August 1974 Fawn Grove, PA.
Took a beautiful walk today – started out down my favorite
road that goes by the pines, and the cornfield below the
hidden meadow. I was not planning to go to the meadow,
and as I walked by I thought I didn’t want to – instead to
branch down by the stream. Further on down the road there
was an inviting green sunlit field. I turned and started
walking up the hill. All of a sudden I found myself in the
field behind the corn below the meadow, so I found the path
through the woods (cool and dark and damp). Sappho joined
me just as I was having thoughts of being alone in “nature.”
“My familiar,” I thought . Persona more unified. The dog
representing an instinct that leads.
Today I thought of the nun back there somewhere as again
I find myself on a retreat – isolated, thinking.
So we entered the hidden meadow, It was green and
yellow, bright with high goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace
(have to know my flowers). Silent. Bugs. Crickets very loud
here. After some time I started walking toward where I
thought I had entered. The trees are thick around the field. I
noticed that they surrounded me. We walked directly toward
a small opening through the trees – turned out to be a path in
a different direction through the woods, parallel to the road
I would walk back to my brother’s. So by following the path
through the woods, the walk became a huge circle. It formed
itself and I followed it. Lately I remember being a child in
the woods. I noticed that my brother’s four-year-old son
understands magic.
These cards are on my wall: the tree, the women picking
narcissi in the wind, the tunnel, the arch of the city.
Joan Jonas, 1974
This exhibition was inspired by a short text by Joan Jonas, 'Fawn Grove', originally published in an issue of the magazine Art-Rite in 1974. The text recounts a walk that Jonas took through the countryside with her dog Sappho. The content, structure and rhythm of the text reflect numerous elements that have recurred in Jonas’s work over a long career: the notion of a journey, circular movement, mirroring, our relationship to animals and nature and the artist’s abiding interest in poetry and literature.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication with contributions from Éric Alliez, Daisy Lafarge and Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith.
