Thankful
Invited Artist |
Margarita Casanova
Table of Wishes, 2004
Breastbones, ink, oak, glass, velvet, foam, brass, Turkish rug
Table: 60" x 24" x 36", rug: 5' x 7'
In the fall of 2003, I asked 350 people (everyone I knew at the time), by mail, to share with me their experience of coming together with friends and family for a Thanksgiving dinner. I requested that they save the breastbone, or wishbone, from their turkey and give it to me, and that they fill out a questionnaire with statistical information about their dinner gathering and two questions: what they were thankful for, and what they wished for. I received forty questionnaires and thirty-six wishbones (four respondents were vegetarian).
The bones were dried, bleached, photographed and catalogued. I designed and made an oak display case to house the collection of bones. Table of Wishes serves as an archaeological record of a specific day in time when thirty-six ethnically, socially, and culturally diverse groups of people came together, some willing, some unwilling, to share a feast. Each bone incarnates the unique social interactions of those who were fed from it.
Wishful, Thankful, 2004
Two-volume leather-bound book with Japanese silk slipcase, printed on Holcombe paper Edition of 10
9" x 12" x 2"
The information from the forty questionnaires was carefully entered into a database, accompanying the description of each wishbone. Wishful, Thankful is a hand-made leather-bound book in two volumes of alphabetized words: all the words used by the respondents to say what they were thankful for, and all the words they used to say what they wished for. Thus, the individual statements become one collective thought. The books can be read down or across the columns. Like refrigerator magnets, the reader can make poetry from the words, inferring his or her own gratitude and desire.
