The Art Gallery at the Franciscan University, Clinton,
Iowa, 2004
Two weeks after my daughter’s birth, we began a new
tradition in our household—making tamales on Christmas
Eve. As I changed Chiara Rose’s diapers, folding
each dirty one into a little package or bundle, I realized
that this act paralleled the making of the tamales, and thus, Folding
Into the Earth was born. There is a circular
relationship between these two acts, and in these forms. From
death comes life. From dirt/shit comes food. From
eating comes defecation. When a child is born, a life
begins, and death begins as well. Each plastic disposable
diaper (1400 of them) contained a corn seed, ready to sprout
to life. After a child is born, the first food, colostrum,
is supped from its mother's breast. In this installation,
the colostrum rests in animal bladders that once held bile. Collected
in plastic bowls below the bladders are cicada exo-skeltons. These
small fragile amber-colored packages symbolize both death
and rebirth.
