Catherine Jo Morgan - Art for Energy™

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Iron Vessels - Symbolic Associations, Meanings

Iron

Iron has long been a symbol of the dark and of the dead. "Dead as a doornail" is the common phrase. Yet inside, iron is a dance of electrons. Like all beings on earth, it has a spark of sacred life.

To make art with iron is to look deeper than the surface, to show the inner life. So for artwork that's about the inner life, about aliveness, iron is the perfect medium. If we can see the true life in iron, then everything is alive. Iron art can shock us awake, awake to the sacred fire that burns in all.

Iron Vessels

Unlike most things made of iron, the vessel form is loaded with positive associations. Prison bars, knives, axes, gates have positive uses but many negative connotations. Even the fireplace poker has associations as a murder weapon. These work on a subconscious level as well as in our conscious thoughts.

A vessel works on the sunny side of iron. Even the word vessel has a double meaning in English: a way to get somewhere in the flow of life, and a way to hold nourishment to share or use. And it has an association with spiritual life: "a vessel for the Holy Spirit," a "spirit vessel," a medicine bag.

In the Chalice and the Blade, Eisler talks about the vessel as a symbol for creative power - what Starhawk and others call "power with." This is quite different from the "power over" symbolized by the blade. Iron can make either form - vessel or blade. Of course I don't mean that any artist who makes knives is a violent, patriarchal person hastening the ruin of our world. It's just that to use iron to make a vessel has enormous symbolic power at this time in world history. We have a choice to go beyond the use of force, to go beyond patriarchy - the "power over" system of thought, feeling, and action. We can use love and imagination - creative power.

Spaces - Openings

"For nothing can be sole or whole, that has not been rent."

Yeats, from Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop.

The iron vessels I make are openwork, not solid unbroken surfaces. I used to joke, "None of my ideas hold water!" It's true. They just let energy flow.

Often the iron is pierced with rough torch cut openings, made spontaneously. These make the shadows as important as the bowls themselves. The openings cast lights in the shadows.

Typical alternate spellings for important words in this page include:
decrative metal art, vessles

Additional keyword phrases that would help someone find this page include: abstract 3d art, metal sculpture artist, metal art objects, sculpting with metal, wrought iron art, iron bowls, iron vessels.

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