The Merry Month of May, The Green Man and the First Anniversary of this Blog

The Green Man is often a key figure in the May Day celebrations. Ok I know, it’s a bit late in the month for May Day celebrations, but apparently there are still some Green Man celebrations happening somewhere, usually in Britain, but, unfortunately, not here in Victoria.

We, that is Bill, Eric and I, have a bit of soft spot for the Green Man. He figures in some of the sculptures that we create here at Summer House Studio. Eric, our son, has long had a fascination with these mythical characters, and has created his own versions. We have a Grape Satyr Green Man with his connection to wine and pleasure.

We even have a Beethoven version whose hair and eyebrows have become leaves.

The other day, as I was surfing sites looking for the Green Man and his association with May, I came across a couple of interesting sites. One site I liked was one in East Anglia in Britain, where someone has gone to the trouble to find images of the Green Man in churches in the area.  I’d always thought that the Green Man was pagan but it seems it’s actually been part of the decor of Christian churches for centuries .  There are Green Man images tucked into the decoration on pews, on the columns and even on the pulpits. The Green Man has long been, since the Middle Ages, a symbol of our connection to nature and for creativity. One day I’ll have to do a proper little researched post on this very interesting archetypal creature.

It was when I was checking out Green Man festivals that I noticed an interesting phenomenon.  All of these festivals were about todays concerns about the environment.  Most were offering lots of ideas about gardens, recycling, environmental awareness and just getting back in touch with nature.  The image of the Green Man was becoming a contemporary symbol inspiring us to reunite with nature.  Something that is quite timely when you think of ecological disasters and so many other threats to the environment all over the world.

In fact, in light these ideas, I’m seeing our own Green Man sculpture in a new way. In our sculpture, he has his eyes turned toward something that is obviously frightening. Did Eric inadvertently capture his expression just as he is seeing his domain threatened by ecological destruction?

May also has another meaning for me besides May Day and the beginnings of Spring. It is also a year ago that I started this blog. My first post was April 31st, 2009. But to me, May is the anniversary month. When I first started this blog I was in a quandary since I’d read that a blog can only have one theme. You can read about my angst in the “about me” post. I worried about how I, definitely not a “one theme kinda girl”, would manage a blog. After much thought I decided to scrap the one Theme idea, and try to weave together much more into my posts. There would be art, gardening, sculpture and mosaics, garage sales and recycling. Now, a year later, I see that there has been an overriding theme, that was of using art and lifestyle choices as a way of considering environmental awareness.

This new meaning for the Green Man, as a reminder of our need to unite with nature, though, brings it all together for me. The first sculpture that Eric created for Summer House and cast in stone was the Oak Green Man. As a believer in synchronicity and serendipity, it’s kind of nice that this old archetypal figure, the  Green Man, now also has a more contemporary meaning. And it’s a meaning  that fits in nicely with what I’ve been posting about, that is creativity, art and also the environment.

Tags: environmental awareness, Green Man, Green Man in East Anglia, new meanings for the Green Man