A little interactive installation …
Reception Friday, December 10th, 6 - 8 pm
(with Covid safety protocols in place)
On view Dec. 7 through the 31st
Anchor House of Artists, 518 Pleasant St., Northampton, MA 01060
Phone: 413-588-4337
Artist’s Statement
We are stardust. All composed of the same building blocks of matter, yet our destiny as a human being begins with the random luck of a parental draw. Each of us are a one of a kind prize from the genetic lottery. We begin utterly innocent. A baby with no control over their environment.
When you step into the “Birth Wheel” installation, and take a turn on the big hand painted wheel of fortune, you get to see what birth parent(s) you could wind up with. This is briefly described through nationality / economic / religious / political and/or lifestyle circumstances. For example; spin the wheel and you are born to an old money conservative oil tycoon father and school teach- er mother in Texas, USA; another spin and you are born to Somali refugees living in temporary shelter in Mogadishu with severely limited food, water, or basic needs of any kind; the next spin has you born to biracial parents employed as Jamaica.
On the walls surrounding the wheel altered vintage photographs of babies are painted in bright colors. By removing their natural flesh tones and making them into rainbow babies they become united, universal, and fantastic. They are no longer subjected to traditional perceptions of skin tones. The original photos (found by chance and destined for the trash bin) have been revitalized and born anew.
The intention behind the Birth Wheel is encourage you to consider the randomness of your birth and to what (so called) advantages or disadvantages you and everyone else had to start out. Not by choice, but rather a random joining of a persistent sperm and a viable egg creating a unique genetic concoction that, in baby form, innocently enters into an utterly new world. With that acute understanding, compassion for every being is possible.
