Goals for the New Year is to keep making Batik art & apparel for my on-line shop and for local brick & mortar shops in the Seattle area and beyond! I'd love to see my apparel at local PCC type stores, where there's just a small section for clothing. Do they even have that anymore? And how do I go about getting my stuff into shops? I really wanted my stuff at the shops I sell my tarot decks in but clothing is a whole other genre. I know that it would sell. Getting a unique one of a kind hand painted piece at a local independent business that specializes in the mystical is an empowering experience that you can wear. There is a great power in the clothing you wear and the places you go in your clothing, the pictures taken with the memories attached. The memories are embedded in the very fiber of the clothing. The people who see you in the clothing is like wearing a sigil, it imprints upon the observer.
It's why I don't understand how to make those who run these shops understand the significance of the clothing you wear. The disposable mass produced clothing we wear has made us forget the significance of what we adorn our avatars in, and the impact it has on ourselves and those we come into contact with.
My last fleece hoodie I just put into my shop is called "Paths of Anubis" was it planned to be called this? No - this piece was very spontaneous and I just let my imagination go and this is what came up. I began by drawing a fox but this fox turned into something else - Anubis! Who is Anubis? Only the Egyptian god of the afterlife!! And the pyramid shapes, portals and so forth happening on this hoodie was all pure unencumbered imagination coming forth from perhaps, the "afterlife". Where does imagination come from?
The only way out of this realm is through the portal of death, and the "afterlife" is more real than the reality we are entrenched in right here and now. I feel this gives people hope and triggers deep memories of the soul and its journeys through the portals of all our incarnations, avatars, lives - whatever you want to call it.
What about animals? I've had such great loss therein. I'm sure we have all suffered this lesson of death and loss. The lesson creates separation, a gap in the timeline of our lives, a great pause on our journey as we reflect and must come to grips with the finality of death, of that one having passed into the "afterlife".
So this hoodie is a great comfort, for Anubis represents the watcher who helps and guides us through the portal.
Maybe in wearing this hoodie we will begin to heal, and others who see its imagery and recognize what it means will also begin to heal from the wound.
May this new year help us through the healing of loss and realize the significance and truth of death.