IN BETWEEN
Bronze, wood, raffia and thread. last revision 1990, 16" x 10" x 17".
I tinkered with this piece through several showings before boxing up all my bronzes and turning my attention to drawing. After my son started kindergarten, I pulled the boxes off the shelf. It was an amazing period of clarity. I made my peace with the way I made sculpture and, one by one, began to rediscover, reclaim each figure, each sculpture.
The years of storage in an unheated shed had taken its toll on In Between. The raffia was in tatters, and in the places where it had broken or slumped, patina stripes could be seen, cris-crossing the figure, echoing the original taunt bindings. I kept putting off a planned re-wrap and then I understood.
Change is inevitable. Families, jobs and living arrangements continually evolve. Sometimes I readily shuck the confines of the old, eager to explore the new. But some transitions are hard, forced, painful. Going back is not an option; going forward seems impossible. I am trapped in a backwater, an in between, by my pride, my fear of starting over, my refusal to trade in old hopes and dreams. In Between went into storage tightly bound; it came out marked by the experience, but its bindings were falling away, disintegrating. In Between isn’t a moment in time, it is a process. It takes time to grieve losses, to accept and welcome new possibilities. It takes time for wounds to scab over, heal and scar. But eventually I am ready - to sail on, to chart a new course, to learn a new way of being.
- Janet Geib Pretti
