Marilyn Gottlieb-Roberts
Independent Artist
Abstract
A Durable Tale, and graphic report, with almanacs
A Durable Tale started with agitation over the night sky’s wonders. In childhood I’d been oddly worked up over my grandfather’s Farmer’s Almanac, because it drew order over the glitters. In 1980 enchanting accounts of Babylonian sky watchers set me wondering about familiar constellations. Could some of them be oral star almanac remnants? And if so, might a complete mnemonic story still be lurking there? I promptly began collecting star stories and traditional astronomy remembered in the SE U.S. and in West Africa.
The book’s five chapters reflect the resulting 30-year process: Chapter 1 illustrates the six constellations of the Perseus story group and some actual history perhaps coded within this myth; it also includes souvenirs made by my U.S. collaborators. Chapter 2 relates my learnings from traditional astronomy in West Africa, a thread picked up in Chapter 3’s illustrated Gilgamesh I-IX (based on Andrew George’s translation, Babylonian Standard Version); in this chapter I depict the Epic standing upon an almanac star story set 26,000 years ago in the seasonal climate of Mali’s Inland Niger Delta. Chapter 4’s seasonal almanac follows my own seven decades, and Chapter 5 illustrates relevant descriptive astronomy treasures.
A Durable Tale - Presentation slides
A Durable Tale - Audio file
Biographical Details
Marilyn Gottlieb-Roberts has an MFA in Painting and Drawing (the terminal studio art degree) from the University of Miami. From 1980 until her Emeritus retirement in 2007 she taught painting, drawing and art history in Miami Dade College’s Department of Arts & Philosophy.
In order to solve the vexing problem of gathering raw materials for A Durable Tale, in 1980 she began borrowing methods from the art-life genre, a specialized area within performance art. The resulting thirty years of puzzle over the night sky taught her a ‘studio science’ version of descriptive astronomy, a love of the oral tradition’s poetry and durability, and restored her childhood awe at the night sky’s sensual beauty.
Interactive installations for the project in nearly 100 U.S. museums and galleries and research conducted in villages and nomadic encampments in Senegal, Mali and Nigeria were made possible through the generous support of funding agencies. These include the Henry Luce Foundation and the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) for 2000-2001, and a 2001-2002 Lecturing/Research Fulbright Scholar appointment at the University of Jos in Nigeria.