Iris Adrienne Langlois-Smith

Shrine to Salacin

Ceramic, mirror shards, aspirin extra strength tablets, found metal, glass, resin, plasticine, wax, sand, rusty nails, reclaimed jewelry fragments, dried tulip, rocks from Lake Ontario

“This piece responds to the prompt of seriality through the use of tulips buds, a motif that can be found in nearly all of my work. When considering the concept of seriality, I was reminded of a passage from The Book of Qualities by J Ruth Gendler, in which the quality of Clarity is personified as a man whom the speaker has gone to visit. Clarity tells the speaker to “draw the same thing every day until it starts to speak to you”(35). I started drawing tulips 6 years ago because of how thrilled I was to see their expressive leaves and their sensual buds after a long silver and gray winter. I remember when just drawing them in my sketchbook felt excessively sensual – in those moments I might blush, or hide what I was doing. They continued to make appearances, filling the margins of my notes or slipping into my paintings. A couple years in, I started to draw them eating their own tails–a tulip ouroboros. Themes of natural cycles deepen. They began to spin and dance together, one spitting out the next. They began to feel anthropomorphic, the buds little faces, animated. Themes of temporality, of cyclical motion, of decoration and beauty and abundance and nature’s gifts, all encapsulated by my little doodles. I tattooed a ring of them on my thigh. I started to carve them out of clay. I grew live ones in my garden. I wanted them to cover everything, to be everywhere. What strikes me most is that I haven’t gotten bored. I’m still eager to see what will happen when I let them encircle a new object, when I try them in a new configuration.As I deliberately bring my focus building a healthier personal relationship to nature in light of the climate crisis, the tulips have also taken on meaning as a facet of nature which is highly palatable, marketable–so frequently commodified, cut, and sold. I wonder about tulip supply chains– flown to us from South America or grown in resource-heavy greenhouses when bought out of season. I always wanted my tulips to feel a little weird, a little sexual, sometimes a little funny, but hiding within a sort of pleasant, decorative setting. Mostly though, they still represent gifts. Gifts from this beautiful world. From bulb, sleeping, to blossom, unfurling into sweet curls. They are one small symbol of the beauty and complexity of this world. They remind me to stay with my wonder.In shrine to salacin, I also reference another gift from the plants–aspirin, from the chemical salacin, derived from plants such as Willow bark and Myrtle. I’ve learned that humans have been using this compound, found in plants, to treat pain for thousands of years (Desborough & Keeling, 674). I take it in tablet form– and it is vital in helping to alleviate chronic migraine. Some days it feels like my higher power– A cheeky blasphemy, to consider an over-the-counter drug divine? But I know that plants are a higher power. That all of nature is. And that I am a part of it.This piece also explores the ephemeral–the light captured, reflected. The way it shifts based on time of day or weather. It’s reminiscent of the moments of mundane beauty I find on my city walks– complete with the rusty nails that I find so evocative. Shrine to salacin, like most of my recent works, is a play between inner and outer – my vulnerable sensitive internal self– and the outer world. Knowing that both are part of the same whole.”