Equinox: Art & Magic

curated by Kathryn Turley-Sonne, PhD.

The Equinox takes place when the sun passes the celestial equator twice yearly and is a vital part of the astronomical calendar. In the Northern Hemisphere, we shift from summer to fall during the autumnal equinox, and in the Southern Hemisphere from spring to summer during the vernal equinox.

James Reynolds of The Strand, London 1846 Hand tinted astronomical print

Earth’s annual rotation around the sun, along with the zodiac scale, symbols, equinoxes, and solstices.

Royal Museums Greenwich, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

“Equinox”

by Joy Harjo

I must keep from breaking into the story by force
for if I do I will find myself with a war club in my hand
and the smoke of grief staggering toward the sun,
your nation dead beside you.

I keep walking away though it has been an eternity
and from each drop of blood
springs up sons and daughters, trees,
a mountain of sorrows, of songs.

I tell you this from the dusk of a small city in the north
not far from the birthplace of cars and industry.
Geese are returning to mate and crocuses have
broken through the frozen earth.

Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead

and made songs of the blood, the marrow.

“The trope of the witch is a particularly useful one for artists as it seems to resist assimilation and retains a wealth of radical meanings.”

— Noble xvii

Frances F. Denny

Frances F. Denny is an internationally exhibited photo-based artist, editorial photographer, and screenwriter whose work investigates female identities. Frances is the author of two books, Let Virtue Be Your Guide (Radius Books, 2016) and Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2020). She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts 2016 Fellowship in Photography and has won numerous awards, including PDN’s 30. She received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Frances lives in New York.

Listen to our B+S w/ Friends Podcast ft. Frances F. Denny.

The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming features Denny's Major Arcana: Witches in America

Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA & New-York Historical Society, NYC

Photos by Kathy Tarantola/The Peabody Essex Museum.

Wolf by Kathy Tarantola/The Peabody Essex Museum

Amanda Yates Garcia

Amanda Yates Garcia, also known as the Oracle of Los Angeles, is an example of a contemporary Art Witch heavily engaged in social justice. She is an artist, author, activist, podcaster, and healer. She utilizes her witchcraft practice to initiate, protect, and bind around many local and global issues. She has taken on Tucker Carlson and Trump, engaged in protecting the environment, and leveraged social media to connect with other like-minded individuals. Her book, INITIATED: MEMOIR OF A WITCH, takes on the ills of capitalism, ecocide, and family legacies of trauma, prescribing ritual, enchantment, and rebellion as an antidote.

Substack . Website . Instagram . Podcast . Book

©2019 Amanda Yates Garcia by Tatiana Wills (Art Witch as Liberator)

©2019 Amanda Yates Garcia by Tatiana Wills

(Art Witch as Liberator)

©2017 Amanda Yates Garcia, Trump Binding Spell

©2018 Amanda Yates Garcia, MOCA Tucson

©2016 Amanda Yates Garcia, Devouring Patriarchy at the Women's Center for Creative Work (Image 1)

©2016 Amanda Yates Garcia, Devouring Patriarchy at the Women's Center for Creative Work (Image 2)

©2014 Amanda Yates Garcia, Human Resources (Solidarity Spell for Workers)

©2014 Amanda Yates Garcia, Human Resources (Solidarity Spell for Workers)

Alison Blickle

Alison Blickle is a Los Angeles based artist. She received her BFA from the California College of Arts before going on to gain an MFA from Hunter College in New York. Blickle primarily creates paintings that depict women involved in mysterious rituals, exploring powerful female archetypes found in mythology. Her works explore connections to nature, ancestry, and spirituality.

Blickle is represented by Kravets/Wehby Gallery in NYC.

http://alisonblickle.com/

https://www.kravetswehbygallery.com/artists/alison-blickle

https://www.booooooom.com/2022/05/04/artist-spotlight-alison-blickle/

History of Magic Part I . . . The Hermitage

Hand of the Philosopher, 60 x 36", 2013

Devotional, 48 x 36", 2013

 Blue Room, 56 x 64", 2012

Simon Costin

Costin is an artist, curator, and museum director of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic and the Museum of British Folklore. He is also a set designer for major fashion houses and has art pieces in the permanent collection at the MET.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/124143

https://www.clm-agency.com/set-design/simon-costin

https://museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/

http://www.museumofbritishfolklore.com/about_the_museum/our_people/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7jmKytvsNkhttps://somethingcurated.com/2016/04/01/simon-costin-designer-folklorist-engineer-of-the-fantastical/

https://us.toa.st/blogs/magazine/a-curator-s-view-simon-costin

   Incubus, Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), NYC

The Incubus necklace is part of the permanent collection at the MET. This piece was part of a six-month commission to create a jewelry collection for the Silver Gallery in London. Incubus was the result of research on pre-Christian Heathenism in England. The Incubus is a demon that magically impregnates nuns. Costin designed the piece to hold five vials of human semen donated by five different men. The vials were surrounded with baroque pearls, a common symbol of sin, and copper filigree. The copper was buried for three months to alter the color of the metal.

Costin invoked rituals pre- and post-burial. He interviewed with BBC the night before the show opening and was subsequently arrested for “outraging public decency” after detailing the elements used in Incubus. Costin stated,

“What this taught me was that objects created with a magical intent can certainly have power. Weaving layers of meaning into what I made became more and more important and remains a constant for me.”

The power manifested in the radio audience’s discomfort with the topic leading to his arrest is the same power that brought attention to the magic-laden, mystical process.

veronique d’entremont

veronique d’entremont (they/them) is a trans-disciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, whose practice spans devotional sculpture, audio installation, video and performance, and involves an ongoing, inter-species collaboration with a feral colony of honeybees. veronique descends from a line of Sicilian women who are either blessed with spiritual gifts or cursed with bi-polar disorder, depending upon who you ask. To make sense of this legacy and the resulting suicide of their own mother, veronique infuses personal documentary with elements of magical realism, using their work as a medium for building empathy, healing from inter-generational trauma and challenging notions of otherness.

Through creative myth-making, veronique seeks pathways toward healing our relationships to our environment, to each other and to ourselves. The artist looks to stories from early Christian mysticism, Sicilian folk magic and other earth-based practices for ways we may reimagine our attitudes toward neurodiversity and claim queer ancestry with human and non-human kin.

Self-Portrait by The Artist’s Mother, 1976 .
2019 – ongoing. 50” x 14” x 14”
Materials: Beeswax, honeycomb, wood, steel, gold leaf, plaster
Description: Originally sculpted by the artist’s mother 23 years prior to her 1999 suicide, this bust was re-cast in beeswax and placed it inside a beehive. The colony filled the figure’s head with honeycomb, honey, and thousands of buzzing bodies. When not being exhibited, the bust lives inside of a hive, in a perpetual state of transformation.

Photo credit: Grant Gutierrez


Exhibit: Baptized in the Fires of Cuyahoga River, Spaces Cleveland, Ohio

christy roberts berkowitz

Artist, musician, writer, educator, agitator, and emotional laborer, christy roberts berkowitz (she/they) composes experiences, images, and objects that explore personal and collective constructions of power and agency. A third-generation Southern Californian and University of La Verne faculty member since 2015 (in the Art, Art History, Photography, and Honors Departments), roberts berkowitz holds Bachelor's degrees in philosophy and religion, a BFA in studio art from the University of La Verne, and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University.

She/they is one of LA Weekly’s 2012 “Best of LA People”, roberts berkowitz is currently the 23’/24’ Creative Strategist in Residence for Los Angeles County, she is a 2023 Creative Corps grant recipient, is President/C.E.O. of KCHUNG Radio (a 2016 Creative Capital Award recipient and 2022-2023 artist in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) and a founding member of The California Poppy Collective, Problematic Radio, Human Resources for Art Workers, and the Los Angeles Art Union. Her exhibitions and happenings have been hosted and/or commissioned by the Los Angeles Dept. of Cultural Affairs (including CURRENT LA Public Art Triennial), MOCA Los Angeles, The Getty Museum (VR News Panel Curator), The Telfair Museum (residency and permanent collection project), The Chrysler Museum (residency and solo performance), REDCAT (performance), The Hammer Museum (including Made in LA), The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Orange County Museum of Art, The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, American Jewish University (commissioned solo exhibition), among many others.

roberts berkowitz’s various residencies include the IMMENSIVA AI/XR Residency for Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture (21’), Feminist Field School at the Centre Pompadour Neofeminist Institute in France (19’), and a Glass Residency at the Chrysler Museum (18’) and she has received generous funding from the Inland Empire Community Foundation, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Asylum Arts, The Institute for Jewish Creativity, Creative Capital, Foundation for Art Resources, and The Righteous Persons Fund.

Her essays, reviews, and poetry have been commissioned and published by Lambda LitFest, Art21 Magazine, Citizens of Culture, Undo Magazine, the Hebrew Union College Skirball Center, Freewaves (upcoming), and the Los Angeles Press. Her experimental electronic music project, Glitzer, has one critically recognized full-length project (“Score”), and in 2022 she released her debut album ”WOLVES,” co-produced by four-time Grammy Winner Jahi Sundance, under the name “christy” on Alpha Pup Records.

 https://linktr.ee/christyrobertsberkowitz

http://christyrobertsberkowitz.com/index.html

portrait of my mother as a young universe, 2019

This is a silhouette my mother had made as a young woman. When I found it in her archives, I used collage to mix it with a photograph of our universe from the Hubble Telescope as an ode to her and all of the women and femmes in the world. We are stardust. We are a universe.

Spirit Bingo, rooted in both skepticism and mysticism, is both a tongue-in-cheek and sincere attempt to question our relationship to art history, art theory, and historical authority through the lens of the seance. Participants use a Ouija Board made by the artist, with a breadboard and a wood-burning kit, to contact deceased artists and ask them questions. Participants each have a BINGO card with squares that can potentially be used as answers. The limited number of answers point to the limited ways art history (historically, mostly conducted by European men seeking to reinforce the values of capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, etc.) has interpreted art and artists.

Aaron Gach & the Center for Tactical Magic

The Center for Tactical Magic engages in extensive research, development, and deployment of the pragmatic system known as Tactical Magic. A fusion force summoned from the ways of the artist, the magician, the ninja, and the private investigator, Tactical Magic is an amalgam of disparate arts invoked for the purpose of actively addressing Power on individual, communal, and transnational fronts. At the CTM we are committed to achieving the Great Work of Tactical Magic through community-based projects, daily interdiction, and the activation of latent energies toward positive social transformation.

Inspired by studies with a private investigator, a magician, and a ninja, Aaron Gach co-founded the Center for Tactical Magic in 2000—an organization dedicated to the coalescence of art, activism, magic, and positive social change. His commitment to exploring disparate arts (martial arts, magical arts, and contemporary art) has led to the creation of numerous projects that consistently address public space, social politics and community issues. Among these are the Tactical Ice Cream Unit (a mobile command center that dispenses free ice cream, community-based propaganda and more), the Ultimate Jacket (50 secret pockets; endless possibilities), and the Witches’ Cradles (for achieving altered states, both mentally and politically).

In addition to producing national and international projects, Aaron Gach has taught courses in Public Art, Street Media, Art & Magic, and 4D Art at UC Santa Cruz, Stanford University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and currently at California College of the Arts. He is a contributing author for Arthur Magazine’s Applied Magic(k) column, and his writings on art, magic, and politics have appeared in a wide range of other publications, anthologies, and collections as well.

IG: @tacticalmagic1

Probably Just the Wind: Death, Necropolitics & Transformation

Magic(k) Wands, Center for Tactical Magic

Magic(k) Wands is a display of the most encompassing symbol of magic: the wand. Like so many useful technologies over the last few thousand years, wands have gone through changes, becoming more and more differentiated, designed, and specialized. In many cases they are so removed from their origins that one easily chooses to forget their roots. Today, UV sanitizers, security wands, cosmetics, remote controls, "personal massagers" barcode scanners, “magic markers” join the traditional tools of ritual and entertainment to conjure the magic of our daily lives. And while marketing researchers will tell the consumer to be sure to use the right wand for the right job, most witches, wizards, and magicians insist that its not the wand but the person holding it who contains the magic(k).

Magic(k) Wands was first displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2008 where they were exhibited in relation to LACMA's own collection of anthropological oddities and contemporary art. Their subversive (although permitted) placement carved out a discursive space for visitors to recalibrate their preconceptions of exotic cultural artifacts, and come away with an enhanced understanding of magic(k)-in-the-everyday.

Witches' Cradles, Center for Tactical Magic

Devised initially for interrogation and torture of accused witches in the Middle Ages, the witches’ cradle was eventually reclaimed by its potential victims to induce altered states, prophetic visions, and inward journeys. Drawing from these historical notes, as well as from New Age sensory deprivation tanks, Houdini’s famed Metamorphosis illusion, and symbols of state power, the Center for Tactical Magic’s re-envisioning of the witches’ cradle suggests a present-day desire to conjure alternative states.

The Gallows version of the Witches’ Cradle combines a Foucaultian notion of discipline, punishment, and spectacle with the potential liberation that comes with kink, fetish, and alterity. The star-chamber is constructed from black vinyl, metal zippers, and chrome rings; simultaneously evoking a body bag, an S&M bondage apparatus, and Goth/Punk fashion. It ties together a history of torture and persecution that encompasses early witch trials, lynchings, corporeal punishment, and state-sponsored torture. But, it also hints at the potential for “deviant” or “subcultural” activity to subvert the means of control. The wooden structure of the gallows plays much the same role as in the past: a public stage for morbid fascination where one contemplates life, death, and the spectacle of authority.

To date, more than 2500 people have attempted to achieve an “altered state” during their 22-minute experiences within the cradles. Each cradle consists of a large 5-pointed star designed to simultaneously evoke its magical origins, imperial state power, and a cosmic source of light amidst darkness. After sitting in the center pentagon, the points of the star close overhead as the cradle is hoisted off the ground, allowing the participant to swing gently in the darkened center of the collapsed star. Like a black hole, a holding cell, or a metaphysical amusement ride, the Witches’ Cradles distort time and space through random oscillation and sensory deprivation. It is at this event horizon that the Witches’ Cradles create a place where one can begin to realize an altered state (of consciousness, or an altered political state) and contemplate the next course of action.

Trulee Hall

Trulee Hall’s work presents a surreal geography drawing on motifs of the domestic, the decorative, and the erotic.

The artist’s creative practice spans video, sculpture, painting, audio composition, and choreographed dance. Hall integrates these mediums into immersive installations. These vignettes offer multiple representations of a non-narrative visual subject, replayed through painting, sculpture, and video amalgams of CGI, claymation, and live action performance.

Witch House (Seance of the Umbilical Coven) 2020

Adriene Jenik

Adriene Jenik (she/they) is an artist, educator, scholar-activist and end of life doula who resides in the desert. In her work she develops and shares creative processes that support personal introspection, social critique, and cultural transformation. Jenik’s current creative research projects include “data humanization” performances, immersive learning experiments and public performances reading “climate futures” with her ECOtarot deck.

Jenik received her BA in English from Douglass College, Rutgers University and her MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. At Arizona State University, she serves as Professor of Expanded Arts in the School of Art, is a Senior Global Futures Scientist at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Sustainability.

griefdeck.com

IG: @ecotarot

Cards laid out on fabric C    5 card ECOtarot spread on handwoven linen cloth, image courtesy of Adriene Jenik

Printscatter

The ECOtarot deck is screen printed on handmade paper made from agave plants and recycled cotton and linen

Adriene Jenik Artist Statement:

Since 2017, I have been performing in public spaces with my ECOtarot deck. The ECOtarot is a performance system where a custom tarot deck is used to offer “climate future readings” in public settings. The ECOtarot deck itself is an art object – made of handmade paper derived from agave plants and recycled cotton and linen, and hand-painted with natural pigments. ECOtarot readings make space for the complex emotions surrounding climate disruption and focus participants on actions they can take and values they can foster, drawing from their specific talents and capacities.
Interpretations of the cards are drawn from scientific knowledge and modelling (drawn from IPCC reports and vetted by climate scientists); philosophical texts that argue for new values necessary to support our continued life on this planet (cooperativeness, interdependence, resourcefulness, respect for nature); the presence of ecological heroines throughout the ages; and knowledge of the meanings of the tarot as passed down through languages and centuries. Since the project began more than 1400 readings have been conducted in the US and internationally (in English and Spanish).