On the morning of Sept. 11th, I was pulled out of bed only to find myself directly underneath the first plane as it flew into the World Trade Center. As most Americans, I am inexperienced in the ravages of war. In that one moment of flames and smoke filling the sky fueled by oil, people jumping to their deaths, broken glass flying upward reflecting light in millions of directions, inexplicably compelling to see as it was horrible, i was changed.

Meditation on Mourning was made as a response to the enormity of loss that has occurred over centuries as a result of wars. In war we become our own enemy. In war we affix our humanity against ouselves. In war our grief becomes bereft of meaning.

In this piece as in the one proceeding it— female figures made of hay— i have decided to work in multiples. The figure when repeated finds a landscape from which narratives of ritual may be derived. The figures are faceless and anonymous because they live in everyone. They are women as representative of procreation and land—equally restful in their positions and in pain. I wanted to know grief in its process and found it in the women cocooned, where both flight and ossification are expressed in her experience of loss.

It is my hope that this piece allows a dialogue of healing to take place between one's personal understanding of loss with one's universally shared experience of loss. The Mourning Women are containers of grief. They hold the loss and the longing for a better world.