The artist has settled on a design idea for each of the four looks required in their Major Design Project. These ideas are to create looks emulating four separate species of spider- all of these will represent the element of nature-drawn from the overall project topic and dissertation question – “What is the link between nature and religion in modern society?” as well as covering the religious aspect of the question by choosing species with traits reminiscent in some way to the gods/deities chosen from the show American Gods (2017)- which are all based on existing mythology and ancient gods. The first being focused on here is Bilquis-see image 1:Bilquis (Series) (American Gods Wiki, n.d.).

    This Goddess will be represented by the Jumping spider of which a few species demonstrate patterns on their bodies that are only visible on the Ultraviolet light spectrum- invisible to the human eye in normal lighting, but viewable by the spiders; according to studies these patterns are essential to mating of these spiders- see image 2: Female and male Cosmophasis umbratica (Matthew et al, 2006) taken from the study that identified the differences in patterns between the sexes and the importance and success of mating under various light settings-including a setting that lacked any UV spectrum light- which proved to greatly inhibit normal mating rituals and habits. This in turn directs the first idea for this project to be creating a jumping spider in a UV lighting incorporated setting, with UV reactive patterns included on the spider in the way they are seen to each other. This design will represent the goddess Bilquis, whose character in American Gods (2017) is that of a beauty, love and sexuality goddess, also known to be ‘The Queen Of Sheba’. Her scenes in the show are very much adult themed, and also set in dark rooms with various coloured lighting arrangements-reds and purples- often reflecting off her glossy dark skin; this in turn becomes communicative of the jumping spider’s UV patterns being reflected back, and the reasons that they have this aesthetic-solely to take partner and mate. Bilquis in the original novel (Gaiman, 2001) is a prostitute (would now be referred to as a sex worker) and in both the novel and the show (American Gods, 2017) she takes sexual partners whom she consumes through her genitals- this is her way of absorbing power through the ‘physical worship’ of her and her body (American Gods Wiki, n.d.), spiders in general are known to consume their partners too in that they are sexual cannibals. The overall consensus is that this is a great fit of the goddess of Love/sexuality to be portrayed by the jumping spider species Cosmophasis umbratica.

   As this is an initial blog collection, there will likely be further research performed on jumping spiders and Bilquis throughout this Major project that is not currently featured here, efforts to add and update this blog throughout the process will be made.

The practicality of planning and creating this design will be covered in blog 8.

References

American Gods Wiki (n.d.) Bilquis/Series [Online]. Available from https://americangods.fandom.com/wiki/Bilquis/Series (Accessed November 15th 2021) 

American Gods Wiki (n.d.) Bilquis/Novel [Online]. Available from https://americangods.fandom.com/wiki/Bilquis/Novel (Accessed November 15th 2021) 

Gaiman, N. (2001) American Gods. William Morrow Paperbacks.

Matthew L. M. Lim, Daiquin Li. (2006) Extreme ultraviolet sexual dimorphism in jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae) [Online] Available at : https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2006.00704.x [Accessed 11th Nov, 2021]

Robinson, K. (2007) UV light reveals mating secrets of jumping spiders [Online] Available at: https://www.photonics.com/Articles/UV_light_reveals_mating_secrets_of_jumping_spiders/a39318 [Accessed 11th Nov, 2021]