Visual Display - "Mariposa" The seven foot sculpture "Mariposa" (Mariposa means butterfly in Espanol) was the result of a vision I experienced during the  1995 Burning Man Festival. Some years ago, definitely in a galaxy far far away, I was given an actual prop, a rubber, hollow, alien mask, from one of my favorite films, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"- the original version. (Thank you again Peter Greenberg where ever you are in Australia). In 1996 I inherited a mannequin, sans hands, from a dear friend Hellene Biedny who was moving to Colorado Springs. I knew the mannequin would somehow form the body of Ms. Alien. And she did.

As I was blending these different materials and textures, using a myriad of mediums (blessings to Phil at Jackson's Hardware in San Rafael), with each stroke, I thought of all that I find beautiful on Earth and in our known Universe, of all that I want to embody in myself on a molecular level, and she began to take form. She was painted by hand and with an airbrush under black light, along with many prayers.

Mariposa is a creature with a balanced heart, body, mind, and spirit; at complete peace with 'the mind boggingly big' vastness of the Void. She radiates beauty, joy, kindness, and is an alien Buddha. She represents all the 'dancing' beings in the Universe. Can you imagine what their music might sound like, provided we can even hear it, feel it, see it, or sense it?

IMHO, our loose knit tribe (soon to change I believe) who dances all night long to trance inducing techno music, has overall, an inhibited sexuality. Thus I gave her sex organs on the back of her neck to honor all those (on Earth or elsewhere) who are completely sexually healed, perhaps never wounded at all by any repressive culture, and who are uninhibited and love unconditionally, to help remind us how beautiful lovemaking is, and to call it into our tribe in a sensual, kind, powerful, and beauty way. With her species, the male's penis is inserted into the yoni where microscopic fibers reach out and morph with the impulses of her mind....which of course gives an entire new meaning to "fucking one's brains out". Also, see the stars of the film "Microcosms" the Burgandy Snails...for the sensual undulations her species also enjoys.

And like the plankton of Earth's seas, and fireflies and many other creatures, she is phosphorescent, and glows in the darkness like a brilliant 32bit butterfly.

The artist Maureen Hoffman Garrett lives in San Rafael, CA (415) 459-5334 mh2o@microweb.com www.microweb.com/mh2o/