Guild of Dreamers

Kitezh

Guild Unlimited

works | history | future

Barbara Heath

Jeweller to the Guild of Dreamers

Members
future forecasters, astrologers, tarot-card readers, crystallists, shamans, style forecasters, politicians, psychologists, urban planners and artists.
Patron Saint
Don Quixote

The Guild of Dreamers commonly advocates the use of ritual objects as aids to effect transition from the waking state to the dreaming state. These objects are collectively titled Hausgeister, a gothic term that describes an anti-fascination device or spirit guard. Such protective objects are placed inside the home, hung near doorways (thresholds) or above the bed. The symbolic placement of these objects echoes their metaphoric meaning; Crown Guardians facilitate the dreamer’s passage through unseen thresholds, from time-based experience to eternity, and back again.

My work for the Guild of Dreamers has been informed by colonial fretwork, Chinese folk designs, Feng-shui and the Shamanic worldview. These hanging Crown Guardians recall medieval artefacts. Gothic hanging crowns were used to symbolise radiance issuing from sacredness, the emanation of virtue and the force of light.
With contemporary science supporting a major paradigm shift in the Western view of reality, practices once devalued as superstition can now be reviewed. Allowing that life at a cellular level is ‘minded’ opens new perspectives on the limits of rationalism.

Sleepers Dream On! The future belongs to those (of us) who believe in the beauty of our dreams.


Fretwork from the breezeway of the Queenslander where Barbara Heath lives and sleeps -- inspiration for her crowns.
Crown Guardian #1 bronze patinated flourite; 33.5 x 17.6cm, 2001 (photograph Malcolm Enright)

Born in Sydney, Barbara Heath studied Gold & Silversmithing at RMIT and Parson’s School of Design in New York. She has exhibited at the Brisbane City Gallery and her work is frequently seen in Japan and China. In her ‘Jeweller to the Lost’ mode, Heath has made an art of commissioned work involving subtle negotiations between client and maker. View her commission exhibition on-line at: www.co-opones.to/barby/bhcom/view public art and recent activities at: www.co-opones.to/male/viewer. Barbara lives in Brisbane.