I first met Sara Welponer around 1996. She was in the UK from ltaly for a while, studying English. Sara is a very gifted artist, and worked as my assistant for a few months before returning to ltaly. I was looking through her portfolio one day and saw this picture of a character she called Kolchec, (below left) who Sara described as her "dream guide". I was a bit stunned to say the least. I dug through piles of my old artwork until I came across a file I had labelled "secret dreams". This file contained drawings of dreams that I had done in my teens, and had never shown anyone, not even my wife Maggie. In the file was a series of drawings of Kolchec and another character Lunaria that I had drawn in 1977. Kolchec was my own "dream guide" and was identical to Sara's Kolchec in appearance and the spelling of his name.

'Kolchec', © 2000 by Sara Welponer; click to enlarge.

'Kolchec 1', © 1978 by Al Davison

Even more disconcerting was the fact that "Lunaria" as I had drawn her, looked just like Sara as she is now (below left) , but was drawn the year she was born and only a month after her birthday!

This simply re-affirms just how little we really know about how the universe functions, and that the scientific approach to understanding life still has its limitations. The more I discover that appears to be inexplicable, the more enthusiastic I become about exploring life.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Exploring life, sure, but also sketching it! Without these two dream artists' visual records, we'd only have verbal descriptions and a funny name--well, a unique name. But even a dedicated skeptic can't easily reject detailed images like these; they're clearly sketches, in different media and styles, of the same character. Leaving ambiguous what "character" means here--a figure Davison's dreams created, and Welponer's picked up later? Some collaboration between a child's and a teen's dreaming brains? An independent entity visiting both, years apart?

I don't know. But what's your alternative? "All these Kolchec drawings are coincidence"! Suuuure. And I'm a purple cow. By coincidence.

Anyway, the lesson I get from all this for dreamworkers is... draw it. Even if it's just a sketch. Even if you shove it in a folder for twenty years. Who'd have thought some teen's 1977 doodles would prove so important?

Aside from Kolchec, I mean. That trickster's guffaw in every sketch suggests K. knew all along.

SOURCE: Spiral Dreams by Al Davison, 2000, Slab-o-Concrete Publications; unpaged, but close to end.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites