By Richard Lewis
Illustrated by Elizabeth Crawford
Photographed by George Hirose
Touchstone Center Publications, 2003
With a text by Richard Lewis, based on his theatre piece originally performed at the American Museum on Natural History, CAVE has now been brought into book form through a series of striking clay sculptural images created by Elizabeth Crawford, sensitively photographed by George Hirose. Each image reflects the simplicity of a text ‘imagining’ how and why humans over thirty-thousand years ago, with their profound relationship to the natural world, began to paint on the walls of dark caves, the astonishing images of the animals they hunted and revered.
The third in a series of books documenting texts and projects integral to the educational work of The Touchstone Center, CAVE is published at time when we must look again at the possibilities of imaginative expression as being essential to ourselves and our need to coexist with all forms of life.
56 pages • paperbound • $14.00 • Order Form
CAVE: An Evocation of the Beginnings of Art-video
CAVE: An Evocation of the Beginnings of Art
An interpretative video of the book created by Geoffrey Jones. Music by Margie Barab. Narrated by Richard Lewis. Touchstone Center Publications
8 Min, 48 Sec • DVD or VCR • $10.00 • Order Form
CAVE is a thought-provoking inquiry into our quest to understand the origins of art among our distant ancestors. Illustrations are based on photographs of small clay sculptures, carefully molded to form abstract scenes of a Paleolithic world. Rich in shadow and warm earth tones, the scenes are effective in calling forth an image of ancient people in a primordial place and forgotten time. Cave has something to offer just about everyone with an interest in poetry, spirituality, creativity, or the human imagination.
-Danny A. Brass, Illuminations, December, 2005
Beginnings come from both seeds and explosions. CAVE is small enough to hold in one hand yet bright and bold as fire. It reminds us that the impulse to make art is also a significant part of what makes us human and that the need is primary, alive, and not to be forgotten. The language of Richard Lewis’ poem is like ‘the stars coming toward us.’ It blends perfectly with sculpture by Elizabeth Crawford, photographed by George Hirose. Read this book and look right into the cave of imagination!
—Patrice Vecchione. Author of Writing and the Spiritual Life: Finding Your Voice by Looking Within
Long before The Origin of Species and long before Jung discovered the subconscious, man and woman pondered as much upon a dark, smoky canvas of stone. In labyrinthine chambers bearing names like Lascaux and Altamira, the human spirit and the Spirit of the Earth breathed into one another across this membrane of stone – and art was born of the ecstasy. CAVE invites us to breathe like this once more.
—Calvin Luther Martin, Author of The Way of the Human Being
I am so deeply moved by CAVE and the way it allows the beholder to move back in time to inhabit the embrace of stone, to experience darkness and light, to sense, as Campbell says, ‘the inner reaches of outer space,’ and to experience the human impulse to give back the gift of expressing a sense of oneness with all of life. By the end, we remember who we are.
—Peggy Whalen-Levitt, The Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World
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