The South Dakota Arts Council Artist's Fellowship 2024
The South Dakota Arts Council has granted me an Artist's Fellowship for 2024 to share the journey of healing after one of the most painful experiences in my life.
A composite of photographs from the fire.
After the fire fighters had gone I was alone with the remains.
The focus of my fellowship will be an exhibit utilizing materials that endured after the embers cooled.
It was surreal to walk through the burnt out building and get excited by the artistic possibilities of what remained. I have made art from discarded artifacts my whole life. It was as though I was given a choice. Create or cry. And I did do my share of crying but I also got to work saving what I could of my extensive art library, heirlooms, crated artworks, family pictures and materials I had collected over the years.
I held onto the possibilities of those materials and planned for something in the future. As fate would have it I was about to give up on the idea of turning my pain into art when I applied to the Arts Council.