10,000 Lakes and 1 Mighty Miss
Artist’s Statement Barbara Rogers Bridges, Ph.D.
In the artwork “10,000 Lakes and 1 Mighty Miss” I employed a methodology I call “recordari”, from the Latin “to remember, call to mind (re-restore and cor, genitive, cordis heart, understood by the ancients as the seat of judgment and memory” I would like to identify “10,000 Lakes and 1 Mighty Miss” and artworks like it, as representing our “lived experience” in visual form. I suggest we are practicing “recordari”. as “10,000 Lakes and 1 Mighty Miss” takes you on a journey which explores and records all the waterways I have visited in Minnesota.
My adventuring was particularly soulful since I am a Maine native and a Franco-American. I have called Minnesota home for 17 years. Maine claims Paul Bunyan as their native son. Imagine how curious I was to view the Paul Bunyan sculpture residing in Bemidji, where the university I have worked at for a decade is located!
When at my beach home in Maine, I am a daily searcher for treasures brought in by the tide. I currently live 1500 miles from any ocean but I still go to the water, like the lemming I was born to be : ) I was shocked and delighted to find that the 10,000 lakes and the Mighty Miss also throw their treasures onto their beaches. I collected. I sorted. I made art. This chair is a record of my relationship with the water in Minnesota. It is sealed with the boat epoxy I learned to use in Maine as I mended boats. This chair is indestructible, just the people of Maine and Minnesota.