrative: Corn Maiden Storyteller ~ Shards of Our Stories - written by Pola Lopez ©2022

In later posts, I'll add more photos and my own thoughts about how these stories live in our collective imaginations. More than once, I've thought about Charles Dickens' devotion to fairy tales, theater, clowning and the Arabian Nights. He weaved the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future into a holiday celebration of children, games, and storytelling. Like this mural, Dickens constantly dramatized a dire warning, especially in his vision of Ignorance and Want, about the sacrifice of children to economics.  

Mural location is at Baca St and Hickox St.  

Many thanks to Stanley and Marty for getting me to and from the Rail Runner station in Albuequerque.