Grass for Sarah

Grass for Sarah

Woven copper and wool, copper tubing, linen warp
by Shanna Wheelock, 2011

The last few weeks have rolled by quickly with a multitude of deadlines and long drives, thus my absence from blog world. Time is always shorter than the list of things to get done, it seems. I am breathing a bit easier now, though, since my MFA semester work has been passed-in. The long drive back from Kennebunk last weekend offered hours of reflection on accomplishments, gratitude, and goals.

While on the road I was able to visit family and spend a day in Portland enjoying art and some slow-paced browsing. If you are in that neck of the woods definitely check out the biennial show at the Portland Museum of Art. I thought it was one of the best that I had seen.

Over the next couple weeks or so I will post two new sculptures, but for now, will begin with a woven work that has had me on a journey of discovering information about one of my ancestors: my great-grandmother Sarah. The last blog entry that I wrote three weeks ago outlined some of my experiences during this quest.

The discovery that Sarah was a weaver who had a deep reverence for nature inspired the piece pictured above. From the tidbits of information that I found in the New York Times, she was working with grass on crash fiber. It was considered a new and interesting material choice for her. I decided, for my own piece, to focus on the word "grass" and to weave with a new material that I had not used before: copper wire. I am not certain what "crash" is, but from the definition that I found, it sounded similar to linen warp string.

Throughout the whole process, I felt my great-grandmother's presence. I imagined what colors she would have chosen, or how she would have ordered the 25 individual panels that were eventually pieced together. I wondered if copper ever had significance for her being a jeweler. She lived on a plantation with sheep. Did she use wool from those in her own weaving work? Did she help her husband Henry sheer the sheep? And did she then card and spin that wool? Were her hands as sore as mine after a day of weaving?

Each day I would finish a component of the work but each day I still did not know how the tapestry would end up in its final concoction. The mystery unfolded only after moving through numerous transformations. Eventually the panels formed long strips of green and copper that flowed from a frame of copper tubing.

"Grass for Sarah" became more than just woven panels spliced together. Emotions were intense and in talking about the process and why certain decisions were made, Chris said to me that they way I described the piece sounded like a "Transformation Tapestry."

I started making "Transformation Tapestries" in 2007 after my Nana died. The tapestry, made with her clothing, was a venue for grief resolution as well as a commemoration and celebration of her life. Since then, I have made others, not only to represent the deceased, but other life transitions as well.

I felt that "Grass for Sarah" was guided by Sarah's spirit, through my hands, as a Transformation Tapestry in honor of her daughter Amy, who drowned only a few months before Sarah herself died. I thought of how Sarah was an incredibly strong woman, having lost two children but still managing to raise two others and still continue to progress as an artist. She must have spent many of her days with a deep sadness, and at the time of Amy's death, I thought that perhaps she had not yet fully processed that loss when her own death occurred.

Finishing "Grass for Sarah" was one of those big exhale moments. The process had consumed my thoughts since the morning of April 1st, and the physical labor demanded over one hundred twenty hours, the bulk of which was input during April vacation. There were lots of cuts and scrapes and sore fingers and moments of "starting over". There are at least 11 panels that did not make it onto the final piece and the frame was built three times. But all was a necessary part of the process and nuggets of ideas have been sparked for future pieces.

The song by John Hiatt, "Through Your Hands" makes me think of my journey with "Grass for Sarah", and also of all the other incredible things that come from our hands - from a child's art, to penning a poem, playing a musical instrument, building a house, healing, loving, baking, planting.......

powerful to think how our hands are conduits for the creative thoughts and ideas that come from our souls....

Trying on Some New Genes

These illustrations are by my great-grandmother Sarah.

"The Book of Grasses: An Illustrated Guide to the Common Grasses, and the Most Common of Rushes and Sedges"
Written by Mary Evans Franics, Illustrated by HH Knight, Arthur G. Eldredge, and Sarah Francis Dorrance
1912, Doubleday, Page and Company, Garden City, New York.
(1920 reprint has the author listed as Mary Francis Baker?)

This is the only photo that my mother has of Sarah.
I'm not sure what year this was taken, or of her age in the photo.

Bello has found a new spot to sleep while I am weaving.
Yes, he's a big boy!

Smaller components of a larger work in progress, wool and copper wire. Sarah's photo is pinned to the wall for inspiration.




I had an epiphanic moment about two weeks ago, and my thoughts have been consumed since by a desire to dig deep into family roots and to find answers that have been missing for years.

For weeks I have been lacking inspiration for a weaving project. I had been obsessed with the factory sculpture and a deadline for some sort of tapestry was looming. Each day that passed, anxiety built because I just couldn't come up with something new that would be different than what I had done in the past.

On a snowy April Fool's morning, due to school cancellation, I had the luxury to move at a slower-than-normal pace. I eventually sauntered out of bed and when I looked in the mirror I felt that I was looking at a stranger, though the face felt quite familiar. I thought I resembled someone who might have lived in the 1920's. Then it came to me that I was "looking" at my great-grandmother Sarah.

Sarah has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. We knew very little of her life and over the years have pieced together the tiniest tidbits of information. The family story is long and complex but I will try to explain in simplified form, and in a respectful manner, why we know so little of her.

Sarah is my maternal great-grandmother. She was the mother of my mother's father, whom I called Grampa Sam. Grampa Sam was only eighteen when his parents died. Sarah and my great-grandfather Henry's car was struck by a train in Plainfield, Connecticut, in 1924. Only a few months before, Sarah's sixteen year old daughter, Amy, had drown, and in 1912 her one-year-old baby Sarah had died. The eldest sibling, Joanna, lived until the early 1960's, never married or with child.

Over the years, Grampa Sam told my mother stories that he remembered of his mother, but they were few. When he was a sick child and quarantined, Sarah, who loved nature, found a way to sneak him out into the gardens. She was an artist: a painter and a jewelry designer who worked for Tiffany's of New York. Her father was a minister, and she had an intense interest in genealogy. She was on return from a genealogy conference in Boston, where she was a speaker, when Henry had just picked her up from the train station shortly before they collided with a train.

When my grandfather died in the mid 1990's, we went to Connecticut for his burial. At that time, we first met Merle, a distant cousin to Grampa Sam's father. Merle's family, as I understand, sort of watched over my grandfather after his parents died. During this brief visit, Merle gave me a simple tall, thin, clear handblown glass that Sarah had once kept her paintbrushes in, telling me that Sarah would want me to have it as I too was an artist.

I have held on to that glass for years. In fact, that morning I looked in the mirror and saw Sarah in my own face, I had just moments before taken one of my own paintbrushes out of Sarah's glass to use for a project.

The last time I tried to research Sarah was in the mid 1990's after my grandfather's passing. I wrote a letter to Tiffany's & Co. to see if they kept record of their designers. A response came back to me that a search would cost a few hundred dollars. I didn't have that kind of money and let it go. I always held onto, though, that my great grandmother was an artist and perhaps that is in part why I am as well. Maybe, I thought, it was in the family genes.

But I always felt a bit of a disconnect in that I really wasn't a painter. My mom is a painter, and my sister a jeweler, so that made sense, as I had always heard Sarah described as a painter and jewelry designer. But where was my connection?

Even though it seemed a longshot, I decided to do an internet search for info about my great-grandmother. I was surprised that her name did indeed show-up. She was listed as an illustrator for a book about grasses. Without hesitation, I ordered the 1912 book sight unseen and listed as "condition unknown."

I continued the search and to my surprise, once more, I found her in a 1904 New York Times article in the Modern Arts and Crafts section - Objects of Applied Arts by American and Foreign Artisans.

"An interesting vein is being worked in textiles by Mrs. Sarah Francis Dorrance, who is known for her quiet, tasteful work in basketry. She uses native grasses to weave designs on crash, and produces individual work of a gentle, unobtrusive kind."

A weaver. Sarah was a weaver.

I finally found my connection. Is this why I was so taken with weaving from the first moment I held a loom?

Everything changed for me in that moment. Inspiration returned at the thought of Sarah trying something new with her weaving. And from there, a flood of other questions. Did she spend time in New York? Where did she grow up? When was her birthday? Was she also a potter? Which artists did she admire? Did she weave tapestries? What is her ancestry?

My mother told me that she thought I looked like Sarah, though Grampa Sam used to say that I reminded him of his sister Amy who had drown and who he was very close to. Either way, I now have another connection in that I physically resemble my ancestors.

is this what it is like for someone who is adopted? To feel that desire to know their biological roots? To wonder who they look like, or why they have a certain unexplained habit or fondness for a particular art, music, or some other talent?

I have continued my search, and found a second NYT article from 1900 that mentions Sarah as showing her baskets in a show under the Arts and Crafts Guild of New York. I also hold dear the book of grasses that finally arrived in the mail. Each drawing a piece of my great-grandmother. I also find myself amused that she signs each of her drawings with her initials in a manner that resembles the chop signature that I use on my clay pieces.

The search continues, feeling a sudden passion for genealogy, as Sarah once had.

I will close with a quote from the introduction of the book, so beautifully and poetically written that it brought me to tears as I read it yesterday. I am not sure how exactly Mary Evans Francis is related, but I am sure that she must be, sharing the maiden name of my great-grandmother. I am filled with anticipation as I "climb" the family tree searching for answers.

"Grasses yield us the earliest intimations of spring, as a faint flush of green, in harmony with the soft colours of the April woods, tinges the brown hillsides before snows have ceased. The first grasses are more delicately coloured than are those of midsummer when the sun burns red and purple into the tiny flowers. The green spikelets of many spring grasses depend for colour upon their lightly poised anthers of lavender and gold."

"The Book of Grasses: An Illustrated Guide to the Common Grasses, and the Most Common of Rushes and Sedges" Written by Mary Evans Franics, Illustrated by HH Knight, Arthur G. Eldredge, and Sarah Francis Dorrance, 1912, Doubleday, Page and Company, Garden City, New York.

Update: The inscription in the book reads "To S.E.F.D." (Sarah Evans Francis Dorrance) So the new line of thought is that the author, Mary Evans Francis, is either a mother, aunt, or sister to my great-grandmother Sarah.