Over the past year and a half I have been working on art focused on two themes. I began using the poetry of the Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca as inspiration for a series of intaglio prints that I began doing early in 2009. Also, following a trip to Ecuador in the summer of 2009 where I spent two months traveling throughout the country, I brought back some ideas for wood sculpture based on the artwork, stories, and Colonial sculpture I came in contact with there. These two themes have become mixed in such a way that I no longer am able to (or want to) know what is coming from where. At the same time, the death of my mother in October of 2009 has tinged this work with ideas and elements of death and rebirth, fire and water, the loneliness of losing someone.

In Ecuador, while riding through the countryside on the bus, we crossed a small river where women were washing clothes along the banks of the river.After washing, the clothes were spread out all along the banks to dry in the sun. The view of the brightly dressed women and clothes laying flat and colorful in the afternoon sun was really a feast for the eyes. Someone on the bus told me about a tradition where, when a person dies, his or her clothes are taken to the river to be washed ceremonially, one last time. I carried this image around with me for a while and after my mother died in Ocober of 2009, I tried to make it into something useful for my grieving. So, thinking about stories that my mother told me about making her own paper dolls as a child, and thinking about that Ecuadorian landscape, I put together a scene in my mind of how her clothes might be washed in that river.

The sculpture is made of laminated and carved wood with tin leaves on the side. The shirt is made of painted tin as well. The piece is about 30 inches by 18 inches.

The Spanish translates to : "We Wash the Clothes of the Dead."

See the rest of this series at http://tomhyatt.tumblr.com