Faceless Art

Young faceless woman in a black cape with 2 lion cubs in the moon lite  within the cape. An old letter to a friend many, many years ago (circa 1980). My teen years were a little angsty. 

 

A while back my buddy Adam sent this old letter back to me.It is interesting that there is no face and now I make faceless people. Does this mean anything?

My answer is who the heck knows but it has come in handy. I have some Muslin friends and acquaintances who follow the practice of not having art with faces. I still need to research this but have not yet. Anyway my faceless art has been convenient when showing my art to members of the Muslim community.

One young man told me this great story of his son finding a way to negotiate the faceless thing in elementary school. Mohamed shared how at a parent teacher conference the teacher asked why his son always drew the family in sunglasses. No one in the school understood Muslim culture and kept asking the children to draw people so this kid figured out how to tread the line by putting sunglasses on everyone. Yay creative kid, I thought this was an awesome story.

eid sisterhood - a feast with a Russian Jewish grandma carrying a plate of fish, a muslim mother with a bowl of fruit and a nun carrying a loaf of bread. In Spain an many places Christians, Jews and muslims lived together for centuries creating strong rich culturally diverse communities.

I just stumbled into making art that is accessible to my muslim friends and now I have an excuse for no faces. I actually was able to donate the above piece to the Muslim Educational Trust here in Portland because of the combination of no faces and my fascination with multiple religions with the practice of covered heads. I wanted to create a piece of art showing the commonalities of cultural practices and the women coming together in sisterhood since eid al fitr is about uniting in brotherhood.

I very much respect the work of the Muslim Educational Trust. I have learned so much through this great organization that cares very much about building collaborative relationships in the larger community.

A few last things to share. First is about capitalizing some muslims do not use capital letters so my lack of capitalizing is on purpose. The second thing is about brothers and sisters, I am getting use to using brother and sister as a title because I now understand it. If we all come from Adam and Eve then we are all brothers and sisters so if someone from the muslim faith refers to you or someone as "brother" or "sister" it totally makes sense. This is sometimes hard when I want to show respect and call someone "tio" or "tia" because to me uncles and aunts are the wise ones I offer respect to.