This is a wreath I felted from raw wool and decorated by sewing on jewelry. Most of the jewelry I have had for many, many years. You see my Grandmother’s broaches and earrings, my Mother’s earrings and the blue beads from a necklace of hers that broke, Aunt Mary Jo’s watch she gave me forty years ago, some of my jewelry from the 70s and 80s. The hearts on the hanging down chain are engraved “Robin + Dinah.” Bought for me at a carnival booth when Robin still loved me. Kept by me all these years as evidence of that fact? He left when the baby was four months old, so kept for seventeen years as what – proof?
I think this wreath defines the gender of several generations of women in my family as conformists to social stereotypical roles of femininity. Housewives in dresses and high heels, earrings and broaches. Carnival trinkets kept for sentimental reasons. Jewelry that will never be worn again kept year after year. To me these are female gender attributes. Yet it is important to me to keep these symbols of my biological history. Pressing the wreath on the glass to scan added a swirling attribute to the jewelry on the wreath, as if the jewelry spins around and will blend together and funnel down a whirlpool in the middle of the wreath.
