This artwork was made as a physical embodiment of the emotional toll of capital accumulation.

The artwork was created out of sadness about the sale of a sacred place. This autumn, the rising cost of living, increasing cost of late-life care, and limited social service support combined for the artist’s family, ultimately leading to a difficult decision: to sell a small property in northern Michigan that had been in their family for five generations. It was the family’s original tie to that magical region of the world, where ultimately, generations later, the artist was born and raised. 

The piece was also created out of frustration about the systems of capital accumulation and wealth concentration on our local, national, and global levels. The sacred land and home was sold to a non-local family who bought it in cash, sight-unseen, as they were interested in ‘expanding their portfolio of rental properties’. The external blue walls on the coffin feature words that express anger, frustration, and exasperation with this reality, the forces at play, and the systems of accumulation. The blue external walls also acknowledge the shared experience of the loss of land for profit, power, and gain, as related to experiences of gentrification and settler-colonialism.

The piece was also created out of deep appreciation, gratitude, and love. For five generations this property was an oasis, a refuge, a final resting place for family pets, and the continuation of a legacy of connectedness to land. It was where the artist’s great-great grandmother cooked fresh fish caught in the lake, great grandmother collected antiques, grandmother rowed a boat through the marsh and into town to buy butter as a child, mother slept on the porch with trains singing in the distance, and where the artist was stopped in her tracks each time she heard the call of the northern loon: its otherworldly sounds inspiring mindfulness, imagination, and focus, and ultimately inspiring her creative practice. The internal yellow walls resemble rays of sunshine and light, which feature words of the most special and sacred symbols and aspects of the property. The back center features the serenity, charm, and beauty of the property, featuring the cobblestone hut, its surrounding woods, hydrangea bushes, grassy field, and the shoreline of the inland lake. 

In separating the blue external walls from the internal design, the artist seeks to keep the external forces and frustration outside of the memory of the space, so as to honor the sacred property, memory, and legacy and to lift it up as loved and not only as lost.