The challenge presented was to create an art piece using a standard red mailbox flag, and as such Sending & Receiving’s imagery playfully addresses the action engaged in prayers and blessings. In generating thoughts, whether petitioning for guidance or an invocation for change, a threshold for transformation is encountered.

Sending… When the art piece is engaged, the upward pointing flag touches off the inner fires of desire, setting loose the Phoenix. The smoke bird rises beyond as a symbol of expanding the mind to other possibilities. Timing and specificities may be very concrete from one perspective, while possibilities could be infinite from another!

Resting in the star fields above, the brass 8 turned on its side has become the sign of infinity, the endless movement of the heavens around us. Also a symbol of the movement of manifestation, it acknowledges that the creative process has been engaged. The star fields themselves speak to re-orienting oneself within the greater sphere of existence, as we give birth in one form or another to the new.

Receiving… The flag itself can be moved to indicate whether the thoughts are being sent with red arrow pointing up, or moved clockwise 90º when the answer is being awaited. In this position the flag’s crescent moon indicates a receptivity to what comes from above. Patience is called for, represented by the sea snails, positioned as if pacing each other clockwise upon a silver path around the request. The process will take as long as it takes.

This silver path bears two sides, the starry heavens to the inner, with a golden side facing outward. On either side of the frame are two brass spheres, representing the polarities of possibility. While the linear focus of the barn wood pieced together in the center can suggest that there is always a third way, perhaps a better solution.

Sending & Receiving is the initial art piece in the Divine Rain series with its use of recycled materials given a new life as art. In this piece, the smoke bird symbol is first created as part of an iconographic language that reappears in the artist’s work. Barn wood, an old broken mirror frame, and empty shells have been reassembled in an art piece to engage the viewer to contemplate the thought processes used in the manifestation of their lives.

K. M. Ehrenfeldt, 1994