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I lived in Hawaii in my 20's and learned how to build free standing dry stack rock walls, known as hakahaka walls. The walls were built around a home as a landscape element or to demarcate property, but they also held an ancient symbol of protection and strength. 

Making a hakahaka wall required solving a visual and structural problem, patience and time finding the perfect rock to fit the previous rock stacked, and tenacity to see the project through. In this craft, I found creative fire and a way of seeing into things.

 

My work continues to be rooted in some kind of connection to ancient place and practice. I'm attempting to communicate primordial inner impressions into form, as they point to what I’m made of- the nature of my being, a microcosm of the world itself. When I make art, I'm aware of a sense of raw innocence vibrating at my core. The images that emerge from this inner landscape ask: what does it look like to know who you are?

I want my work and life to be a reminder of the essential unique nature of the individual and that there actually IS one to directly know. 

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Cynthia Spillman is an Aptos, Ca. based interdisciplinary artist

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