{"id":8746,"date":"2011-06-02T01:03:22","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T06:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/?p=8746"},"modified":"2011-06-02T01:03:22","modified_gmt":"2011-06-02T06:03:22","slug":"8746","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2011\/06\/02\/8746\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Chair-ity’ begins at home — with art!<\/strong><\/h2>\n

By Hope Wallace<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you happen to drive by the Wassenberg Art Center this week, you may notice we have a strange mix of brightly colored chairs and stools on our front porch. We are gathering all the chairs painted by area artists for our annual silent \u201cChair-ity\u201d Auction. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"The silent auction will be at Fountain Park during the ArtRageous on Main art festival June 3 and 4. We hope you will stop by to bid on your favorite work of art you can actually sit on! A variety of chairs\/stools adorned with a fun flying pig, tumbling owls, flippy fish, floral designs and abstract patterns will be up for bid. With this mix, there is something for almost everyone!<\/p>\n

We are also gearing up for the 55th annual June Art Exhibit which opens to the public on June 5.\u00a0 There will be a reception and awards ceremony on June 11 from <\/sup>5\u20139 p.m. which will include a barbeque and live music featuring guitarist John Reichle from Montpelier. Please join us in meeting and congratulating all the people who bring beauty to our world. \u00a0The June show is sponsored by Van Wert Federal Savings Bank, and we greatly appreciate their help.<\/p>\n

We look forward to meeting you at Fountain Park or here at the Art Center!<\/p>\n

The Wassenberg Art Center is located at 643 S. Washington Street in Van Wert.\u00a0 Call us at 419.238.6837 or email us at wassenberg@embarqmail.com<\/a>. Visit our website at www.vanwert.com\/wassenberg<\/a> to learn about current events.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sekhmet, who drank the Nile<\/strong><\/h2>\n

By Kay Sluterbeck<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe One Before Whom Evil Trembles.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThe Lady of Slaughter.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cMistress of Dread.\u201d These are a few of the titles given to Sekhmet, the warrior goddess of Egypt in the time of the pharaohs. Sekhmet\u2019s name actually means \u201cthe one who is powerful,\u201d and according to the ancient Egyptians she was very powerful indeed.\u00a0 She was not only the protector of the pharaohs who led them in warfare, but also the goddess of healing in Upper Egypt.<\/p>\n

Paintings and sculpture show her most often as a woman with the head of a lioness, the fiercest hunter known to the Egyptians.\u00a0 They believed Sekhmet was so powerful that she destroyed the pharaoh\u2019s enemies with arrows of fire, and that her body sometimes took on the bright glare of the sun, giving her another title — \u201cLady of Flame.\u201d\u00a0 When the hot desert wind blew, it was said to be the breath of Sekhmet.<\/p>\n

Along with providing cures for illness, she could also bring disease to those who displeased her.\u00a0 But she was best known as a healer.\u00a0 The name \u201cSekhmet\u201d actually became synonymous with physicians and surgeons during the Middle Kingdom.\u00a0 In the early days of her cult, the priests of Sekhmet were often considered to be on the same level as physicians.<\/p>\n

Sekhmet was easily angered, and appeasing her wrath was important.\u00a0 Festivals were held at the end of battles to encourage Sekhmet to stop the destruction, and rituals were constantly held to calm her.\u00a0 Many images of this goddess were preserved because her priestesses performed a different ritual before a different statue of the goddess each day of the year.\u00a0 Most of these statues were designed to last a long time, and they are therefore rigidly crafted, with little show of movement or life and no expression of the actions she was associated with. It is estimated that in one temple alone — that of Amenhotep III on the Nile\u2019s west bank — there were over 700 statues of Sekhmet.\u00a0 In addition, tame lions were kept in temples dedicated to Sekhmet.<\/p>\n

In art, Sekhmet is depicted as either a fierce lioness or a woman with the head of a lioness.\u00a0 Her clothing is red — the color of blood.\u00a0 Sekhmet is occasionally portrayed with little or no clothing.\u00a0 Sometimes her dress is shown with a rosette pattern over each nipple, an ancient motif associated with lions.\u00a0 The pattern is intended to represent the shoulder-knot hair common on lions.<\/p>\n

One myth says that Ra, the sun god, created Sekhmet to destroy mortals who conspired against him.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Sekhmet\u2019s bloodlust continued after the battle was over, and she almost destroyed all of humanity.\u00a0 To stop the destruction, Ra turned the Nile into beer mixed with pomegranate juice to resemble blood.\u00a0 Sekhmet immediately drank it all down and became so drunk that she gave up senseless slaughter.\u00a0 Because the Nile turns red with silt each year during flooding, people believed that Sekhmet drank the excess every year to save them from inundation.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of each year a festival was held to placate Sekhmet.\u00a0 Participants danced, played music, and deliberately drank great quantities of beer as part of the ritual.<\/p>\n

When the city of Thebes became more important, many of Sekhmet\u2019s festivals took place in the temple of Mut, who (in the somewhat confusing way of Egyptian gods and goddesses) also took on some of Sekhmet\u2019s characteristics.\u00a0 In 2006 archaeologists from Johns Hopkins University working at this temple uncovered new findings about the intoxication festival.\u00a0 They included illustrations of drunken priestesses being ministered to by temple attendants.\u00a0\u00a0 The excavations at Luxor also revealed a \u201cporch of drunkenness\u201d built onto the temple by the Pharaoh Hatshepsut during her 20-year reign.<\/p>\n

You can see a beautiful graphite drawing of Sekhmet in the upcoming June Art Exhibit at the Wassenberg Art Center.\u00a0 In the picture \u201cSekhmet,\u201d by Leslie Wilson of Fort Wayne, Indiana, the goddess holds a half-empty goblet, a reference to the festivals of intoxication held in her honor.\u00a0 Does she look a bit under the weather, or is she just pensive?\u00a0 That\u2019s for the viewer to decide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Chair-ity’ begins at home — with art! By Hope Wallace If you happen to drive by the Wassenberg Art Center this week, you may notice we have a strange mix of brightly colored chairs and stools on our front porch. We are gathering all the chairs painted by area artists for our annual silent \u201cChair-ity\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wassenberg"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 12:47:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}