Daniel Rich and Serena Trizzino

Luisa Rabbia and Maria Giulia Prezioso Maramotti

Claudia Peña Salinas, Andy Cross, Dave Choi, Andrew Wilhelm, and Ian Holman

David Dixon and Andy Cross

This, from the artist:

For most of contemporary society, goddess worship is limited to the most popular, individual women of a given genre, like a pop music singer or actor. She who proves the most talented, most attractive, best dressed, richest, or loudest amongst her peers and therefore stands-out/shines, and attracts fanfare.  These women are a powerful testament to the will and endurance it takes to be a star in our capitalistic, consumerist society. But also, praise should be given where praise is due, and all women, the whole world over, who have been left out of this “fame discourse” and have not been given equal treatment and respect, deserve not only equality but reparations.  All-Mother attempts to redress this gap.
 
To speak of goddess worship, in my view, and a masculine view at that, is not to praise a specific, individual woman, but rather to uphold an older symbolic archetype of woman, of mother earth.  Mother Earth is known around the world, in every culture and every age. Her name is long: Isis, Ki, Pachamama, Nintu, Aruru, Mut, Kubau, Tuuwaqatsi, Toci, Ninmah, Ninsun, Ashrah, Ashtart, Cybele, Hera, Demeter, Artemis, Gaia, Tellus, Venus, Magna Dea, Juno, Minerva, Anu, Danu, Dea Matrona, Nerthus, Hlundana, Mat Zemlya, Yer Tanri, Durga, Kali, Mula Prakriti, Shakti, Bhumi, Pra Mae Thorani, Eve, Virgin Mary, Heavenly Mother, Triple Goddess, and the Planetary Logos of Earth – to name a few.
 
Looking back in time, possibly to the Greeks, there was a radical shift in outlook from ‘earth-cult’ (the worship of the feminine and regenerative aspects of nature) to the ‘sky-cult’ (the worship of ideals – good-looking gods that lived in the air above). The pantheon became more masculine, and over the past centuries Mother Earth has been eroded. Global Warming and climate change affect us all, male and female, animal or plant, micro and macro, we need Mother Earth as we always have. However, she is not a comic book superwoman who swoops in to save the day – she only exists as a manifestation of our thoughts and actions. There is no time for us to be scared of the sacred. We are what we worship!

Andy Cross was born in Richmond, Virginia. He moved to NYC in 2001 and received his MFA at Hunter College in 2005. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn. This month marks two solo exhibitions in Brooklyn: one at Sardine and the other at Cathouse FUNeral. In 2013 the second installation of House Painter was exhibited at the Max Mara, Maramotti Collection in Reggio Emilia, Italy. He has shown in NYC at Martos Gallery, Peter Blum, ATM, Museum 52, Kravets Wehby, and with  Mario Diacono in Boston.