She's Got Something To Say
exploring the many ways Earth shares her story
Happy Spring my Friends!
When…
TENSIONS arise…
and you want to blend in…
reconsider…and instead, get to work…prepare for battle…
Wait.
No.
That’s the old narrative, before we understood…
what the earth has been trying to tell us for a long time, but we haven’t paid attention.
Until now. When we see that in the process of re-imagining our relationships to everything, beauty presents itself again and again.1
Lattice-shaped fungi grow on the binding of an outdated Civil War coffee table book. Incredible.
And creatures make a home inside a book about Japanese art.
Book as home.
How cool is that?
But anything is possible when we pay close attention to all the ways the Earth is re-claiming authorship.
At one time, the Cambridge Encyclopedia was the authority…names and ideas presented neatly in alphabetical order: Bonny Prince Charlie, Students for a Democratic Society, Study Skills, stump-jump plough and Peter Stuyvesant together, in order.2
Nations also in order, by name. Their colorful flags defying the complexity of relationships that will never be static or follow the structured rules we thought guided us.3
There are fissures. We know it. She knows it.
They have existed for hundreds of years.
Earth, though, is reclaiming authorship.4
She has an alternative story.
And we’re listening…
ready to turn the literal page, let the old narratives decompose, and nourish us as we move forward.
The colors, textures and shapes that presented themselves, page after page, book after book, left me speechless, just as my early compost photographs had years before.
We honor the sturdy iron structures of old and embrace the Earth’s guidance, as revealed through her handwriting - - meandering molds, fungi and all the other ways she communicates.
Because while there may be a terrifying tempest ‘out there,’
we are hard at work decoding, listening and showing up in every way we know how…
…inviting conversation and exploring what the Earth has in mind…
Because she has something to say…
…and when, after the winter snow melted, I chose to read what the earth and her many collaborators had written in these tomes, I had more than a few things to say as well!5
Some of what I witnessed two years ago are now on view at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock, Vermont.6
These messages from the past, witnessed in the present, offer visions for the future. The juxtapositions humble and inspire.
With gratitude for you, showing up when you can and using your voice to share the stories that need to be told,
Lyn
I’m eager to have the Meandering Mold work travel to libraries, botanical gardens, and colleges or schools with art galleries. I imagine them at the center of interdisciplinary conversations about the decomposition process and the power of fungi and mold, among other things, in our soil, the future of books, and the value of experiential learning. What would happen if…?
If you know of anyone who might be interested in this kind of show, please let me know!
Crazy Serendipity, like looking at photographs I created two years ago this week when I was in the midst of excavating my Garden Library. I didn’t see then what I see now - - that when I opened the Cambridge Encyclopedia it was Meryl Streep’s name that appeared. She is my very favorite actress…I know I’m not alone in this…one who speaks truths about our lives on and off the screen. How did I not see that before? Probably because I was looking for something else when I first reviewed these images.
Once again, I am surprised that I didn’t even notice what page I’d documented. It turns out Peter Stuyvesant is an ancestor of mine. When ‘reading’ these books on that early spring day two years ago, I intentionally ignored logic, opening randomly to this page of that. So weird that this was one of the pages I photographed. I also hadn’t noticed this detail when I did my first few edits of this project, mainly because this particular page is not really as graphically interesting as those with Earth’s actual handwriting.
As hard as we try, we can’t seem to figure out how to get along for extended periods of time. The United Nations offers such a helpful structure for resolving international conflicts. I find it extremely upsetting that the United States continues to think it is above/beyond/outside of the rules we helped establish eighty years ago.
Most of the books I composted were written by men telling the men’s narrative: The H.W. Janson’s History of Art, which I purchased for Fine Arts 13 at Harvard College in 1984, did not include women artists until 1986.
It’s taken me two years to finally give this body of work the attention it deserves…there was something about a move and family and the rest of life. But I am excited to have these images get out into the world.
The show goes through April 29, 2026. The images in this post are not in the show. To see more of the work in this portfolio, click here.