Jennifer Thoreson, Multidisciplinary Artist

The master bedroom contained two photographs paired with a twin bed dressed in a white woven coverlet, covered in a heavy mound of white ashes.  On the crest of the pile of ashes lay two cast rubber pigs, three pears, sprigs of lily of the valley, and dried figs.  Biblically, pigs represent human disgrace and failure.  Swine are regarded as the most unclean and abhorred of all animals.  In the book of Matthew, a host of Demons are cast into a herd of pigs, who fling themselves into a body of water and drown.  Together with the ashes, the pigs represent decay, and the passing of human life.  The white coverlet is a vintage piece, dating to the 1950’s, and is roughly the same age as the house.  It is worn and well-loved, and I imagined it to be wrought with the physical DNA of it’s owners, and full of their memory.