Scrying My Eyes Out

Output from Week Three of the Reliquary Engine: A brooch for a brooch

This piece is a companion to a brooch, which is itself a companion. It holds my grandmother Deo’s small Egyptian owl pin by way of a slit into which the pin back is inserted, so the owl can still be worn while also wearing my creation.

I’m exploring whether objects can serve as prosthetic devices for memory. This piece is a memory prosthetic for the owl, an aid to the aide, as together the owl and the piece are a memory prosthetic for the wearer.

The owl gazes into a small circular mirror set within a dimensional sterling wire frame. In the mirror, he can also read the stamped word on the copper back plate — BEHOŁD — which is right-reading apart from the L. It remains backwards as, it’s the one letter that can’t be properly mirrored by stamping it upside down. Below the mirror, a small platform set at a 45-degree angle holds a piece of incense or oud within a threshold-like cage shaped like the arched doorway of a cathedral.

Scrying is an ancient practice of gazing into a reflective or obscured surface — water, smoke, mirrors — until meaning emerges from the looking. When lit, here the owl scries into the smoke and mirror, searching for messages of past prophecy.

What surprised me during making was the discovery of a new role in the artist/wearer/viewer equation: here the owl is also a wearer. What does it mean for a worn object to also operate as a wearer? As I was reflecting on this question during the making of this piece, I made a note in my book: “Whooo is this piece for?..” Myself, the owl, or the both of us as companions?

The most honest thing about this piece is my search for memory, but this is perhaps also the most dishonest component, as the act of scrying is preposterous in my logical framework for viewing the world. And yet. The target-like bisected concentric circles in the front of my piece are a direct reference to Hilma af Klint — her belief system, her geometric spiritual vocabulary. I want to go deeper into that territory.

This piece wants to be worn by me. By wearing it and participating in the act of scrying, I hope to become closer to my grandmother and my own sense of self through reflection.

The title is a pun, and also a reference to the burning sensation I encounter as the incense smoke wafts into my eyes. Sometimes memory stings.