Under The Wings of Artemis

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102 - 103

Bea Nettles’ marvelously crafted Forbidden Fruit connects the biblical story of Eve and the myth of Persephone. In both legends, the women ultimately pay the consequences for submitting to the temptation of the desired fruit. The book is striking for its almost miniature size—a mere 9 cm high – and for its construction featuring four pop-ups holding two distinct collaged scenes from each story. When fully opened the book becomes a kind of tiny gallery that allows singular focus on each scene. Eve’s story, titled Song of Sin, intensifies the drama by compacting it. First, there is an

image of a snake in a garden – temptation itself – and then, in the second panel, temptation yielded to: a hand holding a bitten apple. The hand imagery, a unifying device, continues in the interpretation of the Persephone myth. This time a hand holds a pomegranate, joined by a profile of the Goddess gazing at a flower. The title Bitter-Sweet Regeneration aptly alludes to both the pungent flavor of the pomegranate and the bitterness of Persephone’s abduction that is followed by the full sweetness of a revived spring upon her return.

Forbidden Fruit
Bea Nettles

Demeter has been searching the world for her daughter Persephone, but has not found her. Distraught, she wanders among the mortals, neglecting the earth. On the page shown here the figures are depicted in bold, elemental drawing with brightly lit figures set off by heavily shaded areas. Fawkes tells the story without the use of voice balloons, letting the images speak to the text on the facing page. Demeter, disguised as an old woman, is seated by the main well of Eleusis. She is greeted by the daughters of Keleos, the king of Eleusis, and tells them that her name is Doso, meaning “gift” or ‘giver,” a play on Demeter’s role as the giver of life’s greatest needs. She

then fabricates a long account about how and why she came to be there. The daughters offer her a position as nursemaid to their mother’s newborn son.

It’s interesting to note how Fawkes was inspired to create her Homeric Hymn to Demeter. As the mother of a daughter she says, “A daughter calling to a mother who can’t hear her, and a mother searching for a daughter who would not be found among the living are scenarios that may be felt and imagined by many.”

Homeric Hymn to Demeter
Glynnis Fawkes; translation by Gregory Nagy