"The Two Faces of Pele"

Pele Click Here for a Close-up Portrait

I finally finished this tableau, and they have been sold, but I thought you might like to see them together and/or hear their story: Pele, Goddess of the Volcano, is still alive today in the hearts and minds of the Hawaiian people. The paradox of Pele is that she is both goddess and woman, both ever young and beautiful, and ancient and ugly, both vigorous and unpredictably volatile, kind and cruel, like the volcano whose energies she embodies. On the lush green mountain top of the volcano she appears as a young seductive maiden, lovely and seductive. Beware. Her jealous rages and fiery powers over both land and sea are legendary. By the oceanside where lava flows meet the sea with a hiss of steam, Pele can be found wandering as a revengeful old crone, with wrinkled skin like old lava and eyes that glow like burning coals. Withered and bent, she can still spark a flame with a mere snap of her fingers. Beware. Even today it is said, "Never refuse an old woman- she might be Pele."

Here stand her alter egos side by side. Pele the beautiful stands crowned with a lei of fern and red lehua blossoms, her sacred flower from the ohia tree. She wears the open lei of the maile vine, whose spicey fragrance was one dedicated to the goddess of the dance. Now rare, it is reserved for important persons and special occasions. She holds the gourd drum which accompanied the hula dances of old, danced in her honor. Her cotton wrap is stenciled with plumeria, a most fragrant blossom which seems to scent the very air of the islands.

Offerings are still made today to Pele, with chants and dances, with red fern (amaumau) and leis of lehua blossoms. It is said the first lei, Hawaii's well-known symbol of beauty and love, was of lehua, presented to Pele by her sister Hiiaka. Lehua leis today are made only as gifts to Pele, never worn, for fear of incurring her displeasure or wrath.

Pele the crone stands on a glowing lava bed, wearing a lei representing hina-hina (airplant), and her muu-muu is patterned with ghosts of the many fern she has destroyed. Withered fern curl at her feet. She holds a single lehua blossom. Perhaps she is remembering her broken promise to Hiiaka, when she so wrongfully destroyed Hiiaka's favorite groves of ohia trees and so lost the chief Lohiau that Hiiaka had so carefully brought home for Pele to wed.

Or perhaps she remembers the handsome surfer chief Ohia himself, whom she had turned into a tree in a jealous rage at his hesitation to wed. Another god turned his true love, Lehua, into the red blossoms of the Ohia tree, so they could be together always. It is said even today when the lehua blooms are picked from the Ohia tree, the rains will come, the tears of heaven for all separated lovers. Pele's fiery temper seemed to leave her lonely time after time.

Both Peles are sculpted in polymer clays, (Super Sculpey or Granitex) and painted with acrylics, with soft stuffed and sewn bodies around poseable wire armatures, and hair of black mohair or Cotswold wool. Cotton fabrics are hand-stenciled. Hina-hina is represented by fragrant lichens from Washington state forests, as close to the Pacific waters as I could get. The lava bed is sculpted of Paperclay, forever "burning" wherever Pele'stands.

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