BOOKS AND PRINTS

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BOOKS

PUBLICATIONS BY CAROLYN HILLYER

NAMELESS DRUM
Song Words and Other Voices
A comprehensive collection of one hundred songs and chants

From the beginning we have created music and prayer with bone and wood and horn and skin and voice. Our drums were born from the raw fabric of the land, formed by our own hands from the gifts of nature. Our songs were simple and profound expressions of the many voices of the earth. The Nameless Drum is a collection of over one hundred songs, chants and other writings created by the Dartmoor musician and artist Carolyn Hillyer, and sourced from the sacred untamed land and the hidden memories of our ancestral mothers.

These words, read without their music, reflect ancient and shamanic traditions of ritual poetry; celebrating rites of passage, seasonal blessings, cycles of life, journeys in death and many unusual perspectives on the wild earth and our primordial roots. This beautifully produced book is an excellent retrospective collection of over thirteen years of Carolyn’s work. Illustrated throughout with 48 monotone images from original paintings by Carolyn Hillyer. Includes the words from eight CD albums plus additional and new material.
PRICE - £15.00 160 pp 180mmx210mm.

PRINTS

ASHES AND EARTH Travels inside the Silent Lands

This new cycle of paintings was created over 2 ½ years, firstly born out of bereavement then developing into an expression of our many journeys of loss and return, the rich understandings we acquire through simply being human in a world of constant change and the maturing that we all experience through the inevitable impact of dark and shadow in our lives.

The Women of Ashes and Earth embody some of the physical, emotional and mystical aspects of
a journey inside and around the perimeters of death. They are midwives of dying and bereavement;
of lament and funerary ritual; of hope and the restoration of life. With their bodies these women
form gateways into the silent lands. and the magnitude and subtleties of death – grief, struggle, brutality, fear, disconnection, yearning, wonder, revelation, release and kindness… as well as a
stark and exquisite beauty.

The Women of Ashes and Earth are also shaped by the four aspects of the moon (red, white, black and unseen) as she moves through her constant journey, a rhythmic ebb and flow that informs our understanding and enriches our experience of changing, ageing and the turns of life. Our moon holds light and dark continually at play, a profound enactment of the mysteries of disintegration, death, rest and restoration. With every cycle the dark inhabits the moon, and each time out of darkness swells the powerful light. These women stand on the circle road, custodians of non-linear time and catalysts through which change creeps and crashes.

The symbolism of spinning and weaving, of spun threads and woven cloth, extends into all life. The fabric that gives shape to birthing and living and growing and dying is frayed, picked apart, cut and rewoven into new cloth. And so cloth forms a significant aspect of this work and a physical testament to the ancient hands that work the sacred loom. Old fabrics woven on hand looms, memories and songs sewn into skirts, the shawl in which we nurse our babes, the quilt on which we sleep, the gloves in which we dance, the veil that protects and binds, the coat in which we walk our dying steps, the threads onto which we bleed, the shroud into which we are sewn, the spindle that winds us out to the very edges of death, all these rich and precious weavings of love and passion, care and trust, loss and return …

These prints are accompanied by the album Drum Songs from the Heathen Hills

There is a programme of weekend workshop journeys for women based around this cycle of work. Dates and details available on our workshops page.


SOLITUDE The Dissolving Woman The burden of wounds	SILENCE The Hollowing Woman The restoration of grace


HOPE The Bleeding Woman The gift of shrouds	LAMENT The Illuminating Woman The blessing of songs

PRICE PER PRINT - £7.00 (page dimensions 21cm x 29.5cm on high quality card)

FULL SET - £25.00 (portfolio of 4 prints with text in display folder)

THE NORTHERN SISTERHOOD OF DRUMS

This series of nine intense and powerful life-size paintings was created as part of a cycle of work inspired by several winter travels into the Arctic landscape. A circle of primordial grandmothers or udegan (elder, witch, grandmother, shaman) sit together in council, representing a journey into deep archetypes, the power of the sacred drum voice and a women’s mystery that was born 25,000 years ago from ancient ice. The present day features of the frozen lands were once those of places far further south. By looking northwards towards the snow, we are able to trace old ancestral tracks along a distant time line and find a route into the indigenous memory of our own lands.

These prints are accompanied by the album ICE: Cold Songs.


WOLFSMILK UDEGAN	WISE ASHES UDEGAN	RED OCHRE UDEGAN


TWISTED BRAID UDEGAN	RIVER NOMAD UDEGAN	RAVEN SCAR UDEGAN


SHADOWS UDEGAN	MOON IN WATER UDEGAN	EDGE OF ICE UDEGAN

PRICE PER PRINT - £5.00 (page dimensions 21cm x 29.5cm on high quality card)

FULL SET - £35.00 (pack of nine prints)

WEATHERED EDGE

Ancient ragged spirit women, concentrated fusions of wild energy, gather in this cycle of life-size paintings, shaped by wild weather, by enduring seasons and by the hidden patterns of the land. They are formed from the deep life and death forces of nature and they dance the rhythms of the earth, the ebb and flow of the year and the deep magic to be found in the secret places of ancient wood and marsh and meadow.They help to shape the landscapes that we are - through the weathered edge we remember and bind together the story of our own spirit land.

These images were created over a two-year period. A range of organic and woven materials, and many elements of symbolic magic, were gathered during each seasonal phase to sew and weave into the dance skirts worn by the women. Beneath the skirts lie the hidden symbols and totems of the paintings. This cycle also celebrates the eight ancient festivals of the year.

These prints are accompanied by the album Weathered Edge


MIST The Concealer	SNOW The Protector	ICE The Hunter	WIND The Summoner


RAIN The Bestower	CLOUD The Visioner	SUN The Destroyer	STORM The Drummer

PRICE PER PRINT - £5.00 (page dimensions 21cm x 29.5cm on high quality card)

FULL SET - £30.00 (pack of eight prints)

Each image includes accompanying text.

FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

This work explores our indigenous pre-Celtic ancestry, describing the circle of life and the cycle of seasons in a series of eight prints of paintings and weavings. Here are ancient foremothers of flesh and of spirit who walk through the forgotten places of this land, binding together the threads of our oldest, deepest mystery. They represent the woven fabric of our wise stories, our strong truths and our deepest relationship with the earth.

These prints are accompanied by the album Songs of the Forgotten People


KEHPE Heron Track Runner	GRAUNIG The Greening	RAUMI First Hearth	MA-LEKMA Bright Edges


DUHTAN Loom Singer	BERRIDRAUN Stone Teller	VWALU Grave Hag	VWALA Long Flight

PRICE PER PRINT - £5.00 (page dimensions 21cm x 29.5cm on high quality card)

FULL SET - £20.00 (pack of eight prints)

OLD SILVERHEAD

Old Silverhead is a culmination of the powerful experiences and transitions that define our passage through womanhood. She represents a cycle of eight initiations to honour and celebrate our changes from girlhood to old age: Girlseed, First Blood, Fruitmother, Spinmother, Midwoman, Earthcrone, Stonecrone and finally Bone, who is Old Silverhead herself.

This print is accompanied by the album Old Silverhead: Songs and Initiations of Womanhood

RICE PER PRINT - £10.00 (size 52cm x 27cm on card)

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