Unicorn Dreaming

I came across this peeling bark yesterday, with it's intriguing texture revealing successive layers beneath. This was my mother's trunk, which was locked when I first received it, until the day my son came to ask me what was inside it as I sat making a major decision about my life direction - which track to take for my Master's degree. After telling him I did not know, I suddenly pictured the key to it being inside my mother's old sewing box of buttons. I went and checked, and indeed there was a key which did open the trunk to reveal alot of my childhood art work. I decided I would choose the creative expression track for my studies in Transpersonal Psychology.

Earlier in the day, I had been thinking about the symbols on Palace of the Soul - how my unicorn is made of old thin jean material I used to wear and how nearly all the other fabric in the cloth is new - scraps and bits of different materials, but the only used cloth is a piece of old linen tablecloth I snow dyed and handkerchief I natural dyed - both without any personal history for me. I cleared my various stitched cloths from the top of the chest to hang about my studio and looked inside at some of the art, noting this painting of a unicorn I did when I was a child and remembering I also wrote a unicorn poem when I was twelve:

And there was this copper etched print I made in highschool, with its rainbow horn like the one on the unicorn on Palace of the Soul.

And here is the portfolio I stitched back then, to hold the work I made:

At one time, I imagined I would breed race horses and had a page of names all beginning with 'Unicorn' ready for my future foals! So the use of the old jean fabric for my unicorn on Palace of the Soul 'fits' right in as it's a symbol that has been with me for a long time.