Regarding Solutions

Description

Regarding Solutions:

The being woke from their long slumber
to an object, objects all around them,
in the soft roots of their haven
and they thought they knew who?d caused this.
They sought a human to explain it.

They found her in the cellar
of her home in Pennsylvania,
and they offered up the refuse,
wide palm fulls of unknown rubbish,
fallen through the cracks and creases
to their realm of moss and fungus.

They asked her to explain each object?s significance
to the all consuming human concept of progress.
Together they sorted and sifted through detritus
and patiently she explained every object to the being

?Here?s a nail, you see? Used to tack together wood.?
?And here a glass bulb containing light
when connected to the right source?
And this is how they went until
they?d gone through every quandary
brought up, one after another.

Contented after a long while,
the spirit offered up a final vessel,
a parting gift for all her trouble,
opaque and date invisable,
as of yet, and she saw what it meant:
that there is hope to be had in the struggle,
of picking through the wreckage and rubble together,
so that we may ponder solutions.






Background:
As a person growing through a time of ever worsening environmental circumstances, I have chosen to focus my attention and my art on the issues arising, rising tides and heat waves and resource races at our doorsteps. I have a great reverence for outdoor spaces and the profound effect they have on me. I often utilize folklore and fairytale narratives in my work because of their ability to explain the wonder in the natural world around us. However with the onset of human induced climate change, scientists have proposed that we have entered a new geological era, which they are calling the Anthropocene. Traditional folklore may not be able to explain the changing world around us. My artwork focuses on proposing new fairytales for the Anthropocene Era. The marionette within this world space is a representation of the nature being described within the poem. The person wearing the gloves becomes the human working to help the being understand the altered environments we now inhabit by picking through what has been manufactured and discarded over the centuries.