The Impossibility of Rest

I was taking a summer sculpture class at Bennington College in Vermont. Our materials: Thin wooden rods—soaked until they had absorbed as much water as possible, gently compressed into a bow shape, and left to dry overnight. This gave us subtly curved wooden sticks that we could lash together with thread or bind with glue.

As I played with various arrangements of pieces the next morning, it began to suggest a rocking chair. But I only had a limited variety of curves and stick lengths to work with, not the range of choices I would have needed to construct a proper, symmetrical chair. So it became an improper one, a topsy-turvy chair that would never fulfill a practical purpose in real life. I made an abstract, skeletal figure to sit in the chair, but it could only perch precariously on it.

This was toward the beginning of our Parkinson’s life and I had the responsibilities of work, home, mothering, daughtering, and trying to figure out what Parkinson’s was going to mean for us. In tribute to this, I named the sculpture-in-progress, The Impossibility of Rest. 

Because time was running out half-way through the project, I started using a glue gun instead of laboriously fastening the sticks together with black thread.

Before my trip home in the car, I carefully laid the sculpture on the back seat. But when I got home, I saw that the hot sun had melted the glue and the structure had fallen apart.

Disappointing, but somehow fitting, I thought. I reconfigured the pieces into a new sculpture that felt even more right.