The Dusty Roads Project

The Anemoi Frieze

The Anemoi Frieze

To free the pale horse

I am the wind, I am an idea I am a tree, I am a horse I am a tree, I am an idea I am you, I am the wind I am the winds

The Anemoi,

the embodiment of the song of the perpetual winds.

 

 Occasioned by the treatment experience at the Eye Center CU Anschutz Medical Campus of one of the individual artists who works as a member of the Dusty Roads Project (the authors of the Anemoi Frieze), The Anemoi Frieze was conceived in the fall of 2015 as a way to represent the feelings of individuals who find the need for eye care at the Rocky Mountain Eye Center and celebrate The Eye Center and its associates and their commitment to personalized, high quality, caring treatment . The Dusty Roads Project creates works of art based on classical themes interpreted in ways which are meaningful to viewers in current times to be placed in situations where they are available for view by the public. The Anemoi Frieze - the concept and its creation. One of the favorite sources for material for their work is the works of Homer, the Illiad and the Odessey. In Book XVII of the Illiad the immortal horses of Achilles weep at the death of their master, Achilles' chariot driver Patroclos. Their tears blind them. They refuse to return to battle. Achilles’ horses in the Iliad were immortal, gifts from his father, Peleus, who had received them from Poseidon as a wedding gift, offspring of Podarge and Zephyrus, the west wind. Balios (dappled) and Xanthus (blonde) wept over the death of their master, Patroclos. The weeping symbolizing the gods’ grief at their being involved in the miseries of mortal existence in spite of their own immortality and the implication that they, the gods, were involved in the suffering of humans. Their weeping rendered them blind to the battle which raged on around them except that they knew that Achilles would also fall victim to the spears and arrows of the Trojans. Thus, we had the theme for the project, blindness, the absurdity of human suffering, or at least the knowledge of humankind’s own suffering and the vehicle, the immortal horses, the four winds; Zephyrus, the west wind, and his companions Notus, the south wind, Eurus, the east wind and Boreas, the north wind to carry the message much as they have carried man for millenia. The Anemoi, The Winds © The Dusty Roads Project 2017 The Anemoi, The Winds eurus zephyros boreas notus Upon finding their riders had fallen Hot tears ran from their eyes, Dropped from their cheekbones To the dry earth Soaking the dust to mud At their hooves. Tears Streaked their manes Gathering dust from the fray Settling amongst the strands It too, running in clots and Dripping to the soil. The Anemoi ran wild in their rage And grief, circling the seas, Prairies, mountains, woods. Immortal, they were cursed to Witness mortal man in Triumph and pain, in Life and death. Cursed to carry Their own broken hearts Through tall prairie grasses, Snow, wind and rain, To search in vain for Another who could with Them run wild and free across the Horizon without fear of Passing some sacred and Forbidden boundary from which, Upon crossing, only they could return. The Anemoi, © The Dusty Roads Project, 2017 ﷯ Our research had revealed a path, a direction, a map, which, if followed would lead to many questions to be answered each spawning its own path and set of questions: Greek mythology and that of the rest of the world and world history has horses, both immortal and mortal; the Anemoi, the four horses of Helois the sun god, Hera’s horses, Poseidon’s horses, Alexander the Great’s steed Bucephalus , The Scythians and their horse culture, The horse cultures of the Native Americans. Who were the first humans to ride horses? How did horses affect culture and language? What makes the theme valid to today’s culture? A man on the steppes of Asia, four thousand years ago, riding a horse had four eyes and two brains seeing and guiding, all reflected for us in the mirror of the collected language of what it has meant to be human. I believe we are still riding that bay mare who carried us forward, she seeing the path, we seeing the way. © The Dusty Roads Project, 2017 Figuratively, all of the horses who have inhabited the earth are descended from the Anemoi and all have empathy for man. The idea dictates the composition – so we set to work answering the questions and more which arise.

 

Throughout history man  has sought to unseat the riders of the four horses of the Apocalypse.

To free the

pale horse.