MELISSA POWERS

WRITTEN BY QUINN RUSSELL BROWN

Each day it gets a little harder to remember what the yard looked like.

She grew up in the house with her mom and her grandma, and it was just the three of them. Her dad would come over to clear the vines and cut back the branches. He worked the yard with his hands and he worked it with his eyes. He circled and surveyed the yard, and he dropped to the soil to dig and he rose back to his feet to meet the wheelbarrow. He grappled with and pinned the vines, and this quieted the wilderness, and in its place he painted a peaceful scene with shears and a shovel. And then he went home to a different yard, alone, as the sun fell and the yard faded away. Now he rises each day to meet the overgrown yard, fading more each morning, looking to him no more or less like any other.

Her dad’s eyes have broken down. They see only fragments of before. These were his eyes and his legs, but this is her anger: an anger that can only falter and fall apart like a flower that blooms too soon. She courts this anger, kneading it and grinding it into grief, a preemptive grief, and with her camera she takes pictures of the untamed yard. Her lens blurs and breaks down the wilderness like a kaleidoscope, cloning the branches and layering them into spiderwebs, and she lets them hold her here. Each time she comes to the garden it looks different, and in this way it is still growing, and still without her dad. But it is here that she talks to him, the way she can’t at his house, and she sows her grief into the soil. She knows this is where nature has planted her.

* This is an interpretive essay based on a conversation with the artist, rather than a direct reflection of the artist’s thoughts on the work

WHAT HAPPENS TO A FORGOTTEN SEED?

(left)

Six projected videos overlapping on walls and across a 14’ x 14’ polysilk curtain.

Dimensions variable.

Photo credit: Neighboring States

WHAT HAPPENS TO A FORGOTTEN SEED?

(below)

Six projected videos overlapping on walls and across a 14’ x 14’ polysilk curtain.

Dimensions variable.

Photo credit: Neighboring States

HER LENS BLURS AND BREAKS DOWN THE WILDERNESS LIKE A KALEIDOSCOPE, CLONING THE BRANCHES AND LAYERING THEM INTO SPIDERWEBS, AND SHE LETS THEM HOLD HER HERE.

SOMETIMES THERE ARE FLOWERS