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Time Keeper

Materials used:

  • painted plaster cast of my face
  • Bison Occidentalis partial skull
  • slate base, Montana
  • sea urchin spikes, Hawaii
  • buffalo fur, Montana
  • coarse sand, Hawaii

(table mount)

Time Keeper: a person or instrument appointed to mark and announce the time.

Time: the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole. (Oxford Dictionary)

Time: Era, age, epoch, duration.
Time: the inevitable progression into the future of the passing of present events into the past. (Wiktionary)

Chronometry: the science or art of the accurate measurement of time.

This Mask Artistry creation entitled “Time Keeper” is an observer of the Past, Present, and Future. The skull base for the mask itself is a partial Bison Occidentalis skull from between 5,000 and 11,000 years ago, and, therefore, represents antiquity. It is an honoring of the ancient and extinct forerunner to the modern Buffalo. The solemn eyes of the mask seem to have the ability to gaze from the Past into the Present, and even into the Future. He records Time, acknowledges the passages of eons, generations, epochs. The observation itself is the measurement of those epochs. The spirit of this mask may well be called a chronometer, the art of the measurement of Time.

The Apache Tears, strange out of shape obsidian stones, are natural volcanic glass, originating from ancient siliceous lava flows and are found in tertiary volcanic terrain of the western USA. Birthed in the distant Past, they, too, carry their existence throughout time to our Present, and may well continue that presence into whatever geological Future is in store for our planet.

The patterned stripes and coarse sand of the Time Keeper’s face, with open mouth and seeing eyes, serve as an honoring of all (Past) ancestry, current global (Present)existence and all direct line (Future) descendants, offspring and successors of our ancestors of all prior eras. The adorning obsidian reinforces that honoring. May all who gaze on the face of “Time Keeper” further the intended Honoring of Time: Past, Present, and Future.