Betty Branch catalog (6-21-23)) - Flipbook - Page 15
Within several passages, the image of the crow
becomes something of an allegorical figure persistent
throughout Branch’s art (she would, no doubt, use
the terms “totemic” or “totem”). Through different
narratives in a variety of literary formats, it becomes
increasingly evident that the crow intimates darker
moments of psychological stress, its appearance
emblematic of the utter unpredictable arrival of
emotional turmoil. A flock of the dark birds — or
the more ominous ”murder” of crows referenced in
a newspaper clipping — is oft symbolic for troubled
states of mind, further compounded by accompanying
periods of creative stasis and inventive interruption.
With an autobiographical directness that defies
storybook clichés or expected norms, the artist’s own
writings — such as Plaster Caster’s Postpartum Blues,
as well as Skinny Braids and All — explore many of the
complexities and sundry complications of relations
between mothers and daughters. Circumstances of
the artist’s relations with her own mother, as well as
the artist’s position as a mother to her own children,
are again and again revisited throughout the Branch
oeuvre.
A consciousness that flows though Branch’s journal as well as
her art is a consistent, persistent, and even insistent attention
to community, inclusion, and partnership among women.
The notebook’s inclusion of snapshots of the artist’s friends,
her colleagues, and her children — all gathered together, all
carefully named, all recognized and credited — emphasizes
the fullness and expansiveness of Branch’s decades-long
exploration of female-centered imagery. Also in the bound
volume’s strategic insertion of poems, texts, and images by
other poets, scholars, and artists, Branch fully acknowledges
the sharing community of women who inform her own work
and whom she, in turn, has so significantly enriched and
enhanced with her life and art. Through her work, the artist
insistently envisions the female form as a goddess to be
honored for the blessings she bestows. Undoubtedly, Branch
would say that her effigies are no different from all women, and
in that modest feminist idea resides the truly sacred wisdom
and very spiritual meaning of her art.
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