Rainbow / machine-stitched appliqué and thread

Mary Snyder Behrens © 1986

Above Mary Snyder Behrens, Rainbow Sleeves (1986). Machine-stitched appliqué and thread on found fabric. 19"h x 29"w. Collection of the Racine Art Museum, Racine WI.

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H.H. Green, Simple Life of a Commoner, 1911—

But of all the things I saw that day, there was one that so deeply interested me that I have never forgotten its exact appearance. It was a wonder to a boy of my age and would be of considerable interest even now. It was just a common ordinary pocket knife with a bone handle and blades of steel, but it contained 1,851 [because it was made to be shown for the first time at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, the first World's Fair, in 1851] of those steel blades, from one to two feet long and proportionally wide and thick, on down of all sorts and sizes till the smallest could not have been more than a quarter of an inch long. They were all open from the handle and stood out in all directions like the quills on a porcupine's back when he is on a war footing. Up to that time that was the greatest sight I had even seen. I have often thought since, if that knife had been lost for a thousand years and then found by some antiquarian, what a time the wiseacres might have had ever the monstrous size of a man, who, in the middle of the nineteenth century carried a pocket knife like that.

Indian eyes / the role of ocular culture in high art

© Mary Snyder Behrens

Above Mary Snyder Behrens, Title and current location unknown. Machine embroidered wall art / altered Brownie Scout uniform, ©1984.

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Ginu Kamani, “Code Switching” in Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, ed., Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. 99—

Indian lore is full of the magical power of the eyes—justified, in my view, as Indian eyes are truly incomparable. The cultural emphasis on implicit rather than explicit communication, on keeping emotions in check, on placing others before self, and observing duty-bound restrictions on words and action, transforms ocular communication into a high art. In the Vedas, the visual gaze is considered as potent as the transmission of semen between bodies. Westerners are often entranced by the eyes of Indian gurus and holy men, whose gaze casts an enticing spell. Many have felt hypnotized, submitting to a power they cannot fathom.