Raine Bedsole’s works listen to the past, even as they embrace the unknown possibilities of the future. Working three-dimensionally in bronze, glass, steel, fabric, plaster, and found objects, as well as two- dimensionally on wood and paper with paint, ink, graphite, and gold leaf, Bedsole returns to a handful of resonant motifs, including boats, silhouettes of androgynous figures, Buddha, shrines, and things found in nature (flowers and shells). Although these enduring symbols have been used by earlier generations of artists, Bedsole has made them unmistakably her own.
Ever since Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) planned and led the Spanish expedition (1519-1522) that was the first to circumnavigate our planet, the speed of travel and communication has accelerated, and traveling by ocean liner now seems quaint, a throwback to another era. And yet, despite the dominance of air travel, traveling by water has played a central role in human history, and continues to do so, as anyone who watches the nightly news knows. While Bedsole never alludes to current events in her work, I sense her empathy for those who undertake an arduous voyage. She recognizes the strong bond between boats and our passage through life, and why the boat was a potent symbol for so many different cultures and peoples whose paths seldom crossed. It is from this well of disparate beliefs that she draws her inspiration.
Although Bedsole has lived and worked in New Orleans for many years, and grew up on a farm, her work is neither anecdotal nor autobiographical. This is what makes her work singular. Made of thin, resilient branches that have been cast into bronze and patinaed, which transforms them into something otherworldly, her boats are simultaneously fragile and resilient, decorated and aged. In fact, I don’t see them as boats but as vessels, metaphors for the human body and all it will be open to in its lifetime. The dead plants hanging from the underside remind us that life is both cyclical and linear, that renewal and termination are inseparable. An encrusted bottom underscores time’s effect on us all, and how there is beauty to be found in aging.
Bedsole’s faceless Buddha is an artifact from the past and the future. Time has effaced its noble features, but still it has not relinquished its power to move us. I cannot help but be reminded of all the losses that have befallen mankind. Bedsole’s art invites us to look inward and reflect upon how we live in time. Do we shape our passage or does it shape us. In her work, she asks questions for which there are no simple answers.
- JOHN YAU