I often think about two groups of women, one from a family photograph of four generations of women ending with me and one of small busts of women I’ve seen in antiquities museums, some representing goddesses and some not. My thoughts travel to the lives they lived or represented. Did the expectations and conventions of their times constrain or energize them? Were they fulfilled, disappointed, or both? What gave them joy? Heartbreak? What did they pass on?

 

The antiquities live now in glass cabinets, always on view, often with copies of themselves. Enigmatic, timeless, silent, and moving, they are made of clay. Some are broken or chipped; some glued back together; some surprisingly intact. They include the goddess of harvest and agriculture. 

 

What about the women in my photo? My great-grandmother came as a bride to her husband’s family farm in Shenandoah Junction; my grandmother was born and raised there; my mother visited family there; I visited as a child for Sunday dinners and have driven past it many times. 

 

The materials in the show are today’s materials of everyday life. They come from cardboard boxes, egg and berry cartons, the walls of my home studio, string, paper, placemats made by my grandmother, and charcoal. Humble and ordinary as they are, they have a history; they are evocative. In my imagination, they connect with the stories of the women and the place shared by some of them. They suggest the boxes in which we live and what we make of them.