To Touch a Wide Span, 2025, Encaustic medium, cloth, felt, oil paint, hog rings, welded steel, Photo credit: Mario Gallucci
Jacob’s Pillow is located on land that once belonged to people who now reside in Wisconsin as the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. The story of land loss and forced removal is common to many Native Nations, including mine, the Cherokee Nation. In making To Touch a Wide Span, I wanted to address the importance of connections to the land. I used beeswax both from the farm here at Jacob’s Pillow to represent where the Muh-he-con-ne-ok once lived and also beeswax given to me by the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Keek Oche / From the Earth Farm. To talk about resilience and sustainability, the cloth that I used to created the piece is reclaimed waste from a sewing factory. These wax-coated strips are joined by prominent black connectors and harsh hog rings to emphasize and honor the importance, and sometimes the difficulties, of keeping connections to land and community across generations and space.