Bringing together disparate artistic modes, the Woman in the Wall art event took place on a sunny Saturday morning in late April at Antelope Valley College.
The event was one of exploration, featuring a number of artists, Larissa Nickel, Jason Hughes and Nicelle Davis were three of them, each of whom brought something different to the scene, which was built – somewhat literally – around a live entombment.
Yes, a live entombment…of a kind. Poet and instigator, Nicelle Davis put herself in the position of an archetypal historical figure, a woman placed in the wall of a medieval cathedral, an apparently commonplace practice intended to lend the building the soul required to keep it standing.
The character Davis imitated comes from a poem of that era which Davis has re-written. She invited other artists to come and bring their take on the story and the idea behind it as well.
We might wonder at the thinking of those medieval architects who believed their structural plans incomplete without the sacrifice of a human body…and think to ourselves that such a mindset is beyond reason. But this project leads us to ask what we take for granted and to look at our own assumptions and analyze them to check for far-out, magical thinking that people of 2300 will scoff at as they read their e-history books.
And, what do we sacrifice and wall up, believing the sacrifice to be natural and the job necessary?
Antelope Valley Arts 
Just reading about this project illicited a physical response…a slight sense of breathlessness at the idea of being walled in like that. Amazing idea.