My bucket list did not include Ethiopia but when our daughter was stationed there with the Peace Corps Wayne and I went. After a few days in her village for an Ethiopian Orthodox festival, we took a driving tour of the northern part of the country, into the heart of a very ancient Christianity with many churches and monasteries. These were long, mostly unpaved roads that the people use to travel, to move their livestock and to get to market with their goods. I photographed them from the front seat of the car. Later, I either altered or removed the backgrounds in Photoshop to create a mythical setting around the figures. Then, I mounted the prints to panels and worked them with melted beeswax, resin and oils. This is the ancient process of encaustic. “Boy on a Hill” and “Three Running Girls” represent the hope I have in the young people of our world. The girls run to school, into their future watched over by a kindly angel and an older woman who probably didn’t have the same opportunity for schooling. The eager boy ran out to see our car, with white passengers, full of curiousity and adventure in his changing, ever more diverse world. The series is called “Giants in the Earth,” for the iconic novel about Norwegian immigrants homesteading in the Great Plains, because I wanted to show them as citizens of the planet rather than a specific country, beings whose lives are closely tied to and dependent on the fickle tides of weather, soil and seasons more than politics or trends. Most of all I wanted to capture a moment of their lives on the road, as a symbol of life’s journey. I made this series with all the dignity and beauty I saw in the Ethiopian people.
