Existing comment:
LESLIE HOLT
Bipolar Stain (without tenderness we are in hell)
Embroidery and acrylic on raw canvas
36 x 36 in.
Courtesy of the artist
ARTIST STATEMENT
During her last psychiatric hospitalization before she died, my mother asked me to bring her volume D of her World Book encyclopedia set. She wanted to study more about the ducks she fed daily during her morning smoke in the courtyard of her assisted living facility.
She often used the inside covers of books to quickly jot down notes. She filled the title page of the encyclopedia with clusters of notes including phone numbers, lists of medications, diagnoses, doctors' names, and test results. Her handwriting was normally a point of pride -- pristine and elegant. But these words are scribbled and sometimes illegible, powerful evidence of her earnest struggle to make sense of things through the fog of sedation and paranoia.
I incorporated some of these notes in this piece. In addition, I stitched a message on the back of the canvas -- a phrase from a poem by Adrienne Rich: "without tenderness we are in hell." On the front of the canvas, this message is illegible. It was a horrible year, but this inward dive was very fruitful. It helped me look at hard things because I had space and quiet, and everyone else was grieving, too. |