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| Steps and Threads |
Small white boxes from
discarded slide-film containers hold the idea of the many steps and stages
between our birth and our death. I
imagine our lives like fabric, are woven over time from our network of connections with
people, experiences, places and things. The curtain represents and conceals what we don’t know and can’t see which I envision as the time/space between death and birth. The twine on the ground from past installations represent past involvements that no longer hold us. The image below comes from of one of these earlier
installations which hangs on the west wall.
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| Being Here, Old Fort Townsend |
For the window installation, while weaving the string from one box into the next, William Staffords' poem kept wandering through my brain. He wrote this poem 26 days before he died.
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
by William Stafford 1998
