Tending the graves
“Would it be useful if I connected you with my contact who sells art to corporations” my friend Kristine asked me while Vaimo and I were showing her the trolls.
The trolls, if you’re not aware, are still a hit in the lakes region of Minnesota. A Star Tribune article about the artist and the community group that installed them will do that. And, the hype matches the coolness of their magnitude.
“That would be great!” I replied. I told her my dream is to get to Warren Buffett - you know he owns the BNSF and I feel like my railroad paintings hanging in the corporate offices in Fort Worth, TX would be amazing.
Can you imagine?
I love to see the way that the BNSF corporate history is written.
I’m using the passive voice here on purpose. There’s such a lifelessness to corporate history a weird disembodied yet personified tone.
The BNSF history does mention the purposeful recruitment of Mexican laborers of the ATSF (long before the merging of the Burlington Northern and this line) but it’s a brief mention.
And of course the mention is not about how the ATSF was so dangerous that countless identifiable and unidentifiable laborers were killed while repairing the rail.
I think a fitting reparation would be to have my diptych that depicts the loss of imp and lives hanging in a prominent area of corporate headquarters.
Can you imagine?
I like to, and I like to imagine the world in which the powers that be would embrace and accept this part of their history with the installation of these paintings.
A person can dream.
What if mainstream US culture more openly tended to our dead?
I’m coming off a visit to my paternal mom’s family’s resting site in Altoona, Kansas. My Uncle, Aunt and I are the grave tenders of our family and memorial day we head to the old, country, cemetery to tend to the 14 members of our family who rest there.
My Great Grandma and Grandpa Reynolds a buried and their graves have a concrete dome top running the length of their plots. This method of burial marking is now outlawed by many modern cemeteries. There are also empty plots in my family’s section of the cemetery, if I wanted to, I could rest there if I wanted. But my plan for now is to just be a visitor and a tender.
Tending the graves involves (sometimes) mowing, weed whacking, sweeping, replacing dirt, planting fake flowers, repairing trinkets, moving the concrete vases and other statues back after the yard work. We stake flags and flower pots filled with arrangements made by Auntie so they don’t get taken by the wind. The 14 graves take the three of us about two and a half hours to tend on site.
Countless hours we each contribute to make the grave tending a success. The operation requires planning, logistics, and travel.
And care.
I guess that’s just the thing about tending the graves and tending to the dead, there has to be care, and maybe a painting is one of the ways we can show that we do.
Do you have a spot in a corporate office where you think an Art of KCF painting should hang?
Can you send them my way? Or make a connection?
Gratefully,
Kandace