And the rain fell like rain
The project And the Rain Fell Like Rain is a new iteration of my memento mori (“remember death”) work. I really love my life. I will be sad to see the end of it, and I have a lot of questions about that process of letting go. What will my death experience be like? How do I feel about this body after my consciousness has left it? What is the relationship between my small, short life and the larger frame of this world and its long history? The ancient Egyptians spent a lot of time and resources thinking about death as a reflection of their lives, and And the Rain Fell Like Rain is a personal interpretation of their rich tradition of funerary goods and artifacts. The first pieces in this ongoing series consists of three vignettes: a spirit house, the tomb with the body and hieroglyphs, and a scene from the Book of the Dead.
Spirit House, 2021 magnolia branches, paper wasp nests, paint. Photo credit: Ben Easter
The Field Museum in Chicago is one of my favorite places in the world. There is something magical about having so much art and so many artifacts across time and space in one place so that you can compare civilizations. Several years ago, I noticed that there were several seemingly unrelated cultures that all had these amazing little miniature houses for souls to live in called "spirit houses." The Chinese houses were lovely green glazed ceramic homes with courtyards and pigs and bowls of fruit, the Polynesian houses were woven from rattan, and the Egyptian houses were red clay with rooftop sleeping rooms.
My spirit house is a model of my own little house made from paper wasp nests that were built on it over the years. Each year the wasps come, and every time my husband and son knock them down. I think this is both unnecessary and unkind. The wasps are just making their homes and raising their babies. They have never bothered any of us, and yet suddenly…whack! Their lives are completely upended! Catastrophe strikes, and they can never understand why or how it has happened. Each time I picked up the pieces, saving them and wondering what to do with them. It seemed poetic and fitting to making my house from the ravages of theirs.
My spirit house is a model of my own little house made from paper wasp nests that were built on it over the years. Each year the wasps come, and every time my husband and son knock them down. I think this is both unnecessary and unkind. The wasps are just making their homes and raising their babies. They have never bothered any of us, and yet suddenly…whack! Their lives are completely upended! Catastrophe strikes, and they can never understand why or how it has happened. Each time I picked up the pieces, saving them and wondering what to do with them. It seemed poetic and fitting to making my house from the ravages of theirs.
42
42, 2021 graphite on black paper. Photo credit: Ben Easter
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the deceased person’s soul goes before a panel of forty-two judges who decide whether they deserve to move forward towards the paradise called the Land of the Reeds. In my interpretation, I imagined that if I had time to reflect upon my life before I died, I would judge myself by my relationships. They have made me who I am for better and for worse.
Using the idea of the panel of forty-two judges, I drew the eyes of forty-one people who have been significant in my life. Each person was asked to send me a selfie they took while they were thinking about me. The eye's expression reflects the nature of that relationship: the good, the bad, the love, the anger and the regrets. Drawing the eyes was an unexpectedly emotional experience for me, and I found myself dwelling on things I wished I could undo. It also made me realize just how many people have shown me amazing grace, love and kindness when I didn’t feel I deserved it. The group creates an implied forty-second (and harshest) judge: myself.
I used graphite on black paper to mimic the dusky view of a Claude glass, the black mirror used by artists to indirectly view the landscape, as a way of imagining a deathbed experience. The reflective quality of the graphite means that the drawings can be quite bright or ghostly and almost invisible depending on the light source.
Using the idea of the panel of forty-two judges, I drew the eyes of forty-one people who have been significant in my life. Each person was asked to send me a selfie they took while they were thinking about me. The eye's expression reflects the nature of that relationship: the good, the bad, the love, the anger and the regrets. Drawing the eyes was an unexpectedly emotional experience for me, and I found myself dwelling on things I wished I could undo. It also made me realize just how many people have shown me amazing grace, love and kindness when I didn’t feel I deserved it. The group creates an implied forty-second (and harshest) judge: myself.
I used graphite on black paper to mimic the dusky view of a Claude glass, the black mirror used by artists to indirectly view the landscape, as a way of imagining a deathbed experience. The reflective quality of the graphite means that the drawings can be quite bright or ghostly and almost invisible depending on the light source.
tomb
Tomb, 2021 186 individual gouache on paper paintings, foam, paper, plaster, paint, flocking. Photo credit: Ben Easter
I often walk with my eyes downcast because I find such interesting things on the ground. Four leaf clovers, dentures, money, random playing cards, dead birds (and other animals), worms in need of rescue, feathers and hair extensions are all lying on the ground waiting to be found. They inevitably end up in the studio where they are sorted into collections which I call the Larassa Kabel Museum of Everyday Wonders.
Sticks have become a particular obsession of mine. They are really beautiful forms of natural design. It is easy to compare them to calligraphic lines or kintsugi, the veins of gold used to mend cracks in Japanese tea cups. Some branches look like entire miniature trees while others have been damaged to the point of abstraction. They illustrate the different patterns of growth and geometry between species of trees as well as between individual trees of the same species, and there is a natural tension between perfection and imperfection.
The branches are also markers of time. Many come from trees that I have walked past almost every day for 16 years. I’ve watched young trees mature and mature trees fail. I’ve seen trees taken down by beavers and others chipped into mulch by the park service. The two lovely magnolia branches used in the installation with the paper spirit house broke off from the most beautiful tree in my neighborhood four years ago, their buds on the verge of opening. Much to my sorrow, the people who owned the tree cut it down. I have no idea why. It was really spectacular, and I think about it when I look at the branches I rescued - the only things left of it as far as I know.
Over the years, these amazing sticks have been piling up in the studio to the point that they took up too much work space and were (maybe) a fire hazard. Something had to be done with them. I spent months looking at my branches before deciding that what I most needed to capture was their essential form and design. I painted over a hundred and eighty black silhouette twig portraits I call “ghosts”, the velvety blackness of the paint reading as both object and void. Individually, they are essays in natural design. En masse, they become a catalog of how I spend my life: my habitual daily walking, my love of Nature, my deep connection to the place I call home. For this exhibition, they have become the hieroglyphs on my tomb, my way of telling the world “I love you.”. They say “I love you too.”
The sculpture "Tomb" is partly made of paper and plaster just as the Egyptian sarcophaguses were. It is both a tomb and the body, a self portrait as doe becoming new life after death.
Sticks have become a particular obsession of mine. They are really beautiful forms of natural design. It is easy to compare them to calligraphic lines or kintsugi, the veins of gold used to mend cracks in Japanese tea cups. Some branches look like entire miniature trees while others have been damaged to the point of abstraction. They illustrate the different patterns of growth and geometry between species of trees as well as between individual trees of the same species, and there is a natural tension between perfection and imperfection.
The branches are also markers of time. Many come from trees that I have walked past almost every day for 16 years. I’ve watched young trees mature and mature trees fail. I’ve seen trees taken down by beavers and others chipped into mulch by the park service. The two lovely magnolia branches used in the installation with the paper spirit house broke off from the most beautiful tree in my neighborhood four years ago, their buds on the verge of opening. Much to my sorrow, the people who owned the tree cut it down. I have no idea why. It was really spectacular, and I think about it when I look at the branches I rescued - the only things left of it as far as I know.
Over the years, these amazing sticks have been piling up in the studio to the point that they took up too much work space and were (maybe) a fire hazard. Something had to be done with them. I spent months looking at my branches before deciding that what I most needed to capture was their essential form and design. I painted over a hundred and eighty black silhouette twig portraits I call “ghosts”, the velvety blackness of the paint reading as both object and void. Individually, they are essays in natural design. En masse, they become a catalog of how I spend my life: my habitual daily walking, my love of Nature, my deep connection to the place I call home. For this exhibition, they have become the hieroglyphs on my tomb, my way of telling the world “I love you.”. They say “I love you too.”
The sculpture "Tomb" is partly made of paper and plaster just as the Egyptian sarcophaguses were. It is both a tomb and the body, a self portrait as doe becoming new life after death.