Ancestral Threads
Bloggy Blog Bit
The thing about being an installation artist is that before mounting the show, all you have are the bits, and a lot of big ideas. I also tend to have some pretty bad drawings, usually rendered to try to explain to my husband what exactly it is that I am proposing to make. Especially when I am hoping that he will build something for me.
But to promote a show, you need to have images. This is difficult, as every aspect of an installation is essentially a WIP prior to the show, at least for me. So, any way, here is a sort of internal-memo-press-release with some images of the bits and the paperwork.
What isn’t said in the press release is that the front altar in the show will consist of five cedar boxes I built in 1995 with my friend Ian. Or that the threads for the woven panels inside the boxes were dyed back then too, while my new husband was sitting vigil at his mother’s death bed 2,000 miles away. Or that when I first showed the boxes, at another exhibit during my BFA year at UO, the threads were not woven. Instead the colorful skeins were pressed into the boxes using long cedar sticks from the Incense Cedar tree in my yard.
What isn’t said, is that whole point of the boxes filled with dyed threads to begin with, was to try to represent one of the most vivid dreams of my life. In that dream I met the Dead on a tiny mountain road, in what felt like Guatemala. A place I have never been. The cut bank beside that road was made up of many layers and many, many colors. The message those Dead had for me, is that they were all right, that they were so happy to be acknowledged. That all would be well. That the past doesn’t go anywhere. A sentiment I would hear again years later in the wonderful album of the same name, a collaboration between Ani Difranco and Utah Phillips.
What isn’t said is that the white rug I am weaving for the floor of the gallery from repurposed hotel sheets, represents the Land of Milk and Honey. Not the biblical reference, but an Irish reference - to the place where all is well, to the idea that we are connected to the land which provides for us. From the same tradition that requires someone to go down to the hives to let the bees know about a death in the house, so that the sensitive bees can be part of the grieving.
Also can we talk about the newly painted box interiors? Basically the last two weeks have been all about sanding the boxes, then on to painting many coats of traditional hide skin gesso on the insides, and then another two days to paint the egg tempera paint made with homemade Maya Blue pigment - which was made with indigo I grew. There are about fifty stories in that paint. Did you know that sacrifice victims were once coated with blue pigment in Ancient Mesoamerica?
It all connects - the colors of the world dyed onto the fibers of the world to represent all of the beloved Dead that are all around us.
I have had a lot of death in my life. For the entirety of my thirties I lost at least one person on average every year. Sometimes more. When I was diagnosed with a serious illness at age 43, I knew it was very connected to my grief over all of those deaths. I wanted to come to some sort of agreement with the whole death thing in order to get well. By Grace I somehow did recover, in a rather remarkable miraculous fashion. Along the way I came to realize there is only one agreement with Death. Everyone will die, and paradoxically no one will. Death isn’t the end.
So in this time of Pandemic, those boxes tucked away in the closet under the stairs for over twenty years seemed to call to me. I wanted to create an installation, a chapel, a holy place, with them. A space for people to connect to the comfort offered me by the Dead on that dusty mountain road in my dream when I was 25. The dead are still with us, they are well. We needn’t hide from our mortality, all will be well if we walk towards what we fear and reach out a hand to help.
Ancestral Threads opens Friday April 8th. I hope you can come in and sit for awhile. Tyler Little has made a soundscape to accompany your stay.
Press Release
THE FACTS:
WHAT? Ancestral Threads - an installation
WHO? Artist and Naturalist Dyer Iris Sullivan Daire, with soundscape by Tyler Little
WHERE? Sou’Wester Lodge Gallery Trailer - Seaview Washington
WHEN? Opens April 8, 2022 runs through June 2022
Artist Statement:
Ancestral Threads is a handwoven and hand dyed installation by artist Iris Sullivan Daire, with a soundscape by musician Tyler Little.
The threads of the Dead are buried, though not gone. A powerful dream showed me the emergence of the ancestors, connected by these threads.
Its is an unraveling and reweaving of the dreams and stories that tie us to the well Ancestors. Woven threads of natural color that twine through lineage and land. Flowers, leaves, roots and bugs, salt of the earth and water of the spring - of these things our ancestors colored their world.
A place of contemplation that supports the acknowledgement of those who have come before, so that we might reach a hand towards the benevolent ones of the unseen realms. To ask for their help untangling the challenges inherent in lovingly acknowledging the shadows of our past and present, and reimagining our world into greater balance.
(Installation includes a rug woven from repurposed sheets from the Sou’wester Lodge- bringing cloth that once held dreaming guests into the space.)
Bio:
Iris Sullivan Daire is an installation artist and naturalist dyer who uses site specific pigments and dyes to add new layers of meaning to the narrative of her work. She has been a hand weaver since she was seven, and has partnered with plants for color since the early 1990’s.
Iris lives with her family next to the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon. She grows traditional dye plants and has been quietly cataloging the hidden colors contained within the native and invasive plants of the North Oregon Coast. She holds a BFA in fiber arts from University of Oregon.