Mary McIntyre

Breathing Exercise

A partially gilded cedar root is suspended over a charred pine branch, the figures framed by the spiraling, smoke-like silhouette of a cyanotype print. The amputated, gilded branches of the cedar root are striving and exulting. The root casts a deep, distinct shadow on the cyanotype suspended behind it – spirit and form occupying linked, parallel spaces. The cyanotype print serves as a framing device, literally and conceptually, orienting the two forms and defining a spiritual/ceremonial space where artist and subject meet the viewer.Both Indigenous and European thought allow for the reality of intelligence in the object world, as embodiments of the creative energy of makers working and visiting together, or as a phenomenon of the bond between the maker’s mind and the affordances through which a concept is birthed into the material world. If the work is alive, the collective consciousness it embodies survives over time, operating outside the constraints of time and individual life spans. As I conceived and made Breathing Exercise, some spark of my consciousness was imbued in my work, together with the spirit of the work’s subject. Our visiting, storytelling and creative work are not just memorialized in the work; they are embodied in it, dissolving the temporal and corporeal limitations that separate her from her kin, her friends, and me.

“Breathing Exercise was conceived as a memorial to a close friend, made during the last three weeks of her life. We talked about our shared history, how she understood her life and how she was letting go of it. We discussed the conception of the work, and she commented on sketches and photographs of the work in progress. I believe some element of her consciousness and mine are embodied in the finished work which, like our bodies themselves, are vessels for memory and narrative.”