Dorothy’s Art Installation
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Cathy, Dot, Margaret, and I drove up to Massachusetts to see Dorothy’s senior art show, which was from 4:00 to 6:00 PM this evening. Considering school is nearly 500 miles from home, I think Dorothy had a pretty good crew of guests. Kendra and Jacob came the farthest, flying up from North Carolina. Emily and Jessica drove from Virginia and Rob and Susie drove from Maryland. Jean flew in this morning. Abba and Josh drove from Rhode Island. Of course there were a lot of her school friends there, as well. This is her piece and here’s her artist’s statement.
Pilgrimage
What makes a person? What dictates how we remember them, what we keep of them when they go away? How much of the story can we get from objects left behind, and how can our impression of that story change the trajectory of a family? We all encounter things that change us—spirits pass through and transform. To what extent do these encounters, proclivities, and transformations get passed down from parent to child?
This work explores the footprints we leave, the things we keep, and the things we throw away. We inherit traits genetically, but we receive much more from our families than genetic material. Repetitive, mythic cycles appear in family narratives, from a history of tight hip muscles, to a history of alcoholism, to a history of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stepping past the story of the individual, our family legends can teach us about the tasks that belong to us, the roads we are to take, and the whole to which we ultimately belong.
Dorothy and Rachel, another of the senior artists, are in a creative writing class together and their final project was related to their art project. Together they put together a book which read one way had Dorothy’s writing and flipped over had Rachel’s. I think the show was a success from pretty much every perspective. I enjoyed talking with the three art professors and they all had very nice things to say about Dorothy’s work.
One problem with this picture is that it’s a little hard to get the scale. The ceiling in this room is about 12 feet high, so this is a rather large installation.
