Bringing back the Deer in the Nest / The Full Story
The full story of the deer
I so believe in omens, whatever name you want to give them. For me, they usually involve animals. And sometimes they come at me in quite dramatic ways, unfortunately. This one happened when I was standing outside my studio in the spring taking a smoke break and enjoying the sun, when a gunshot came out of nowhere. I live in what I would call residential-country. I have an acre and 1/2 of land. There are houses all around and my kids play outside (they were at grandma’s at the time). A police officer then rolls up my driveway to inform me he had just shot and deer on my property. I was taken aback and still in shock. He caught me smoking pot, something that had just become legal in Michigan. So, let’s just put it this way—I didn’t ask questions. The officer left without saying more, and I was left with a body ( I assume the deer had been hit by a car first). I knew I was meant to watch over this deer. This piece was inspired by what I saw over the next few months. I collected fur when that was all that was left, and a few days later an old oak tree fell on where the body was. When I made this piece, I mostly thought about how humans interact with nature. How we impact it with our actions. And how the cycle still wants to happen, even though our impact created a ripple. How fragile nature is. How beautiful and perfect it is. How broken we are.
The deer is made out of the handmade watercolors that I make out of my grandmother’s antique jewelry. It has embedded crystals, moonstones, beads, glass, and a lot of 24k gold. The piece is 3 dimensional. A real cicada husk was embedded and gilded with 24k gold leaf, and the fur of the deer that inspired this piece was used in it, as well. The piece is sealed to protect the organic components.