Christine Conley
Art and Music
Since surviving a near-fatal auto accident in 2006, I’ve been working on the practices of meditation, positive thinking, visualization, and gratitude. When I was offered the chance to create an installation for the O’Keefe Cultural Center in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, I started examining ways to address those concerns through art.
I easily settled on birds as the main source of imagery. Birds have often been seen as symbols of the human soul and of transcendence, and they came to signify healing, acceptance, and hope to me, as well, as I sat in my backyard watching the birds and slowly recovering from the injuries incurred in the accident.
This project started as a private meditation on spiritual growth. But it took on wider meaning through my discovery of the work of Humes Middle School Art Teacher, Nan Saville Fifer.
For several weeks this year, through art and language, Nan worked with her students on dreams and their meanings. She hoped to help the students understand that the world they see around them is a reflection of the way they see themselves.
I soon realized I wanted to include the work of Nan and her students in my installation. I went into their classroom and interviewed the students about their dream drawings, and also enlisted the students in making origami cranes. It is said if you make 1,000 cranes, your wish will come true. My wish in the crane project was happiness for the children of Memphis, but some of the students also made their own wishes as they made the cranes.
My sincere thanks go to Nan, her students, Holly Lau, Richard Harper, Saj Crone, and Karen Riss who all contributed generously to this project. I must also thank Mary Hardy who offered me the chance to create an exhibit for the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center, and so moved me to create my first body of work since 2006.
 installation with videos, looking into 2-D room |  installation with Backyard Birds video |
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 |  installation with Antonio Making Cranes video |
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Out on a Limb
an exhibition incorporating video, audio, paper sculpture, photographs, drawings, and mixed media pieces
Videos
In the installation both videos played at the same time, at opposite ends of the room, with the soundtrack linked to Antonio Making Cranes. You can play them together here. The soundtrack was mixed from bird sounds and interviews with the middle school students about their dreams and dream drawings.
Antonio Making Cranes
Antonio was an eighth grade student in Ms. Fifer's class who agreed to make cranes for the video. It is said if you make 1,000 cranes, your wish will come true. The entire class made cranes for the exhibit.
Backyard Birds/Simple Gifts
This video shows some of the bird life I saw in my backyard as I healed from my accident. I am still amazed by such things as the transparency of the nestling robin wings near the end of the video.
Backyard Birds/Simple Gifts
Photographs
As I sat in my backyard, recovering from the car accident that broke nine ribs and a collarbone, and punctured a lung, I began to appreciate the slow changes in the garden and to notice the birds. The birds had, no doubt, been there the whole time, but I’d never seen a Robin luxuriating in the birdbath. I’d never glimpsed a Goldfinch feasting on the seeds of the mammoth sunflowers. I’d never spotted the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds sipping the nectar of the butterfly bush. Becoming aware of the birds in my backyard - of their physical beauty, their behavioral quirks, their proximity - nourished me and helped me heal. Learning to see them helped me to develop a sense of gratitude. I wondered what other marvels might be right in front of me, formerly unseen.
Student Drawings of Dreams
When I learned that my friend, Nan Saville Fifer was working with her middle school art students on dream interpretation, I asked her if I could talk to the students about my exhibition. She allowed me to look over the students’ dream folders and then I went into the classroom to talk about the exhibition and to interview them about their dream drawings. Those interviews are part of the audio in the first room of the gallery. The students’ dream drawings are placed here on the gallery wall in the same order as they are discussed in the audio. One of the concepts Nan highlighted with the students was the close connection between your self-image and the way you see the world. She also emphasized transforming the meaning of a dream, in the artwork itself, and in interpretation.
Joshua Baldwin, Dark Eyes
Robert Armstrong, Nightmare, Superman and Clarissa Washington, Peanut, Apple
Imani West, Dark Planet
Joshua Baldwin, Landscape and Antonio Key, Bottle
Zenith Knapp, Moral Interpretation
Monica Pulliam, Love
Mythological Bird Drawings
(pop-up views can be seen under Drawings on this site)
Feng Huang
Called the Chinese Phoenix, Feng Huang only appears in times of peace and prosperity. It is one of the four celestial creatures believed to have created the world (the others are the unicorn, the tortoise, and the dragon). Feng Huang is two birds, male and female, and it has three legs. It is believed that if you play a musical instrument under the tree of a nesting Feng Huang, the bird will bless you by adding its own, incomparable melody.
Garuda
From the Sanskrit, “devourer,” Garuda appears in both Hindu and Buddhist texts. He has the head and upper body of an eagle and the lower body of a human. He typically has two or four arms, often holding the emblems of Vishnu. In Hindu tradition, he battles the fork-tongued sea-serpents, the Nagas, for his mother’s life. In defeating them, he gains the pot of Amrita, which bestows immortality.
Cockatrice (or Basilisk)
First mentioned in the twelfth century, the Cockatrice was born when a toad incubated an egg laid by a cock. In Medieval texts, he is identified with the devil. His touch withers trees. His glance is deadly, so a hunter must arm himself with a crystal vase. When the hunter encounters the Cockatrice, he holds up the vase to reflect the beast’s gaze back unto itself. In that way the Cockatrice kills itself with its own gaze.
My Dreams
mixed media (water color, ink, graphite, colored pencil, collage)
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I decided to start recording my dreams after reading Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols, when I was 17. My first experience was powerful and weird. After waking and recording that first dream (part of it involved releasing sheep from pens) I remember walking around all day, honestly feeling that the gods of the underworld were mad at me for trying to capture the dream.
Since then I have remembered and recorded my dreams off and on, over the years. The most important ones honestly tell me what to do in difficult times. They have helped me improve my relationship with my parents, believe in myself as an artist, and embrace the complexity of being alive. I have learned to trust my subconscious, and to think of it as an ally who works with my conscious mind to solve problems. Most of us have had the experience of “sleeping on it.” We go to bed, perplexed by some problem, and when we wake up, the answer is in front of us. That tells me that we don’t have to do it all - there’s a benevolent force in the universe, inside and out, that helps us navigate the troubled waters.
The five mixed media pieces here are illustrations of recent dreams.
Clockwise from far left: Nest, A Bridge from the Ruins, The Hummingbird Visit, The Angry Baby, Flamingo Man