Bloodlines

Bloodlines is a pair of saddles I sculpted with delicate steel frames covered in elaborate beading. The two saddles are replicas of both my grandfather’s saddle for his horse Dama and the saddle for my pony Silver. I beaded them to imitate the patterns of leather work on the originals, which are dry rotting away. This is one way that I can keep the memory from decaying. In-between the beads I am growing moss harvested from the horses’ burial site on my families property, while ivory colored glass beads strung like roots and mycorrhizae (the symbiotic fungus that lives along tree roots) hang beneath the saddles. The saddles sit side-by-side on sawhorses, with the roots connecting to each ends, as symbols of concurrent generations feeding resources back and forth to nourish each other.