Dear Curiosity Journal,
It’s curious how some days you can sense the wheel of the year turning. A first frost has this effect for me. When you go to sleep to green and wake up to black, the shift feels shaky, like a teenager learning to drive a stick shift, leaving a bit of whiplash. We harvested the last of the gardens from plants still plump with life as the hard frost descended around us on Sunday night. On Monday morning, stems slumped over, and leaves lay liquidated in the field. There is no hand that slaps like that of Mother Nature, a seasonal death sentence, a widespread killing blow. So, it was fitting that Monday I delivered the Catrina sculptures for their continued exhibition at Youth Initiative High School and the Pump House Regional Arts Center. It felt surreal to drive around with these goddesses of death, my skeletal co-pilots, who brought big smiles to everyone I encountered. These lovely figures, formed as an expression of death, arguably human beings greatest fear, inspire fascination, and a further exploration of our seasonal celebration of death, the thinning of the veil, and all that frightens us. I too gained great joy from seeing Garbancera and Oaxaca standing proudly in the gallery, already surrounded by a family snapping photos with them. I was practically tingling from the sheer interconnection of it all, another microcosm of the Driftless Curiosity mission.
~Joy
