Marcella Edmund

This is a monumental work, that took me 5 years to create, or perhaps more, when I tally the count.  Let me tell you the story.

It was my dream, to live in the country.  Life gave me an opportunity to do so, for a little while.  I took a small cottage for the winter, an auxillary studio; not far from town, I could commute.  And so I did.  I lived two lives, a committed partner and a free spirit.  Oh, what joy was mine, to waken there, in the shadow of that giant...  For that was what made me want the place: the 200+ year old Maple tree in that valley (a beautiful, horse-shoe valley at the end of a dead-end road, in the tangles of the northern hills....) When I saw it, I knew that it was a Superior Being, Ancient and Strong,  almost beyond my comprehension.  But --I did understand! and every day I would go out, to greet the Tree, and hear it's Message -- oh, Yes, it Talked to me-- and most often it said, "Go!  Go on..." and so I did.  For five years I danced around it's base, weeded the lilies planted there, felt the late autumn leaves falling on my shoulders, and admired it's awesome profile, in the depths of winter.  I saw, and knew, that that Tree had a Flaw: an Occulus-- where, at some point in it's many years, it had grown apart, and then back together.  It had a magic eye, where the low winter sun peeked out at me and my dog, and so I knew, the Tree was alive.  It spoke to me, and I listened.

This is a love story, and they all must end.  It is a tragic end, one from which I will never recover.  After the half-decade, I could no longer maintain the dream: it had changed into an intolerable reality.  All that I could still love, of that dead-end sanctuary, was the tree, my ancient friend.  I felt as though we understood each other.  The forces of the future took me away.  But, the day I went away, the night I finally abandoned that place, there was a Great Storm, as we sometimes have here, in the North.  Tornados, hail, thunderstorms, that shake the very foundations of our homes... that night, was such a storm.  And I was told, by my country neighbor the next day, that a third of the great tree fell in agony, that night.  It missed the house: the modest, of no account dwelling.  It fell east and west, and groaned into the earth, planting itself through the field, stretching as far as it could go, down the road, after me.  I had gone.  I could never go back.  Such a beautiful dream, lived out and expired, because of ..."practical considerations".  Oh, help my heart.  I ache to be back there; but there is Never Any Going Back.

The owner of that property came to clean up; they cut down and bulldozed the remainder of the tree into the swamp.  It was thought the giant was a hazard to the humble house.  They didn't know, that it had been a tree in love. I was already gone, and so I couldn't tell: too late.  A tragedy.  But, I had lived in the Shadow of that Giant, and blossomed in its shade.

17"w x 26"h

Hand-woven cloth, cut and reassembled, quilted, appliqued and embroidered.