Recollection  (5 x 5" framed to 11" x14")

"Recollection" uses fragments of glass I found while digging in the gardens around the 1793 farmhouse where I live.  The ladder motif  is reminiscent of Jacob's ladder, a powerful symbol of movement and freedom; a verse from Phillis Wheatley's poem "On Recollection" is included in the collage.

The rich poems of Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) are remarkable for their unexpected, fluid metaphors, and the context in which she wrote them.  Brought from Africa in 1761 when she was only seven or eight, Phillis Wheatley quickly mastered a new language and became a prolific writer, all while facing the cruel confines of life as a slave in eighteenth-century Boston.  She loved classical literature and learned Latin.

These collages examine her years as a young girl, a captive, a slave, and finally - and all too briefly -  as a free woman.  Her words, forever unshackled, dwell in the land of muses, nobility, and virtue that she so loved.