GODDESSES OF COSTA RICA AND PUERTO RICO
INCLUDED IN A UNIVERSAL ARTISTIC COLLECTION.

Artistic connection of Wings of the Butterfly with Lydia Ruyle,
who enlarged her canvas collection of goddesses

Recently, three new “mother goddesses” have been added to the banner collection of artist Lydia Ruyle. In addition to being a professor and academic researcher at Northern Colorado University in Greeley, Colorado, USA, Ruyle has traveled worldwide since 1993 to locations where remains of ancient cultures that venerated women in their art have surfaced. She then paints human-sized canvasses with these goddess images from England, Turkey, Ireland, Malta, the Czech Republic, Russia, Mexico, Peru, Greece, Italy, the Himalayan mountains in Nepal, Hawaii and France among others.

Currently, the expanded collection with three new paintings is on exhibit in Turkey. The inclusion of Costa Rican and Puerto Rican goddesses is a result of the interaction between the artist and the Wings of the Butterfly Project which took place on February 19th, 2007. On that occasion Ruyle traveled to Costa Rica invited by the Wings collective to present for the first time her banners about the Mesoamerican goddesses.

On that occasion Ruyle gave a workshop at the University of Costa Rica which was one of various activities planned by Wings of the Butterfly to promote their project, which was created in Costa Rica in 2006, and which seeks to promote the artistic expression of women.

During her time in Costa Rica, Ruyle visited the Gold Museum in San José where she saw the “mud women”, which are part of an indigenous art display from Guanacaste. She also visited the Basílica in Cartago where she was able to observe and experience first hand the energetic devotion of the people to the “Negrita” (The Virgin). She accompanied the long lines of people searching for the healing water that emanates from this sacred place.

In preparation for her trip to Costa Rica, Lydia contacted one of the founders of Wings, Puerto Rican Maria Suárez Toro, with whom she shared the recent discovery on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico of a new goddess figure, the mother goddess of antiquity.

After her visit, Lydia was inspired to paint banners featuring one of the “mud women” figures, “La Negrita” Virgin of Los Ángeles and the indigenous goddess “Atabey” from the Taina ethnic group of Puerto Rico, all of which became part of the worldwide exhibit.

“Atabey” Taina goddess of Puerto Rico The new canvas of Atabey is made of painted nylon and needlework. The figure is gray because the original icon of the Taina goddess is made of stone. Its dimension is the same as all the other canvas: 36 x 72 inches.

With her artistic collection of over 200 banners, the artist has worked to commemorate the honored places occupied by women in ancient history when the World was not divided into unequal halves. Over 5,000 years ago women symbolized the species, according to anthropologic work by Lithuanian Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994). Gumbutas' studies of ancient cultures in the decades of the 1960s and '70s  included the Neolithic period of Southern Europe, which she re-interpreted the data and relics in a new way to show that women symbolize the mother goddess, living life through her infinite fertility.

The “mud woman” is one of the pre-Columbian figures found in the Gold Museum of Costa Rica. Originating with the indigenous cultures of Guanacaste, they appear naked, adorned with black paint lines which represent clothing, bracelets and other decorations painted on the body. Ruyle says that "the majority of the communities which originated from the Ameritas were matriarchal”, which is most obvious because the pre-Columbian art presents women in positions which depict authority, creativity and healing power.

La Negrita, called by Lydia "the La Morenita-Negrita" is the Queen of Los Angeles and patron saint of Costa Rica. Lydia visited the Basílica in Cartago, Costa Rica on a Sunday, when there is often a festive mood around the church, with people seeking comfort and health.

Lydia tells the story just as she heard it in Cartago: A stone figurinethat was found by a peasant girl in the forest. The legend says that since then, this relic has made possible so many miracles that a bishop placed her on the church’s pedestal near a creek. Today she is on the altar near a fountain of water which many visitors seek as a cure and a blessing of the people.

Some of the canvases by Lydia Ruyle are part of the multimedia found in The Labyrinth of the Butterfly by Ailyn Morera. The Wings of the Butterfly play with the collaboration of the theatrical groups Archipiélago and 50 al sur premiered on November 4, 5 and 6, 2008 in The Center for the Arts of the University of Heredia.

For more information about the play and the project visit www.alasdemariposa.org