Bloodline:Building Community
Unique cast bronze, patina and cedar
20 x 84
x 10
in
There is the family you are born into and then there is the family you make. They are the friends you made in school, the neighbor’s you live by and the colleagues at your work. You watch the children grow and tell the secrets wishes you have for them. You have meals together and bring them the sweets when they have lost a loved one. We make an extended family that grows year by year and that makes for a community that is full of rich diversity, compassion, and love.
The Cigar Figures come from a childhood Native American story that my mother told of the “Stick People.” The “Stick People” would run through the night and call your name; if you went with them, you were never heard from again. She never described the figures, and I was always drawn to the idea of what they looked like. The Cigar Figures are my reimagining of that story, now a story of family and my past—a complicated narrative of loss, survival, and resilience. The figures are made from real cigars and found sticks, all cast in bronze. The faces are of the ancestors and family shaped from the idea of a cameo or silhouette painting to capture the faces of the families.
When hung, the light casts a shadow of the figures on the wall. This shadow represents memory for me. Like a shadow, these memories cannot be held, and in the end, we are all only a shadow in history, shadows on this earth.
