P E R S O N A L P A T H S
Deeply Felt Creations
S T O R Y B Y
Roger Greet7
Siamese Cat,
2010,
handmade felt,
porcupine quills,
7 x 14 x 14 in.
FROM CHILDHOOD, SUSAN
Aaron-Taylor has been fasci-
nated by her dreams. Today,
the Michigan artist crafts
intriguing mixed-media sculp-
tures inspired by her dreams,
thoughtfully interpreted in light
of psychiatrist Carl Jung’s spiri-
tually charged ideas.
“At some point I discovered
Man and His Symbols
,” Aaron-
Taylor says of Jung’s landmark
work. The discovery triggered
years of formal and solo study,
during which she assimilated
Jung’s ideas about the collective
unconscious, archetypes and
individuation, the process of
attaining psychic wholeness.
She also discovered a way to
achieve her emerging artistic
aims: exploring her emotional
self while communicating her
findings in meaningful, even
universal ways.
A professor at Detroit’s Col-
lege for Creative Studies, Aaron-
Taylor mosdy creates small
sculptures portraying fantastic
animals—dogs, cats and other
creatures she’s seen in dreams,
then pondered and understood
afterward in symbolic terms.
Typically, her animals have
sinuous bodies, attenuated
limbs, ears and snouts. The ana-
tomical distortions stem from
her practice of fashioning the
cores of her animal figures from
tree roots and branches. To the
cores, she affixes patches of
multi-colored handmade felt.
“I always had dogs growing
up,” Aaron-Taylor says, “and,
as an adult, one important cat.”
Comfortable recollections may
explain why domestic pets show
up in her dreams. But their ap-
pearance has deeper psychologi-
cal meaning, she says.
Aaron-Taylor understands
the dreamed-of creatures as
Jungian archetypes—innate,
timeless paradigms from human
experience that Jung perceived
as comprising the collective
Above:
Pug,
2006,
wood and handmade felt,
9 x n x 15 in.
Left:
A xis M undi,
2010,
handmade felt, wood,
cement, stones
60 x 15 x 15 in.
unconscious, and that arise uni-
versally in myths, folktales and
dreams. “In Jungian symbology,
everything is part of your
psyche, or you wouldn’t be
dreaming it,” she says. “If you
dream about a cat or a dog, it’s
somehow a part of you that’s
come to tell you something.”
The sculpture
Fetch
nicely
illustrates the point. A stylized
Chihuahua posed beside an
oversize ball,
Fetch
initially ap-
peared to Aaron-Taylor as a
messenger in a dream. “He was
about not playing enough,” the
artist explains. “He came to tell
me I needed to play more.”
Fetch
was included in Aaron-
Taylor’s recent exhibit, “Dream
Games,” at River Gallery in
Chelsea, mi. Other sculptures in
the exhibit, among them
Pug,
Siamese Cat, Dachshund
and
Rat,
likewise portray small animals.
But sculptures with subjects
more obviously related to Jung
also appeared.
Dachshund
, 2008,
wood, handmade felt,
aventurine,
8 x 22 x 10 in.
One was
A xis M undi
, a
vertical pole that re-creates a
universally expressed cultural
symbol—the point of connection
between higher and lower
realms, which Jung used to
describe the seifs journey to
sublime completion. Another,
Polarities,
comprises two same-
size rocks, respectively covered
with black and white felt. Syn-
thesizing polarities, such as
those represented by the rocks,
is one way human beings
achieve Jung’s individuation or
psychic wholeness.
Synthesizing polarities may
also explain the mixed-media
character of Aaron-Taylor’s
sculptures, itself a product of
her graduate education at Cran-
brook Academy of Art. At
Cranbrook, Aaron-Taylor stud-
ied textiles with Gerhardt
Knodel and sculpture with
Michael Hall.
“It was great because I had
this polarity, which is a lot like
030 american craft dec/jan 11
