In the Skagit Valley along the Farm-to-Market Road, near Bow and Edison. I drive up here to get a dose of the rural area I used to visit as a child. My mother was the oldest of nine on a farm in Southeastern Minnesota. She milked cows and baled hay along with her brothers. I grew up in “The City,” but we’d visit my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents on weekends; the roads in the Skagit remind me of driving between the Ties family farms, heading to another big meal, or a holiday gathering, or a service at Silo Lutheran Church. The rows of tall corn, the long driveways to tidy houses and barns, the kind open hearts—all of that comes back to me when I visit this farm country. The collage materials in this piece are from Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth (required reading for all incoming freshman when I attended St. Olaf Collage above Minnesota's cornfields), plus some Wendell Berry and rural-themed piano music, and a few pieces of torn paper I'd painted to create texture.
- Subject Matter: Landscape, Skagit Valley
- Collections: Yutori