Shelter

This piece is based on the life of my great-grandmother’s grandmother, Mary Ann Cato. Mary Ann emigrated to Utah, not aware that the man she left England to marry planned to also marry 3 other women along with her. After conflict with two of the wives, Mary Ann moved into an earthen dugout--literally a home of clay in the ground--where she spent a difficult winter. The ceramic disks behind the figure are constructed from clay and limestone used to whitewash dugouts from the land where she lived. After being widowed at 38, she lived independently with farming and straw weaving for support.

Her story is one I was repeatedly told as a child. As an adult, I have worked to unpick the threads of sacrifice, compulsion, resilience, trauma, and the support and constraints of the places we both leave and choose.

Ceramic figure is appx. 33” high without the straw. Earthenware, underglaze, glaze.