Left Behind

The poem “Low Tide, Ryder Beach” by Julia Lisella begins, “We are the colonialists today/gathering/more than we need…” Lisella speaks of what has been rejected by a group of colonialists—those who occupied a space for a time and then left, taking only what they wanted. Just because a being or thing has been rejected by one group says nothing about its inherent worth, only about how those in control view their domain. “We do not see the world as it is; we see it as we are” (probably Talmudic in origin, and made famous by Anais Nin in Seduction of the Minataur). My interpretation of this poem focuses on the rejected: those left behind by those in control. Every stone and shell and piece of glass in my piece was selected and saved by someone who loved it, who thought it beautiful in some way: the time-smoothed gray surface of the rounded stones, the perfectly geometric stripes, the Dalmatian spots of black and white, the way the purples and browns are magnified when wet but retain a lovely velvet texture after drying. Although others rejected each one, left it on the sand and walked away, I love them all. In the spirit of this concept, I began this piece by selecting from my large collection of stones and shells many that I loved. I asked first one friend, and then another, to select the pieces they loved best. Those were removed, and after several rounds of this process, what remained formed the basis of the artwork. My objective was to honor these rejected things, to give them the love they deserve, to highlight their inherent beauty. To the stones I added hand-cut pieces of travertine left over from a kitchen backsplash, and entering slyly from the top a wave of blue glass that will drag them all back out to sea.