"Precious Life" is a symbolic story about our strength, our fragility and our bonds. It was conceived around a recently-discovered photograph of my grandmother Ida and her boys Everett, Fredric and Lou. After grandfather Joe died suddenly in his early fifties, Ida rasied her three boys alone and worked full time in their shoe store. She stood fast when America was at war— while all three sons were enlisted overseas—praying they would somehow survive their tours. They did all survive, their lives forever changed, and have now passed on. The text that runs around the edge inside of the assemblage's openable "door" is scanned from one of Fred's post-service letters home to Ida, and reads quite ironically:

"Dearest Mopsy, I hope that you're well and happy. The war news lately has been so good that we can hardly be anything but optimistic! The new atomic bomb is fantastic..."

Post partum note:
At first we may react in horror that anyone could describe the first Atomic Bomb as "fantastic", but after the horrors of Nazi Germany and the deadly attack on Pearl Harbor, the A-Bomb was first popularly viewed by many at the time as a necessary move to insure American survival and that of freedom. It was, as we all know, a most horrible tool of military and political dominance and has since polarized the world's concept of our use of free will, our self-destruction and the frailty of all life. I ask the viewer to ask themselves, "Where have we come from and what have we learned? Have we really evolvled at all?"

~

Assemblage construction: 15" x 26" x 5"

Materials:
Various hardwoods, a clock face and hands, letter text, aged brass, crushed velvet, a coin, dried urchin, lead type, butterflies, owl feather, dice, copper wire, toned photographic print, marbles, machine gun bullet, dried plants, Quail eggs, a hornet, a Starling's foot and a Herkimer diamond.

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