ANTE Mag Takeover
I won the grand prize for ANTE Mag’s recent open call for artists as alchemists, curated by Douglas Turner, founder of Wedge Studio, AOT Project Salon and Moart NY. The prize allows me to take the reins of ANTE Mag’s instagram for one week! A full Alexandra Hammond takeover, or what I like to call, “Alexchemy.” Follow along as I open the world of my studio and beyond. I’ll be exploring the theme of alchemy, and more broadly transformation, as it appears in works of art, the art world, and New York City itself.
Alchemy is the medieval science of transformation. The alchemist’s quest was to turn base metals into gold or find the cure for all disease. However, conscious imagination already uses this power on a daily basis. Gold is a common metal, made precious by humans within our constructed social reality.
The mind-body is the alchemist and the world is the mirror of the mind — what we perceive and project becomes real.
Alexandra Hammond. Various "Loops". Oil on Panel, 11x14"
The möbius strip is a symbol of the non-dual, ecofeminist worldview. This one-sided, non-orientable surface is alchemy in action: a being traversing its surface would travel on the surface and the underside of the strip, yet the moment of transition from one side to the other is impossible to determine. It is a symbol of the undifferentiated nature of existence and the contradictory fact that we also experience differentiation, contrast and separateness. Physicists theorize that the möbius strip may well be the shape of our universe -- alchemy all around.
The mind is often compared to the sky, a realm of passing clouds and vast possibility. The blue in my paintings represents the ground of being, or all-pervasive consciousness. These works are an invitation into fathomless space, the teeming void that is emptiness pregnant with possibility, an alchemical environment from which consciousness plays in order to experience itself through each of us. Among other things, the snake is also a symbol of transformation with its dual abilities to impart deadly venom and shed its own skin, as if coming back to life. Both Rattlesnake Flags and Boa’s Repair Shop investigate the many meanings of the snake.
Come along with me on the path of artists, Rumpelstiltskin, King Midas, and other magicians, spinning gold out of thin air.