Roots and Bones
Beauty
mixed media, cyanotype, ink drawings on canvas
36 x 40"
Roots and bones exist under the surface, and are seen indirectly. Bones provide structure and generate blood, essential for life. Roots are anchors to a particular place, and sustain a plant or tree with the nutrients present in that particular patch of soil.
My mother died in November of last year. I've been mulling the roots and bones I've inherited from her. When we cleared out her house in Northwest Indiana, we pulled hundreds of canning jars from one cupboard. My parents had a huge garden, and mom canned and froze vegetables and fruit every summer, enough to last us through until the next harvest. I remember her working in late summer in the steamy, unairconditioned kitchen, listening for and counting the “pops” that meant the jars were all sealed properly. The jars became a metaphor for containers of memory, and a symbol of provision and of her legacy.
It was easy for me to identify with my dad, who was an artist, maker and adventurer. I preferred that to the thankless household chores I saw my mom's generation working at from dawn until bedtime. This body of work was a quest to recover the roots and bones that are my mom's legacy in my life. I see now that in the midst of the chores, there were things she loved: interests which have been handed down to me and are an essential and joyful part of my life. Curiosity about the natural world, love of flowers, plants, and growing things (and their names) are part of her legacy. She sparked in me and my sibs a propensity to seek, identify, and collect interesting things like fossils, odd or pretty rocks, shells, and seed pods. She, too, loved adventure, even though she often bore the brunt of the practical work of making them happen.
Backbone
mixed media, cyanotype, photos, ink on panel
16 x 20" (17 x 21" framed)
Gifts
mixed media, cyanotype, photos, ink on panel
16 x 20" (17 x 21" framed)
Cyanotypes are solar prints, and I used roots, jars, and drawings from my skeleton model to make them. Some of the drawings collaged in the work were scanned from my sketchbooks, where I have observed and drawn many of those ordinary, overlooked things that she taught us to notice. Some are new drawings from life or from photos of birds at her (or my) bird feeders. The plants and flowers depicted were shared with me or transplanted from her house to my yard before we sold her house.
The show can be viewed anytime in the Gallery Annex through the month of August: Monday – Friday from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. The works can also be viewed and purchased on our online gallery through September.