One Mighty Miss

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.