Country Bunny - Limited Edition 1 of 25 Photograph

The relationships between human and animals are close. Children so often imagine themselves in varied manifestations of life, from babe to adult, from animal to part animal. In a run down mansion the party continues as a small girl imagines herself as one of five Easter bunnies from the children's classic story Country Bunny where a determined and loving mother of a large brood becomes the Easter Bunny to many. This piece is part of a larger story, A Nursery Rhyme for you. Following is the Artist Statment for that body of work: When my older daughter was born a dear friend gifted her a a collection of tales from the Brother’s Grimm. I remember sitting down in a rocker with my new born daughter and reading about needle pricks, abandonment, vindictive parents and silent young girls being scooped up by so called princely men. Each story more disturbing then the next. And then there is the saccharine Disneyification of such tales which in recent years has slightly improved, but still remains questionable in my book. As my daughters have grown up I’ve found myself wanting to find a portal for them into a world of their own fantasy and magic. This is not to deny the very real world around us and them, but to allow a space where their imaginations can thrive. As a girl my sister and I would sneak-up to my grand-parents attic and ogle the trunks full of ancestral ballgowns and antique medicine bottles, we would talk for hours about what it would have been like to wear such a dress, to attend the festivities that required it. Alas, we never got much beyond wearing shoddy 1970’s halloween costumes and a whole lot of talk. But as a collector of odds and ends and maker of many things, there is something in me that has wanted to find a way to help bring mine and my daughters imaginary worlds into being. In a society inundated with technology the opportunities for unfettered creativity are too often interrupted. I try like crazy to protect boredom, to allow for it, to encourage storytelling and reading and all the possibilities that come with it in hopes that we can go deeply into our imaginations. We each have a story and celebrating this is invaluable, so too is living inside a story that is not our own, trying on a different reality for size. I mine fairytales, dreams, childhood memories, newspapers, magazines, current events and stories told to me in the first person for source material. I am endlessly inspired by both the real and the magical and there are an infinite number of stories I want to try on for size, moments I want to create.