This whimsical little assemblage has an interesting and serendipitous history.
I was born in the old Hotel Dieu Hospital in St. Catharines - but not in the concrete industrial complex itself. In those days the maternity wing was across the road in a large, graceful old home with cheery windows, turrets and trees. it was old then and it wasn't long until it was torn down.
One day a woman was walking by the deconstruction of the site and saw that one of the trees was lying on the ground. it had an exceptionally large piece of fungus growing on it. She picked the fungus up, took it home and put it away.
Decades passed. I went to high school with that woman but it was a large school and our classes didn't overlap. I actually met her for the first time at the Pelham Art Festival last year where I was showing my assemblages. It turned out she, (see 'Genfire' on Instagram), makes astonishingly beautiful jewelry and when I visited her studio she gave me the now dried and shrunken tree fungus from a tree that
likely sheltered me from a winter storm on the cold February day I left the birthing hospital.
I thought about all of the other babies that tree would have seen. I also thought about the nurses and doctors who worked as midwives in those days. The tree watched over them too.
The body of this assemblage is the tree fungus that was part of a tree that stood at the maternity hospital.
I dedicate it to all Midwives.
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