the manna project:
IN THE OLD TESTAMENT (Exodus, Chapter 16), manna was food sent by the god Yahweh to sustain his chosen people, the Israelites, during their 40 years in the desert. Today, we refer to any lucky windfall as “manna.” But manna is both privilege and bondage, freighted with judgments of worthiness. In this project, empty vessels of various kinds testify to the cycle of dependence, fulfillment, and fear of abandonment that accompanies manna.
Empty vessels and empty hands can imply continuous refilling, or continuous loss. Purses without bottoms can accept wealth but not keep it. In Wyoming, our manna is minerals, and our covenant is a boom/bust economy.
Like women everywhere, Wyoming women are beholden to men for their well-being. But they depend more upon manna than do most American women. According to census data, they experience one of the worst gender wage gaps in the US, low rates of representation among state and local governments, and poor maternal care.
Still, manna is more than a metaphor for women’s position in patriarchy. It is also as a metaphor for Wyoming’s economic dilemma, as the state’s reliance on tax revenue from fossil fuels (manna from the earth) proves untenable and leaders struggle to foresee the next boom. Of course, the whole world has prospered from – and now struggles to wean itself from – the same manna.
Most recently, I’ve begun painting still lifes of paper currency and coins, as meditations on our fraught relationship with money, which often defies rational thinking and behavior surrounding finances. I propose that money, the ultimate manna, really is everything.
Scroll down to see works in Sculpture, Printmaking, Collage, and Painting.
