Full of kinship and raw energy, Raven was the first stencil made after hazel moved to the Sunshine Coast of BC. A family of ravens lived in the forest by the creekside cabin, and she would hear their call in the morning - wake up! wake up! - and hear the sound of their wings as they flew overhead during the day. She felt their presence as a part of her homecoming, and was inspired to honour them, and the story they carry….

The lines in the wings speak to southern desert lands, shaped by the wind which carries Raven. The lodge of all beings is there at the heart of things, where our prayers are sent up to Creator, and where Raven, in the beginning, stole the sun from where it had been hidden in a cedar chest. In the Haida version of the myth, Raven was tired of hunting in the dark, and was the first to figure out how to find the Sun, chased across the sky with the sun in their beak, dropping bits along the which became the moon and the stars.

Artist consultant, Penny Lane Shen tasked hazel with making 10 stencils with 10 different patterns and to make them more complex than she had ever done, to bring depth and cultural significance to her stencils. After researching patterns in culture, Raven emerged, concentric circles in the centre, holding the different spheres of our worlds, the triskeles carrying the European stories of Raven, for ravens truly are mythic figures wherever they are found.

Raven holds the circle of life in its heart, and carries the longing for kinship in its belly.

All our kinships, the creatures and ancestors of our past, combine with our current longings, to sail in that direction, too, to our ultimate home in the lodge of all being.

Birth: November 2018 - to honour homecoming - and emerge at an Art Show at the Gumboot