Cats In Art

In Egyptian tombs there are many mummified remains of cats.  The Sun God Ra was a cat. The suns rays were seen to come from the cat Ra. The Egyptians also wore amulets in the form of cats.  There were two other cat goddesses 1) Sekhmet represented the savage heat of the desert sun. and 2) Bastet was a gentle cat goddess who nurtured crops and life. Bastet had some nicknames which were Bast and Pasht.  Music, dance and sex or fertility were associated with Bast. She has a temple named Bubastis meaning the house of Bast at the delta of the Nile River. The well known cat sculpture is the Sphinx which guards tombs in Egypt.

Laurel Burch was born in Southern California and later relocated to the Bay Area of California.  Her maiden name was Laurel Anne Harte. She was married for a time to Robert Burch and she had two kids.  She divorced by age 20.

She first made her art sculptures of cats using junkyard scraps.  Later she started painting and making jewelry.  At one point she met a man named Shashi Singapuri who backed her financially for a time.  Laurel died at age 61 in 2007.

Hans Silvester made his living as a travel photographer.  Two of his best-selling books or calendars of photography are The Complete Cats in the Sun, and The Mediteranean Cat.