LAUREN RAINE MFA is a mask artist, sculptor, community arts facilitator, and author. She received her BFA from the University of California at Berkeley, and her MFA from the University of Arizona. In the 90’s she became interested in sacred mask traditions, and went to Bali to study with Ida Bagus Anom and other traditional Balinese mask makers. Returning to the U.S. she created 30 multi-cultural masks based on worldwide female mythologies for the Invocation of the Goddess at Reclaiming’s Spiral Dance at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. She dedicated the Collection as “Temple Masks” for the Divine Feminine, and for over 20 years the Masks of the Goddess travelled throughout the U.S., used by dancers, storytellers, ritualists and communities, including the 2015 and 2023 Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, the Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors in New York, the Muse Community Arts Center in Arizona, the New College of California, and many other venues. In 2019 the Project was formally closed with an exhibition and performance at HerChurch in San Francisco.
Lauren Raine has received an Alden Dow Fellowship for her “Spider Woman’s Hands” Community Arts Project, was resident artist at the Henry Luce Center for Arts and Religion in Washington, D.C., and was resident artist for Cherry Hill Seminary. Most recently she received a Puffin Foundation grant to create a “Shrine for the 6th Extinction” for Dia de los Muertos in Tucson, Arizona and she exhibited a group of sculptures called “Our Lady of the Shards” at the Tucson Clay Co-op Gallery and at the Tucson Sculpture Festival.
Websites:
www.masksofthegoddess.com
Blog: www.threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com
Artist Statement:
“Myth comes alive as it enters the cauldron of evolution, drawing new life from the storytellers who shape it.”
Elizabeth Fuller, the Independent Eye Theatre
I’ve always seen masks as “vessels for story” – they are empty until filled with the stories and transformations of those who use them. And I’ve always derived inspiration from mythology, the archetypes of collective Story, believing it is important to know what stories we are telling, individually and collective, about our lives and our world. When I went to Bali to study temple mask traditions in the 90’s I was privileged to produce some collaborative masks with Balinese mask makers while there, and I became inspired by their Indigenous traditions of sacred masks. I created 30 multicultural Masks of the Goddess for Reclaiming’s Spiral Dance in San Francisco, and decided to dedicate them as contemporary “Temple Masks”. As I researched multi-cultural mythologies of the “Feminine Faces of Deity” from around the world, I found myself in a grand conversation that grew as others used the masks, filling them with energy and stories of the Goddess who has a thousand faces around the world. In 2013 I expanded the Collection to include the numinous intelligences in nature with a series of masks called “Numina: Masks for the Elemental Powers”, inspired by the Roman concept of the Numina, the “Spirits of Place”.
And because I live in the Southwest, I’ve been inspired by stories of the Native American Creatrix, Spider Woman, called “Thought Woman” by the Pueblo peoples. I believe these ubiquitous myths have important meaning for our time. Among the Navajo (Dine`), traditionally a bit of spider web was rubbed into the hands of infant girls, so they would become “good weavers”, asking for the Blessing of Grandmother Spider Woman. In this paradigm changing time, as we weave the “New Stories” that are arising, may we all rub a bit of spider web into our hands now.
Lauren Raine 2024
“What the audience saw when a dancer looked through the eyes of the mask was the Goddess Herself, an ancient and yet utterly contemporary presence, looking across time, across the miles.”
Diane Darling, Director, Playwright
“Lauren is sublimely articulate about her inspiration, her study, and her realization. In her conversation, passion, and artistic creation, she evinces a mastery of the Spider Woman teachings which has uniquely prepared her to express a new articulation of the sacred teaching of wholeness. Like the ‘Spider Woman’ herself, Lauren has become one with the work of her hands.”
Sarah Gorman, Director, THE CREATIVE SPIRIT CENTER, Midland, Michigan
Lauren’s interest in masks derives from a long interest in her life-long devotion to mythology. She believes that by exploring myth in contemporary ways we activate ancient taproots that can sustain us into the future. “The stories of our lives join a river of universal stories, threads that recede into unknown beginnings, and threads that we ourselves are weaving for those who are yet to come.” The shrines and icons Lauren creates are material representations of this evolutionary process.
John Salgado, Co-Director, RAICES TALLER GALLERY, Tucson, AZ
“The masks of the goddess workshop was a pivotal event in my life. I have been feeling the Goddesses waking up ever since….they were there, definitely there.”
Lorraine Hogan, KRIPALU WORKSHOP Participant
“Lauren probes the limits of whatever medium she addresses. The questions her art raises are deeply significant questions.”
Robin Larsen, Co-Director, THE CENTER FOR SYMBOLIC STUDIES, Rosendale, NY