My Plates

 Mixed media on paper plates
2010-2011

These are a series of plates done over the course of two years with my Conversation Circle friends.  I described the process of the first two plates as they stood at the beginning of 2011 when I began this art blog.  Since then I've added 3 more plates to the series and upon seeing all five in sequence came to fresh understanding.  Sometimes I think they are in an ordered line and sometimes I think they stack.  I've wondered if they might fit together like facets on a gem.  Somehow they go together.

Magazine photos, 2010

This fall I've done many laps around the outdoor trail at the New Hope YMCA.  Their trail circles a wetland and as I walked I pondered how my happiness is like a ecosystem- an interdependent system of individual parts working together in harmony, adapting to the changing life circumstances and developing over time.  No single species exists in isolation nor does any specific aspect of happiness grow in isolation.  Happiness is a robust, adapting ecosystem.  As intricate as the creation of the world is the formation of every human heart.

Tinfoil, fancy paper, acrylic paints, magazine photos, 2010-11

This piece began as a large, flat wall hanging.  I had it hanging in my kitchen for the better part of a year, clipped to the basement door despite the fact that I never liked the piece, even when I made it.  Patterned paper, photos of the basement of the Colosseum from The Smithsonian Magazine, my hand prints in paint.  I was intrigued by the symbolism of  the photos.

The floor of the Colosseum, where you might expect to see a smooth ellipse of sand, is instead a bewildering array of masonry walls shaped in concentric rings, whorls and chambers, like a huge thumbprint. The confusion is compounded as you descend a long stairway at the eastern end of the stadium and enter ruins that were hidden beneath a wooden floor during the nearly five centuries the arena was in use, beginning with its inauguration in A.D. 80. Weeds grow waist-high between flagstones; caper and fig trees sprout from dank walls, which are a patchwork of travertine slabs, tufa blocks and brickwork. The walls and the floor bear numerous slots, grooves and abrasions, obviously made with great care, but for purposes that you can only guess.
The guesswork ends when you meet Heinz-Jürgen Beste of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, the leading authority on the hypogeum, the extraordinary, long-neglected ruins beneath the Colosseum floor. Beste has spent much of the past 14 years deciphering the hypogeum—from the Greek word for “underground”—and this past September I stood with him in the heart of the great labyrinth.

The article linked above is worth reading.  Engineer Beste reveals the hidden mysteries and explains why the slots, grooves, and abrasions others couldn't decipher are the heart and soul of this place. 

I didn't like this piece but I couldn't take it down until December 2011 when on my way to an art day at Angela's, I realized it was really a plate and grabbed as I walked out the door.  Sure enough, folded around a paper plate, it joined the expanding series. Like my life, it's true purpose was revealed out of the mystery and unpleasantness. And I am reminded that with the help of many and the power of the Holy Spirit, I became the archaeological engineer of my own life, reading my hidden story in my grooves and abrasions.

Various twigs, bark, seeds, pods, cones, leaves, December 2011

Walked through a little snow and a fierce wind to the woods across from Angela's and found these.  I wanted to create something to embody my happiness as an ecosystem.  I used to think that winter was a barren time but have come to see that it is instead a time of expectant fertility waiting for its season.  Like pain.  Like illness.

Interior house paint, December 2011

Angela had these paint samples and well, this called.  A simple piece.  A fast piece.  When I tried stacking the plates, this one's on the bottom.  Presuppositions or assumptions, maybe?  Maybe the color of happiness?  Life pulsing?  The Breathe of Life?  I really like this one.