I’m a participant in NeoRio 2020, and anyone can be! It all starts with a wooden cube box with a lid, which everyone gets. Then one ponders, What is Home?
I made something of it and wrote:
Finally, a way to use the materials I’ve been collecting into a theme of something so essential to human beings: home. As my family moved house every 5 years or so as I was growing up, and I continued this trend in my own adult life, I have often thought deeply about what home truly is. I’ve passed the 5-year mark here in northern NM now, and I’ve been working to “settle” and stay here in Taos County because there is an urge to pick up and move to live somewhere else and do something else. The pandemic offered a way to be more reflective than my usual “busy” m.o. and claim an inner home along with my outer home, as well as this project, for which I am so grateful.
We also recorded a video story in which I talked about how butterflies have appeared at crises in my life. In my cube artwork, I use the butterfly who appeared on my windshield, just as it did the last time I was in need of a reminder that life is always in chrysalis, always in process. Even though life felt very chaotic then and now, I am guided invisibly by a wisdom beyond my immediate knowing. When the butterfly symbol shows up, I am reminded, and calmed.
Here’s a closeup photo of the fragment of the butterfly wing that broke off and settled into the teacup face, representing myself, as I was making the box. As if to say, again, LOOK!
And some other photos of the art.
