Listening to the Mother

2nd Installation of 12

July 19, 2022- August 20, 2022

Gathering: Mother and Daughter

The second month started with the completion of the last day of the first installation. I began this whole year long project on June 21, the summer solstice because this way of marking time and seasons seemed to be more in line with the ethos of what I was hoping to experience and co-create in nature.

This brought me to the second installation beginning at the date of my mother’s birthday. Although she has been gone for over a decade now, my work, especially my land art work, is infused with her energy, our lives together and our chaotic goodbye.

This relationship was particularly strong this year as mid July rolled in. I expect it had a lot to do with how I had already felt the change of perspective and deep connectivity after having spent the month in the forest. I had taken the time to create, feel lost, and actually get lost a few times. I had also been able to deeply listen and simply be with myself and with nature. Something she would have loved to experience.

In retrospect, I understand its a pretty straight line from my emotional life and events to the theme of the second installation.

As I sat under an old cedar that had not “lived” for many years, her burn marks dating her to at least 100 years ago when the last fire was reported in this particular part of the forest, I wondered at her upright state, the soft curve of the many branches that cascaded from above me. Upon investigation, I found a young cedar growing out of the fertile center of the Mother Tree, reaching upward and bowing down to touch me as I sat in the dappled sun.

I heard their stories in an instant. The mother insistent yet patient in her gift of knowledge and experiences, both good and bad, that would help the daughter tree to survive. The daughter sure that she had it figured out, yet willing and needing her mothers wise support.

I felt the curve of the branches that almost touched the ground. This was a tree that I had walked by often when on my way to the first installation site. It would make me harrumph as I had to duck deeply to avoid the branches yet without fail one or two would catch my heavy backpack and trip me up. Now I greeted these living limbs with a friendship, an inquiry of story and offered my time to listen before we would decide to co create something that would engage all parties.

I built baskets from the low branches, weaving with their own structures and tensile strength. I was reminded of a baby basinet, a cradle and thought of my own babies as I gently rocked the branches with three different baskets hanging over the forest floor.

I worked on ways to incorporate how the mother tree would visibly impart the wisdoms so the daughter tree could harvest them in each basket, pushing my ideas of human solution materials to the side as I looked to the plants and trees and soil.

I made thread from plantain from my garden at home, and I made paper pulp from old art papers from my studio that did not have ink or paint on them. It was important for me to hold true to the self imposed directive to only work with natural materials that would decompose AND nourish this particular place. I constructed small balls of paper as wisdoms and strung them on the threads and above the baskets.

They caught the wind and danced. They shimmered in the dappled sun. They were incredibly difficult to capture in stills or film but I had many long days of summer to work through this.

So I present, the second installation of the ‘Listening to the Mother’ project,

Gathering: Mother and Daughter

Dedicated to Catherine Watson Carroll, July 19,1942 - September 23, 2009

and my babies, Skye, Max and My.

The mother tree nourishes beyond the obvious, as mothers have done since time began.