Welly Fletcher

Elephant Shoe

August 14 -September 25, 2021

Dear rainbow community member,

I've been thinking about elephants a lot - especially their feet. Their low frequency communications travel beneath the ground, and then elephants "hear" through their feet, along with their ears. Elephant expression of grief is LOUD, STRONG, FULL. We are lucky to overlap with them; we could learn a lot about living by learning to listen better.

I've been thinking about queerness, too. What it is today; how my thoughts and perspectives have shifted in my 43 years. How queerness is, for me, a form of resistance, difference, love, non-normative life-being-lived. Queerness is paying enough attention to know what normative is, and what power-structures hold it up, and how I can more intentionally pursue other options, to be active in my dismantling.

We have so much to learn from other ways of living, other types of life. Our particular flavor of human stupidity can be so harmful. Our consciousness can be so unconscious and unconscientious; careless, selfish, with extremely high costs. It hurts to witness, and to be a part of. I turn to elephants, and others, seeking alternate ways forward.

I'm a big believer that sculpture, too, can be an antidote to some of the particular dis-eases we suffer from today, through its offering of embodied, intersectional, poetic encounters.

My partner told me that when a person silently says "elephant-shoe," it looks a lot like "I love you." So, elephant-shoe: elephants, coyotes, fish, birds, insects, rock, metal, trees, clay, dirt - all these forms of intelligence far (far, far, far) superior to the regular human kind ...

And elephant-shoe to you, too. Thanks for witnessing this new work.

- Welly