WITNESS TO THE POMEGRANATE EXERCISE
This dark red, almost brown pomegranate reminds me of a skull, with its two eye holes. I knew something had to go inside. At first I thought it might be a bird’s egg, but then I found a walnut shell, also chewed by squirrels, also skull-like. Still I thought about birds’ eggs, but then it came to me—a pseudo bird’s egg—a Styrofoam packing shell. And what would hatch out of that? A plastic baby doll! The doll has been hidden in my sewing kit for years and I discovered it by accident. All things come to those who wait. The twig thicket seemed perfect—the pomegranate as nest, tucked away between a barrier of twigs, yet still vulnerable. It makes me think of fairy tales, the Japanese tale of the boy in the peach that my grandmother used to tell. And Sleeping Beauty, hidden behind a thicket of briars. The mostly natural materials mixed with the ubiquitous Styrofoam packing shells. I was thinking about Medieval and Renaissance drawings of the cosmos, layer within layer within layer. I was remembering carvings in the Pitti Palace, one sphere inside another sphere inside another, the whole carved out of a single block of wood.
