My interest in tangles goes back to when I was a small child sitting on my parent’s bed. One of my favorite activities was to untangle my mother’s chains and necklaces in her jewelry box. I always thought this interest would translate into mathematics and I would fall in love with topology. But the abstract language of pure mathematics was definitely not for me. I didn’t enjoy thinking that hard about non-tangible things.
When I did my yarn and charm bracelet drawings during the fall and winter of 2020/2021 when we were still mostly staying at home and waiting to get vaccinated. The world was at a turning point with the potential for political change as a result of the pandemic, But many were refusing to listen to the scientists and the science became twisted and manipulated in the hands of elocutionists who could manipulate it for their own benefit.
Last year, 2021/2022 I returned to making art at a time when there were both images from various weather/climate disasters and images of bombed buildings in Ukraine. I have always found ruins of modern buildings both horrifying and beautiful. On one hand when one looks at the image it is clear that lives have been forever altered. People have lost their shelter, their bed, the place they went to feel safe and comfortable. But at the same time modern homes are also containers for possessions and there is this liberating feeling to see this visual embodiment of the inevitable unraveling of the past generations of material excess: A sense of hope that destruction can lead to a reset.
The dried flowers are from Lindentree Farm and Drumlin Farm. Both organic farms where I have worked in the summer. Both farms that feed me and my family. The flowers start off as small bouquets and by August the table is filled with blossoms and color. I try to get a selection of flowers that can be dried and I hang those around the kitchen. Come October when the first frost has hit and there are no more fresh flowers I take newly dried flowers and refresh my old dried arrangements.
The money plant was collected in Bedford on my walks with the girls to and from the library. Each day this fall I would take a branch or two and put it in the bottom of the stroller. Now I realized that the money plant is the perfect symbol in my drawing the way we impose our petty material concepts onto beautiful natural things.. We like to think we are separate from nature in the four walls of our homes. Modern humans, at least in the West, tend to assume that everything will be OK despite our abuse of a planet that we know will change in a way that is not favorable for us if we continue to burn fossil fuels. After Chernobyl the natural world continued even though humans could no longer live there. And so it will be with the earth. Humans might not do so well with an increase in global temperature but other organisms will.
