Dress-Making-Art

.CHERI A ELLIS

DRESS MAKING 2025 / Crone - Mother - Daughter

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Dedicated to my Mother / Susan Charlotte Lutz Ellis 1940 -2024

BEYOND THE VEIL / a symposium of veiled imagery conveying a message about the innate connection between what is seen and known, and what is unseen and unknown. Beyond the veil of illusion, the idea of finding alignment in our true selves by listening to the wisdoms of what the inner world, behind, beyond the veil, speaks of.

CURVED HORNS / ANTLERS / symbolic of the intuition cultivated in the gut biome, the second brain. The relationship of the balance and health within the gut biome that connects to the vagus nerve that runs up into the 3rd eye pineal gland. Clarity. Over coming fears increases perception intuition. Butterflies flying within our bellies to inform us, to guide us.

CRONE - MOTHER - DAUGHTER / the intrinsic relationship between this trinity of divine feminine connection. A tri-union that shares a gut biome of similar flora and fauna. Gardens planted by our mother ancestors, tended to by each generation, to hand down to each daughter legacies of wisdoms along with unresolved trauma.

MY MOTHER / with the passing of my Mother in the year of 2024, I took back my dress making. Like so many things I do, the choice was made by an inner prompting, an inner beckoning. My love and appreciation for the art of dresses, came from my mother, and from her mother. She taught me how to sew, beginning with hand-sewn doll dresses and onto my own dresses and flannel shirts for my father.

Memories of choosing dresses with my mother, seem to be the ones that I have remembered, and hold dear to my heart. The indicator of my passion later on in life, was cultivated in a shared creativity that spoke of profound self expression and the ability to give voice to it. My mother, like all of our mothers, with "burning tongue syndrome' . Knowing so much within themselves, but confined to a world that does not let them speak, does not let them heal and resolve. Dresses, the crowning feminine expression, revealing the females' own inner beauty and how it looks to her. My dresses were bought with frugality, they were always my choice, and they all seemed to reflect a type of character that I was developing.

Now a doll maker as well, my childhood was spent in a very expansive and magical world with my dolls. Different than the creepiness of dolls that diminish the feminine, my doll experiences were seeped in shared insights and wisdoms that could not be seen and valued in an outer world. The dolls could embody my early 'witchy' qualities of feeling what I truly felt, and created an outlet of expression between themselves. It was my mother who would take me to the tiny little fabric store in the West Seattle junction to buy little quarter yards of calicos and seersucker prints.

Imagery above : here artwork has been printed onto fabric and sewn into garments.The repeat patterns were digitally printed onto yardage, while the single designs were silkscreened onto polished muslins and pieced into the garments. The "Beyond the Veil" trilogy of imagery was created by photographing the dresses and body parts, then merging them 'collage like' (tying everything together) onto back rounds created from the design illustrations. Moths of 'transmutation' were taken from paintings with symbols being created in black and white, pen and ink, then digitally colored. Imagery taken from "Mycelium Portal" , "Plant - Bee Medicine", "Moth Transmutation", "Victory / Six of Wands", "The Orphic Egg Bee"

AUTO IMMUNE DISORDERS / originate in the gut, with 80% of them being women who have them. Autoimmunity is reaching epidemic levels. Imbalances in the gut bacteria can trigger autoimmune responses in the body.

The micro biome and its newly referenced name being the 'second brain', is fast becoming a fascinating scientific confirmation for our ancestral folklore depicting the need to 'listen to your gut". The understanding of a trillion gut bacteria butterflies fluttering around in chaos when a person is feeling trapped by heavy triggering emotion. To be able to listen to that, and heed its message, can be the answer to mental health ... to happiness.

These terrains of flora and fauna we inherit from our mothers, plant lives that can recreate the lives of our ancestors within their descendants, seem to shed light upon the idea of healing the gut and changing the stories.

Prescription medications, antibiotics, wipe out the gut biome. They destroy the immense power the gut plant life has in working harmoniously to keep the body strong and healthy. Treating the symptoms with meds, we miss out on the 'tending of our own inner garden' , the life lessons that require reflection, self awareness and actions of intention. Self care. Self love.

Here, in this body of creative work, I wanted to illustrate the connection of the inner world of our intuition and soulful selves, as the divine feminine with an abundant garden upon her head. The curving expansive horns indications of her ability to utilize the great wisdoms of her true internal self, using it to navigate through the challenges of life. When these garden rituals are in order, we can apply the cycles of nature to almost everything we do in our lives, and this is where and how the dreams are created, ones that our true to us.

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