Canada Archives - Women Beyond Borders

A Portable Muse

Six Interconnecting Planes Of Carbon – One Diamond

I wanted to eradicate the borders of the box and create an open field, so I took the lid and four sides off and placed them flat. I then reconnected each rectangle to the other from the back by using black velvet for hinges. Once I had this field of interconnecting planes, I thought about how over time, the possibility lies the hope for the future. I then burned the field of interconnecting planes, turning the wood to carbon. Within the central rectangle (that had been the bottom of the inside of the box). I inlaid a diamond to demonstrate the reality of evolution. The piece is to be either hung or placed flat, IN THE HORIZONTAL CONFIGURATION AND NOT vertically. This is quite intentional to allow for a broader reading than a figurative (totem) placement would permit and is, I believe, visually more consistent with the concept.

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Bed

Rochelle Rubenstein – Jill in the Box, Canada, 1998

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Pandora’s Box

Canadian Nest

We Create Life

Kristine’s Hope Chest

The central character in this visual story is the Hope Chest. I play a secondary role and I am represented here by the paper mache figure with the hole in her soul and an exposed heart. The setting “Life” is a jigsaw puzzle piece cut from a chess board.

The first things to be taken out of the chest are my sketchbook and pencil. There are three other items on the board and they symbolize external influences that always shadow my moves.

The contents of the chest are: two teddy bears, a doll, a key, a warm knitted blanket, a couple of books, paintings (my work and that of others), pencils, a tin angel and bits of coloured wire. All these items are needed by this nest builder to turn a room or apartment into HOME.

The colourful tin angel was given by a friend, here it means friendships and friends who are sometimes angels.

The colourful curly corkscrew bits of wire are the wonder and amazement that I carry around with me.

On the inside of the lid is a rejection notice from the New Yorker Magazine, and a letter written by my granny when she was 65. She lived and died in Latvia. She learned enough English to cobble together a now cherished letter to her 10 year old granddaughter.

I write a lot of letters and the stamps are the decals from my travels by mail.

Web of Complexity

As an artist, arts educator and mother of two daughters, I continually open small doors. Doors can be understood as metaphors for insights into life, as they shed light on the personal, social and political issues that impact our everyday lives. As we navigate through these doors we find a continuous reconstruction of our own identities. The dialogue within the box, and its door, conjures associations concerning questions of history and healing. Gauze, from my grandmother’s tombstone, is soaked in beeswax. It covers the wool felt, which surrounds a vessel housing the fragments of body tissue.