Day 11: Art that Drives the Point Home

Last night was the opening for my daughter, Bracha’s senior class show at OCAD, Ontario College of Art. Her art is elegant, beautiful, brilliant and disturbing. By using plastic and plants, she captures a sense of how our eyes see a small slice of what matters. A series of beautiful orchids hang on meat hooks, basking In a fuschia glow. Their beauty arrests the eye, then we take in the horror of their true state. They are in various stages of decay due to contact with toxic resin. The lovely glow cast by the grow light drives the point home. Nothing is going to make these plants come back. The complex relationship humans have with their world is all here, what we do to make it “grow“ and what we do to kill it. And how confused we are about that. The installation forces us to confront that time is running out on the toxicity that we accept as normal. One of the pieces is a stunning photograph of a plant, already gone, that was printed on a scroll of paper. A clear statement that memory of plant is what we will have if we don’t get our act together. Here’s the thing- part of the energy of that day was about clarity and what endures over time, the eternal. In the morning, a red-tailed hawk landed 10 feet from us on the low roof of a shop. That’s the closest I’ve ever been to a live hawk. Hawks are powerful messengers. I take that visit as a sign from the natural world that this work has a powerful message that needs to be seen and heard.