ALL IS A CIRCLE WITHIN ME

October 4th-December 31st, 2024

All is a circle within me./I have gone into the world and out again./I have gone to the edge of the sky./Now all is at peace within me./Now all has a place to come home.

–Nancy Wood

The works in this exhibition propound the infinite and eternal interconnectedness of existence through two radically different modes of representation—one figurative and organic, the other abstract and geometric. Both modalities take the circle as their central theme, a universal symbol used across a wealth of cultures and spiritual traditions to embody totality, wholeness, unity, and timelessness. In creating these pieces, McIlroy embraces a worldview in which time is non-linear and cyclical in nature, and in which all beings and phenomena are profoundly and elegantly bound together in relationship. Referencing Alaska Native spiritual beliefs, Celtic interlace designs, and Tibetan funerary practices, All is a Circle Within Me immerses the viewer in various allusions to the infinite. It offers representations of space and time that point to the true nature of our cosmos as eternal, intimately interwoven, and ordered by divine immanence. It is the artist’s hope that these works can serve as tools for absorption, instilling in beholders a numinous sense of both deep peace and tremendous awe. “I aspire to take audiences ‘into the world and out again,’ to ‘the edge of the sky,’ and full circle back ‘home’.”

River of Their Passing

In the worldview of the Yup’ik people of Alaska, migrating salmon that have died after spawning leave their “canoes” on the banks of lakes and rivers so that their spirits may travel overland back to the sea. The imagery in River of Their Passing draws on this conceptualization, and then envisages the flesh of another migrating species, that of the caribou, assisting the salmon spirits in their terrestrial journey home. From this perspective, the bodies of the caribou become an alternate boat for the spirits of the salmon, alluding not only to an ongoing and unbroken circle of time, but also suggesting the co-mingling and interpenetration of the material and the spiritual, the corporeal and the incorporeal. River of Their Passing images an existence in which there is no real division between past, present and future, and in which there is no separation between the world of the living and the world beyond.

*North/Winter*; pastel, colored pencil, acrylic on gessoed paper, 60”x 60”

Blessings to the Seven Directions

Blessings to the Seven Directions looks to sacred geometry and varying lineages of wisdom traditions that recognize both a horizontal and vertical structure of lived experience. The series consists of six works: East/Spring, South/Summer, West/Fall, North/Winter, Above, and Below. The design of each piece is structured around a Celtic infinity knot, a looped pattern that has no beginning and no end. The horizontal axis of existence is represented by the cardinal directions of east, south, west, and north, and the corresponding seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter. It refers to the temporal plane of life in which time is chronological and space is particular. The vertical axis is represented by the directions above and below. It refers to the eternal plane in which time and space are unbounded. (Above and Below are still in progress and are not currently on view). The human heart, situated at the intersection of the two axes, represents the seventh direction of center. Together with the viewer, these works constitute a symbolic sphere that embodies and blesses all dimensions and cycles of existence.

*East/Spring*, *South/Summer*, *West/Fall*, *North/Winter* (installation view)

Sky Burial

How can beauty, strength and grace be inextricably paired with violence, fragility and destruction? Apparent contradictions happen everywhere in Nature. They happen within ourselves. Sky Burial gives form to the human experience of paradox. It exemplifies a state in which a plurality of opposing qualities and forces exist within the same circumference. In essence, two become one.

The title of the work references a Tibetan funerary practice in which a deceased person’s body is placed on a mountaintop to be be eaten by carrion birds and other scavenging animals. The ritual, in addition to its practical function, is considered an act of generosity in which food is offered to living beings, and the cycle of life and death is brought to completion.

‘All is a Circle Within Me’ at the Holter Museum of Art