For the last two thousand years or more, people in Croatia of varying races, tribes and religions have lived together often peacefully, but sometimes warred with enormous consequence.  In Rudele, where the residency took place, buildings and walls were made of stone, some had been bombed in the war in 1995, some in WW2 and some five hundred or more years ago.  When people dig a foundation in Croatia, they frequently encounter human bones.  I saw bullet holes in ancient homes made of stone.  I saw piles of rock that once were people’s homes, destroyed by bombs.  At times, they were indistinguishable from piles of rocks that covered mass graves or simply rocks in a farmer’s field.  No one knew the difference.

 I was awe-struck by the concept of people’s homes built by hand with stone and mortar.  I found it difficult to imagine people having worked so hard to make a house, have it blown up, and then start over; rebuilding in the same spot.  I couldn’t imagine living in a house pock-marked by bullet holes.  What would it be like to live among reminders that your home could be taken away or that you would be attacked in the supposed safety of one’s home?  I asked myself “what happened to the children when their elementary school was bombed to pieces?”   Where did they learn, what did they learn?.  I also asked myself “ if it happened to me, could I bear to return and start over?”  Is home stronger than fear? The answer possibly, “yes”.

I saw Roman aqueducts, almost 2,000 years old.  Who were the people who built those aqueducts?  I knew that they were people the Romans conquered, men with dignity but defeated in war.  While I was in Rudele, I saw men building railroad lines by hand.  Methodically, placing stone after stone to level the bed, while in Canada rail lines now are built and removed by machines.  As a future cultural worker what is the impact of building by hand vs. building by machine?  Does the method of production change your relationship with the future, more than another?  Does one connect you to your work more than another? 

 At the residency, I pondered these questions and tried to answer them with my work.  I created a sculpture to acknowledge the concept of piling, layering and building upon building.  I used felted blankets as shrouds that visually represented those piled debris and rocks.  I placed the felted pieces on the stone homes and walls. My host at the residency Mara Segan, a Serbian woman (who was burned out of her home,) was moved by my gesture, referring to the felt coverings as something nurturing to the places that were violently damaged.  The sculptured rocks were like a memorial; their purpose was for grieving and remembering, and for Mara, the gesture was comforting.  Our world is full of contradictory experiences such as: memory and grieving, fear and comfort combined.

The hundreds of handmade rocks were placed on actual rock.  Then, I transformed the blankets by stitching them together to form a sculptural column and I titled this new sculpture “Aqueduct”.  There was a huge contrast between rocks that have been in that village for thousands and possibly millions of years and my handmade fabrics that almost dissolved in a single rainfall.  I created “Aqueduct” for the Rudele Residency show “Re-inhabit”.  The ephemeral nature of the fabric suggests transformation and change. Between the “rocks” I used cheesecloth to form the vertical column of the “Aqueduct”  Its qualities  seemed appropriate; delicate, vulnerable, impermanent and meant to be seen from a distance as a memorial for the land.