When I look at my work from this strange, heart-rending interval, I see time suspended. At a stage of life when the impetus is to go and do, circumstances compelled my sons – and all of us – to wait, turn inward, reflect. We were all Hansel and Gretel searching for a trail of breadcrumbs in the woods, dreamers wondering about what might be next in an altered world. There was danger, but also opportunity. In these reflections, in the pensive mood of this work, I see my sons growing in patience and a tolerance for ambiguity – along with an oblique sense of humor; qualities necessary for creativity and resilience in a re-ordered world.

Strings 1

The genesis of the Bass series was an assignment in an early class I took with Robert Moll at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. We were asked to photograph one object in as many ways as possible. The string bass's history in my family begins with my husband dancing with my young sons to Charles Mingus' Ysabel's Table Dance. None of us were surprised when my oldest decided to play string bass in fifth grade. The bass is an unwieldy, but also surprisingly fragile and elegant instrument. At its lowest pitches, it is dark and rich, but its upper tones can mimic a cello, or even the lower range of a viola. Single lengths of wood are carved and shaped and polished to provide resonance for a mere four strings. There is nothing wasted. Every part of the instrument, (made with more or less refinement depending on the craftsman/artist) has its purpose.

Olmsted

World's End is a small peninsula, a series of low hills and salt marshes, that projects out into Boston Harbor. It has been and almost been many things. It was a farm, then a never-developed subdivision, with its roads and lawns laid out by landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. By some quirk, it was shortlisted for the UN headquarters, then briefly considered a potential location for a nuclear power plant. The farm is gone and the UN is in New York City, but Olmsted's landscape, simultaneously wild and tamed, remains. Perhaps that is why this series channels something of the aesthetic of 19th century American landscape paintings; where humans, nature and light intertwine into something, if not sublime (see the somewhat overwrought Hudson River School!) - then autumnal and contemplative. 

Cultivation

"A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself."

Roberto Burle Marx

Landscape Architect and Artist