Squeezing Nectar from the Bison's Snout

Flagstaff, AZ, 2004

Materials: Elderberries, cheese cloth, Teresa Del Vecchio's hands

 

The title of this piece comes from reading Sherwin Bitsui's book of poetry, Shapeshift.  My work is constandly influenced by the process of growing, collecting, preparing, eating, and defecating food.  Gary Snyder states in his essay "Blue Mountains Constantly Walking" that "food brings a form into existence.  Huckleberries and salmon call for bears...Human beings have made much of purity and are repelled by blood, pollution, putrefaction.  The other side of the "sacred" is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots."  Lewis Hyde writes in Trickster Makes this World that "you get no seeds if shit never enters the New Palace."