"The wisest and noblest teacher is Nature itself." - Leonardo daVinci
My grandmother, Elsa Edson Breed, was born September 20, 1899... Scenes from Camden, Maine, 1920s
Elsa is the inspiration and catalyst for this new line of ocean-inspired prints and cards called the Ocean Gems Collection.
My grandmother was a painter, and one of the first group of women to graduate from the Museum School in Boston, MA, in 1921. She lived in Camden, Maine, with with my grandfather, a retired professor from MIT. I can imagine her walking the quiet beach in front of their house in the early mornings, the ocean filled and overflowing with abundant beauty, leaving these slippery gems at her feet for her to find. I can see her picking up these gorgeous lacy specimens, arranging and pressing them between paper to keep forever in a book she titled, "Ocean Gems." I believe she was preserving her own dreams, pressed and suppressed, as fragile as these tender gifts from the bottom of the sea, between those same pages. Ocean Gems is my grandmother's gift to me
Following the path backOpening and entering this book is like looking through binoculars from the opposite end...I can barely make out the figures in that distant past.
Through the making of these prints, and in contemplating the origins of this book and all the hands that must have touched it, I am following the path...back...and back. And now I find myself at a crossroads...looking for Hecate to take my hand and show me the way...It’s as if there is an inherited pain and sorrow in my grandmother's work, one that I can actually feel while I turn the delicate, fragile pages of this book. I have had a lot of time to be alone, to think and be present with a past I did not know.
After one-hundred years in a dark attic, I am bringing these images out into the light of day as sharable works of art for all to see and enjoy. While I resurrect and transform these images into works of my own, I wonder... can we inherit our ancestors' emotional experiences? This may be true, yet I believe we have the ability to change our experiences of the past by transforming our relationship to it. Something can be healed when this shift is allowed to happen. In some unknown way, I hope my grandmother can sense that healing, too. The ocean holds within it the mysteries of Life itself. My wish is that you, too, will find a healing and transformation of your own through these exquisite Ocean Gems. The other women in our story |
