“Penelope’s Girdle” was inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. It is a series of horizontal color woodcuts, printed by the artist on Okawara paper using a baren. Two poems also based on the Odyssey are incorporated within a handmade presentation box.

In the Odyssey, Penelope, wife of Odysseus, yearns for his return for 20 years. To delay suitors vying to marry her, she pretends to be weaving a shroud for her father Laertes – telling the suitors that she cannot marry until the shroud is finished. She weaves and then unweaves so as never to finish the shroud.

My version is titled “Penelope’s Girdle” – I change the shroud to a girdle (belt) that can be woven to a great length. Length becomes Time. I color the girdle. And I add poems about Penelope -- "The Wife of Many Wiles" by A.E. Stallings and "Ithaca" by Louise Gluck.

Joan Dix Blair

Joan Dix Blair