The Sleeper Series
From their inception, I’ve imagined beds for these "sleepers," and have reveled in the play of literalizing this
metaphor! My indulgence has allowed a brief time when elements and ideas gathered over many years and deliberately stashed for some
unknown though certain purpose reemerge to merge with present forms and fascinations.
Being a proclaimed "sleeper" (and dreamer) myself, I’ve cherished these sensual, sleeping forms as among my most
intimate—akin to the comfort and familiarity I know with my horses (who nicker at me each morning with some mystical
knowledge that I’ve slipped free from my sleep and tossed my blankets off—they of course eager in anticipation of morning
feed…)
Windows from which I look out to the garden (and the horses) are like beds for my eyes to look beyond—into garden beds of
flowers or dried seed heads. Enveloped in seasonal shift, psyche infused with nature, I dream though the cycles. I gather
vestiges of memory of full bloom, and seeds of potential return: to begin again. A windless season leaves behind lofty billows of
cottonwood cotton along roadside ditches and pasture pockets and dips. I gather cotton, feathers, leaves. Always I’ve
gathered stones. Water flows, enveloping stones embedded in the wet of creek’s edge—like dreams that lap into
waking—submersed and emerged at once—like sleepers in dream. . .or dreamers awake…
I’ve "make my beds" through immersion into that which is familiar—certainly not all that is pleasant. Although my attractions
and choices of indulgence tend toward the esthetic and comfort of such imagined pleasures as a "feathered bed" or
"cottonwood bed," of course there are beds of shattered reflection, of rusted nails. Of mud and rocky sand. Of refuse and
discarded, composting matter. Of anxious unrest like pins and needles. . .
The "beds we make" are the beds of which we are made. They hold us inside of our dreams—like nests of psyche—from
which sometimes we rest, sometimes we fly, sometimes we cry.