The Nest Series

By Pamela A. Heyda

 May 27, 2006

I have long been fascinated with the symbolic meaning of the egg and have used it as a subject in several paintings.  This past year the egg led me to thinking about nests. I felt driven to study the bird nests I’ve collected and field guides of bird nests.  Then, last summer while hiking in the Sierras I came across a robin’s nest with three beautiful blue eggs inside.  Although I am a painter, somehow it didn’t seem enough to render the form two-dimensionally.  I needed to hold it.

 

My first effort resulted in the piece titled “Spring”.  I quickly came to the understanding that the nest was a symbol for home and even more it was a container for all my loves, interests, desires and spirit.  After I created this first piece, putting eggs in the nest felt limiting to me. Using objects from nature I created “Winter”, “Summer”, and “Autumn” which honor of the four directions, time, and cycles of the natural world.  The results were thrilling to me and awakened a new vision of placing personal symbols in the nest.  After creating “Healing” I knew I was on to something. 

 

I wanted to express my desire to dedicate my life to art.  As a woman in my 30’s many of my friends are having children, something I have only the slightest desire to do.  They are nesting, and so am I.  However, my nest doesn’t contain babies.  It holds the realization that I am fulfilling my destiny when I am creating art.  I am at once a fetus inside the nest, growing and maturing and the artist/observer watching the growth take place.  This realization materialized in “Evolution” and “The Artist”.  I wanted to explore this theme further and turned my attention to the female reproductive system, creating “Sanctuary” and “Cradle”.  Going deeper still, I explored conception with “Time”, and “Shield”.  From this point on the nests became an exploration in fertility.  I looked at fertility not only in the sense of my ability to have children, but fertility of mind, Earth, and spirit.  I returned once again to the study of nature to create the “Stage” series, using the life cycle of the butterfly. 

 

Working on these nests has brought me a deeper feeling of connection with my feminine power.  I looked to my books on the Goddess in art, a topic I feverishly explored more than ten years ago.  Objects such as the “Venus of Willendorf” a stone Paleolithic female figure, “Sheela-na-Gig” figures holding their vulvas open above the doorways of churches in Celtic Britain and fertility idols from around the world inspired me to create “Idol Worship”, “Ancestor”, “Arachne”, and “The Phoenix”. 

 

The most recent work in this series goes in still another direction, with “Prayer”.  In “Prayer”, the nest contains 3 sacred bundles.  In the American Indian tradition, these tobacco filled bundles would be imbued with prayers, then cast into the limbs of a tree.  In “Prayer” the bundle has landed in a nest where it will be carried off to the Creator.