From "The Last Gift She Gave,'' by Carrie Dickeson, in the group show "Solastalgia,'' at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Westport, Mass., April 4-29.
She asks: "Is it possible to balance the manufactured with the organic, the man-made with the earth-grown? In decades to come, how will 'Nature' respond to the synthetic materials that humans generate?''
"The title, 'The Last Gift She Gave' emerged from a series of text messages, as my mother stood witness to the extraction of our family’s cedar trees, felled in exchange for an updated power grid. We shared a history with those trees. They shaded our summer gatherings, and shielded our home from winter winds. As a child I used to climb the cedars’ scraggly trunks, seeking new perspectives, hanging upside down, inadvertently collecting the sap sticking to my hands and clothes. This visceral relationship included the intimacy of hugging the branches, and breathing the spicy oils. And long before my own childhood, the trees stood strong, through multiple generations.''
