Artists Statement: THE SHAMAN AND THE SCIENTIST

I have long felt and experienced curious parallels between scientific and shamanic symbols and modes of perception. This feeling was intensified when I read a book by anthropologist Jeremy Narby entitled Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge which draws analogies and parallels between South American shamanism and biological sciences, and these are expressed in this work. We see the (female) scientist joyfully examining a test tube on the left hand side of the image while the (male) shaman holds a drum beater up to his eyes on the right. This vertical symmetry continues throughout the work, with each aspect of the symbolism having its counterpart to create, not an expression of polar opposites, but a mandala of complementary aspects of the human being.

timothée barrus/ Bruce Rimell Art #5/ The Shaman and the Scientist (10/28/10)

and finally, the bartering press of tensile curves/ unbind what we know of memory's instruments roared by when the brakeman comes to pull it all together/ but the slow tributes to the river spreads a past we never knew could poise upon the leaving/ all rain bursts suddenly resolved and wings/ launch wars thought buried long ago and hushed so neatly out of sight/ unseals the heavy air dazed with the mystery of demons toothless and dying in the graves rattled by the roots/