We are a people hungry for color. After spending nearly six months in Minnesota winter, white and gray are our daily companions. And while the snow was still in its dirty piles all around, the pandemic descended and we moved inside, looking out the windows hoping, praying for a spring that would bring multiple signs of hope. Green grass. Purple crocuses. The early yellow of daffodils. The red-flecked petal of bloodroot emerging. Color. If we could just have some color, we might be able to see another page of this sheltered existence in a new, more courageous light. 

Every year the Minneapolis Institute of Art hosts the perfect prescription to our deep desire for color when Art In Bloom takes up its fragrant presence alongside some of the museums most treasured art pieces. This weekend would have been that weekend when those known as ‘pedestal artists’ create an interpretation of paintings, sculptures, tapestries using flowers. I am mourning this yearly dose of beauty and creativity. Last year my friend Carol and I had the privilege of interpreting a piece called Hannukah Lamp and it was a treasured experience for me. But this year…the museum is closed…and Art In Bloom was cancelled. The color faded into the distance. There has been a smaller, virtual show online which is lovely. I am assuming those who have created these pieces worked alone or with someone else with whom they share a home. Because my friend and I had dreamed of our piece together, this virtual creation seemed impossible from our respective homes as we sheltered-in-place.

I am sure that there are as many ways of going about this creative process as there are pedestal artists. Carol and I had met and we had plans! We had ordered flowers, purchased vases,  measured and sketched and had an outline for what we were trying to portray. Just as last year, our way of interpretation was through metaphor. It is how we both think, I believe. Our art this year was a painting by Édouard Vuillard called The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door. In our conversation, we explored what doors really mean in our lives and the question: Aren’t all our mothers the original door-openers for us? With her very being a mother opens the door of herself so we might enter the world. And then there are all the other doors that mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, ancestors open for us so that we might move from one place to another. Doors are both literal and metaphor.

This led us to a poem by Marge Piercy, an American poet and novelist:

Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But
while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies.
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters
most just yield a bathroom or a closet.
Still, the image of a door is liminal,
passing from one place to another
one state to the other, boundaries
and promises and threats. Inside to
outside, light into dark, dark into
light, cold into warm, known into
strange, safe into terror, wind 
into stillness, silence into noise
or music. We slice our life into
segments by rituals, each a door
to a presumed new phase. We see
ourselves progressing from room
to room perhaps dragging our toys
along until the last door opens
and we pass at last into was.

While Carol and I did not, as yet, get to create our interpretation of this painting, I was struck by the metaphor of doors and how these days of being inside our homes has offered the liminal wisdom of doors. We are indeed held in “a matter of going through into something else”, “passing from one place into another one state to the other, boundaries and promises and threats”. On a daily basis we do not know what the ‘something else’ is and the “boundaries”, and “threats” are held in “promises” we try to feel assurance in. “Light into dark”, “dark into light”, “known into strange”, “safe into terror”. All this sometimes within a mere hour. All the while “we slice our life into segments”, “see ourselves progressing from room to room”. Our hope is that at some point we will open the door, pass into a place where we can look back at the “was” of this pandemic and recognize there the mercy, wisdom and power of this time for how we will move into the present with understanding that is still mystery. 

Color. May we know it. May we see it. May it nourish us in these emerging days of spring. And may we continue to watch for the doors that invite us and walk away from those that do not bring life to us or those we love. Some time in the future my friend Carol and I have promised one another that we will once again meet and at that time we will create our floral art based on Édouard Vuillard’s painting. Until then, we live in liminal space between one door and another. 

***Special thanks to Carol Michalicek for the photo of The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door