Listening to the Mother

5th Installation of 12

October 21, 2022- November 20, 2022

Shelter

As my time in this forest became familiar and part of my routine, I began to be in the presence of the forest beyond the quest of materials or scouting sites for future sculptures. I began to notice all the residential structures and infinite expressions of life in this wild nieghbourhood and appreciate how integrated they each were with the space and opportunities that the forest offers. Within the dwindling light under the newly opened canopy, I was able to see spaces of shelter for forest inhabitants that had hidden in shadow or foliage only weeks ago.

As the air and light begin to herald a time of slumber throughout the northern hemisphere, I find myself able to be quiet in new ways, as if everything has slowed down enough for me to understand this language of nature with a little more fluency.

I feel, see evidence and hear the muffled busyness of the forest getting ready to go into the quiet time, to find shelter and to dream of all the life that was fully lived throughout the last year. And to begin fantastical dreams for the coming year. There is also a sense of deep wisdom being the central voice in the forest.
Ancient
Nurturing
Patient


I thought a lot about shelter and how that looked different for each inhabitant. The canopy itself was shelter to the forest. The holes in mounds of soil, the smooth edges of a hollow trunk, the layers of decomposing rushes along the edges of the marsh all places and spaces of shelter.
Of belonging.
Of safety and security.
Of home.

I have moved around a lot throughout my life. A life filled with different houses, but not my sheltering place. My parents both left places of many ancestors to find new stories in new places. Their novel autonomy to wander became my normal understanding of being in the world. As an adult I have never completely found “home”. Not in place and space at least. My heart and soul know of the shelter within the love I am surrounded by, those human hearts that beat a belongingness around me, but not one of walls and floors.

Perhaps this missing piece in my journey has drawn my attention to how the forest is shelter to an amazingly beautiful intricate world of beings.

Perhaps it is the thrum of the earth and the tree song that has led me to build a shelter, here under a tree in a clearing where I don’t expect another human to pass by. Perhaps shelter is the forest.
Perhaps there is more to the question.

This sculpture asks me to feel into that, to allow the answers to be as complex and intricate as the forest itself.