Villages have shifted into nations, and the attention to the individual has diminished. So has the attention to their spiritual development; in these times, Rites of Passage are overlooked and under promoted. This unfortunate lack is the subject of my work. Now, contemporary cultures do have certain small moments of growth, such as sweet sixteens, driving age, drinking age, and quinces, but it is a return to the more definite rituals that I long for and attempt to recreate or honor.

I first became interested in this subject from the writtings of Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. It was through “The Power of Myth” that I realized I was not an adult and would not become one simply by default. I had to recognize the moments in which my perspective changed from one of a child into one of an adult- this is partly what I am recognizing and exploring through my sculpture.

When one thinks of “Rites of Passage,” modern anthropology typically comes to mind. But I have no interest in the practices of African tribes or Southeast Asian societal units. They have no historical significance for my genealogy and that is why I crave the knowledge of the northern and western European tribes and folk art there from. But learning of these moments in a child’s life has been difficult. So I infer. It is through folk art that I research the people’s general practices. I imagine a small Norse boy watching his father in a mead hall celebrating a victory and exploding in camaraderie. That is to what he has to look forward. I imagine his little fingers grasping the haft of the battleaxe his great-grandfather forged dozens of years ago. That is the heirloom he will receive. Meanwhile, far across Europe, a Slavic boy hears tales of the Baba Yaga and imagines happening onto her house as it walks through woods on skinny chicken legs; he sees himself outsmarting her and returning to the village with tales of victory.

Just like these intimate village relations, my pieces are much like the Santos figures of the Southwest- folk images passed down from Spanish and Latin American influences emerging through wood – a refurbishing of the Spanish Colonial style (Kalb 3). One particularly luscious example is in the work of contemporary wood carver Wilberto Miera, who has “taken important spiritual and cultural themes of New Mexico and incorporated them into a sculpture called ‘Ultima, Antonio y Espiritu.’ This piece depicts the three main characters in Rudolfo Anaya’s classic novel Bless Me, Ultima, about the rites of passage of a Hispanic New Mexican boy and his relationship with a curandera (Kalb 11).”

Contemporary children are the same as they have been for generations. They try on their parents’ clothes and revel in vintage stories over dinner. But what has changed is their transition into adulthood. It is no longer abrupt and definitive, it is blurred and muddled. Many receive a car at sixteen, but live at home until they are 35. Others have sex at 14, but never marry. This uncertainty creates the obnoxious presence of teen angst. The evidence lies in “Rebel without a Cause,” where Jimmy is forced to take care of his new friends while protecting them from Buzz’s gang. It is also present in the television show “Home Improvement”- on one episode, Brad starts romping with the wrong crowd and is brought home by the police. When Tim asks his neighbor for advice, he suggests Brad needs a rite of passage since he feels like a child and is trying to force adulthood onto himself. Tim then creates the rite by teaching him to use a plasma cutter and an arc welder.

Luckily, some religious rites of passage to still exist today in the developed world, but not many. Taiwan, in the city of Tainan in the Kailong Temple, has had an influx of participants for their festival in which 16 year olds give thanks to the gods designated for protecting children and crawl underneath the altar three times, to symbolize their crawling as babies and their emergence as adults (Chung). In rural areas of Japan, some still follow the rites originally intended for the sons and daughters of Samurai. Between the “ages of 12 and 16 they were taken to the shrines of their patron kami. There they were presented with their first adult clothes, and their boys' hairstyles were changed to the adult style. They were also given new adult names (Murata).” The ceremony has recently been replaced with a national “Coming of Age Day (Seijin Shiki),” which takes place on the second Monday in January and is little more than the American sweet sixteen.

More dramamtic is the “Rumspringa,” the rite of passage in the Amish religion. This is a sancioned excursion, of the soon to be adults, into the modernized world in order to experience all the vice that they can and thus reenter the Amish community willfully. The idea of enlisting “violence” as a rite of passage is the most basic since it is typically children are denied.

It is because the value and commoness of these moments that I have turned to woodwork for my pieces. It is suitable for all classes in all societies- used for dress-up dolls of Mexican saints (Oettinger159), as unpainted bas relief for the altars of the Norse (Nelson 89), and as Czechloslovakian style decorations in the H.M.S. Queen Mary’s Smoking Room (Tangerman 93).

As stated before, with the difficulty in research, it is also difficult in finding artists who have followed my same theme. Often, the loss of innocence or childhood is used, but pessimistically. On the contrary, I look at this loss optimistically. The german expressionists enlisted one painter who focused on physical changes into adulthood through many paintings- Egon Schiele. He acurately described the awkwardness of the changing body, the self-consciousness and embarassment that puberty brings. Lorna Simpson was also following rites of passsage, but through photography.

Not being able to learn form other artists in my field is not a hinderance, for it instead forces me to draw from history and anthropology- both being stronger sources of successful outlets to the collective unconscious. It is because of this that I draw from the cultures and customs of the European Tribal communities. I am insprired by their colors and materials and I implement their beliefs and rites through theirs and my own folk art.

Works Cited

• Kalb, Laurie Beth. Santos Statues Sculpture: Contemporary Woodcarving from New Mexico. 1998, Craft and Folk art Museum, Los Angeles
• Chung, Oscar. Rite of Passage. Taiwan Review. 11/01/05,
• Murata, Takuya. Genpuku. Wikipedeia, 10/23/03
• Oettinger, Marion Jr. Folk Art os Spain and the Americas. San
  Antonio Museum of Art, 1997
• Nelson, Marion. Norwegian Folk Art The Migration of Tradition. The Museum of American Folk Art and the Norwegian Folk Museum, 1995
• Tangerman, E.J. Design and Figure Carving. Toronto, 1940