Juliet Lloyd
Worship Mask: Tribute to Amun Ra
Prompt: In this project, students were asked to effectively use mass and texture in the altering of a plaster body cast to evoke a psychological or emotional state or sensation related to the sensations of a dream or memory.
In my memory, I am laying face up to the sun on my roof back home on a clear, tranquil summer day. After laying there for hours in meditation doing nothing but looking up at the big blue, I had understood that I had finally reached ultimate peace within myself and the world around me. The earth in that moment had become a haven of sorts, I felt the sun in a way that was divine and spiritual, birds called from the trees like mighty gods, and wind swept over my arms like a mother’s embrace. I felt completely enlightened. For my plaster cast I wanted to create a figure of worship that appeared sacred and divine, as how I felt in that memory, in particular a tribute to the Egyptian sun god Amun Ra. I cast the eyes closed, in a calm, tranquil state, which relates to the overwhelming sense of serenity I had experienced in my memory. It is displayed upright so the fingers (rays) reach up to the sky and subsequently, to a divine power.