Patterns Artist Rhonda Thomas Urdang | Pleiades No. 1

Pattern — a principle of art — and probably the universe itself — means the repetition of an element (or elements) in a work of art. Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician and philosopher said, “Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.”

The Nebra sky disc attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, in Germany, dated circa 1600 BC, features the oldest concrete depiction of the cosmos worldwide. The cluster of dots in the upper right portion of the disk is believed to be the constellation Pleiades. The name of the Pleiades is probably derived from the plein (to sail) because of the constellation’s importance in demarcating the sailing season in the Mediterranean Sea. In astronomy, the Pleiades or Seven Sisters comes from the ancient Greek and is an open star cluster containing middle-aged hot B-type stars located in the constellation Taurus. This celestial entity has several meanings in different cultures and traditions. The cluster is dominated by hot blue and extremely luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. The name Peleiades ‘flock of doves’ was later mythologized as the name of the seven divine sisters.

As a woman living near the Percival Lowell Observatory, the night sky is a significant part of my existence as an artist living and working near the San Francisco Peaks in Northern Arizona at 7,000 feet. I’ve chosen to represent the seven sisters with vertical lines of gunmetal metallic stripes. The dots (or circles) can be equated to the egg, a sacred symbol in the cosmology of every people, representing the entire cosmic process by which words and living beings are born. The Lost Pleiad legend came about to explain why only six are easily visible to the naked eye.