Patchwork Object

Items

• Abduction
  Double-layered cyanotype photographs toned with tea on cotton; toned cyanotype on silk Abduction We agreed that lover’s locks left on bridges were a plague on good taste, but there we were: happy-tipsy on Florence’s Ponte Vecchio. We thought it a laugh when I pulled the small padlock from my camera bag. You borrowed a waterproof black marker from another couple. We squeezed our lock in with hundreds of others beneath the statue of sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. Off the bridge, we rounded the corner, hand in hand. We stopped. There was Cellini’s sculpture of a smug Perseus, sword in one hand, the bloody head of the snake-haired Medusa in the other. There was Giambologna’s sculpture of a woman struggling in her abductor’s arms. Lovers, smug in their bright cocoon, are blind to irony.
• Dieback
  cyanotype photograph on cotton Dieback (after e e cummings) the leaping greenly spirits of trees speak a leaf language, a susurration which is lungful, which is air, which is yes now the ears of my ears awake to the resinous hiss of the burning pine which is trial, which is fire, which is resurrection now the ears of my ears awake to the tin tremor of the aspen’s silver-bottomed leaves which is memory, which is mourning, which is melancholia now the ears of my ears awake to the window scratch of the diseased ash which is rattle, which is hum, which is future
• Fruitpicking
  Double-layered cyanotype photographs on cotton and on silk, red embroidery thread, beeswax Fruitpicking That winter in the orchard cottage, they folded together under cobalt night and passed, in dreams, from this world to that. Then, came picking season, and things changed: One could no longer share the night’s echoes of the day’s words, could no longer tolerate the tyrannical metronome of the other’s heartbeat. One’s skin thickened, like a lemon left hanging, while the other’s grew thinner, and, like a cherry skin at the height of summer, threatened to burst into a fleshwound at the slightest touch.
• Patch by Corinna
  This multi-layered patch is made of silk, cotton, photographic transparency film, and beeswax, based on a photograph I made of a forest in Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan, Canada. In many ways, it’s an ecological battleground. Here, trembling aspen, balsam poplar, white spruce, and lodgepole pine invade the grasslands, while trees are threatened by invasive species like dwarf mistletoe. Fire destroys, yet it increases plant diversity, attracts bees, and allows the lodgepole pine to reseed by melting the resin that seals its cones. So, the forest raises questions around terms like native and invasive, parasitism and mutualism.
• Patch by Corinna
  I made a cyanotype print of this Victorian carte de viste of a woman with dog. She looked familiar, and I thought she might be a writer. An image search brought up hundreds of images of Victorian and Edwardian women and their beloved dogs, including a grainy photograph of an American writer, Louise Clarke Pyrnelle, whose dog bore some resemblance to this one. But, no, the women’s faces are too different. So, while the mystery remains, I have enjoyed seeing all the pugs, Chihuahuas, Pomeranians and mutts of all descriptions captured in photographs with their dogmoms. I once explored an abandoned grand mansion in the Scottish Highlands. The decaying house was glorious but empty, so I gathered little knowledge about its previous occupants. On my way out of the grounds, through dense woods, I stubbed my toe, hard, on a boulder at the base of a huge old oak. I crouched down, pushed aside ferns, and found a memorial to two obviously beloved dogs, Brua and Tappie, who had died together in 1932. I felt at once a connection, across time, in an unfamiliar place, with their owner, an unknown woman. Later, I researched the dog’s owner, the former mistress of the house. She was a suffragette, photographer, and a lover of dogs, especially West Highland White Terriers, a breed developed by her ancestors. I think I would have liked her.