Karen Silve at the Confluence of Courage and Hope - Essay by Richard Speer
Sometimes beauty alights as gently as dewdrops on the morning grass; other times it has to climb and claw its way up a dark crevasse until against all odds it emerges into the light of day. That latter brand of tenacious, hard-won beauty is central to the origin story of Rejuvenation: My Bouquet, Karen Silve’s sumptuous and inspiring new work.
When I thought it couldn’t get worse… it did. Portland suffered from a lot of destruction downtown and nationalized riots. Then the wild fires came and Portland was under smoke for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t see my neighbor’s house and the smoke leaked into my old 1911 house. All of the sudden seeing any friends, indoor or out, was impossible. I closed off my house and stayed in one room with my studio air cleaner. A continuous claustrophobia overwhelmed me. I felt like I couldn’t breath.
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