Sky, Mud and Bones 2002
Grand Coteau Landscape, Fig Trees, Winter 2002
Between the towns of Grand Coteau and Arnaudville, Louisiana we have a studio in a building that is over a hundred years old. The drive to the studio is interesting because we move from a very urban environment to stretches of farmland and dense tree growth. In the winter of 2000 and 2001 we took regular trips to the studio in order to get a feel for the land, the farms and the air in the winter. Here is an excerpt from the exhibition in 2001 entitled Planting the Harvest an exhibition that was based on these excursions and observations: “ In Planting the Harvest we decided to continue our previous exploration and to move into the use of other media such as acrylic and to utilize computer manipulated imagery to a slightly greater degree. We felt we had learned much from earlier investigations but rather than harvesting completely those fruits we decided to “turn them under,” to plant the harvest.”
“This past winter we spent much time driving around the quickly disappearing farmland around Grand Coteau and Arnaudville, LA. visually lapping up the dark, dormant fields and skies. The resulting ferment is revealed in many of the images in the exhibit.”
This image is a landscape with fig trees lying dormant in the dark fields of winter remembering the full leaves of spring past and of the spring to come. There is a quote from a poem by Baudelaire and a negative portrait of the poet within a leaf. The fig leaves are silk encased in polymer medium then sewn onto the under lying silk.
