Plexus/ Morgan Garwood: Psychoactive Ingredients

Traveling back in time somewhere between 18,000 and 30,000 years, we would find ourselves, more or less, at the beginnings of sculpture, when "Venus" figures dominated the imagination of the artisan.

In a great conceptual leap, what illuminated the mind's eye was comprehended as something that could be placed outside of oneself. The dream world could be made material, fixed in things. A vehicle, as Beuys has described it, between the mind of the creator and the mind of the beholder, came into being.

To be sure, the Cro-Magnon, or early-modern, man had gestured at visual expression since about 40,000 B.C., roughly the time that he had pushed the Neanderthal type from the face of the Earth.

What we would consider the golden age of primary art, the Magdalenian phase, known for its magnificent cave paintings, began around 16,000 B.C.

The world was locked in ice in 20,000 B.C.; this was the last glacial maximum before what might be considered the modern era. The expression of fecundity, and some inexplicable leap of the imagination coincided with a period of extreme cold.