Born and raised in the Pacific
Northwest, Mary Ellen Hogle was deeply moved by the landscape
surrounding her. "I am profoundly influenced by the tides, the
ebbs and flows of life -- by what is concealed/revealed in the
process, what is born, what dies, what is carried away, and what
remains to begin again." For her, form is not so much an
intellectual exercise as it is a means of reflecting underlying
realities, of exhibiting the inherent connections between the inner
and outer worlds.
Hogle received her B.A. in Art and
Philosophy from Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1980.
While working for her degree, she became increasingly interested in
the work of Carl Jung. She has studied archetypal dream imagery since
that time, most recently through the Body/Soul intensives of Jungian
analyst Marion Woodman. She has exhibited her sculpture in various
galleries, museums and exhibits throughout Utah, California, Colorado
and Washington. Currently she is represented by Lumina (Taos, New
Mexico) and Phillips Gallery (Salt Lake City, Utah).
Artist's Statement
"Wild Woman of the Woods" is
a character of the mythology of the Native Americans of the Northwest
Coast. Her lips pursed, she howls an unending lament. In 1980 I
created a porcelain, burnished, sawdust-fired version of "Wild
Woman of the Woods;" a vessel/mask, featureless but for an open
mouth. This sculpture expressed for me the mute pain that can hide
within a beautiful form.
Eleven years later, while dreaming, I
had a strong image of this sculpture. Food was being stuffed into her
mouth. The message to me was that she could not swallow anymore. The
sculpture had been transformed to include a way of getting rid of what
she had been forced to swallow. There is also a clear reference to the
fifth chakra, to finding one's own voice.
I created this new sculpture "I
Had This Dream" simply as an attempt to encourage the flow of
dream images in myself. It was not intended for public display.
However, it clearly reflected struggles common to many people, and I
chose to submit it to the Utah Women's Art Project in 1992. It was
selected to be part of the Utah Arts Project, exhibited at the Museum
of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, in 1993.
For me, the fascination with "Wild
Woman of the Woods" lay in how this archetypal image transformed,
first through a conscious process of creation, and, later, through the
conduit of a dream, into a new form, "I Had This Dream,"
that continues to teach me over the years.
