Project Statement
Field Journal [1]
There went something into the forest. I think it lived here once, sewing trails, troughs in the soil the way a service road holds the imprints of tires after long seasons. Destruction as memory, as future. There’s a picture of it drawn in mama’s book; serpentine, guarding treasures. Dragons do exist, they’re just smaller than we realize, something you can hold in your hand. It’s nameless but described, in a poem she wrote, as ‘wrm’:
“Where lie lying shiny gem-stones n blind wrms / Witch witch, hut on two crowing legs / Seeking others makes invisible / Yr cloak covered in mirrors…”
I confess, it might be about me. That I left home too soon. I think about the old television, standing on the chair to pull the rabbit ears this way and that, trying to get a clear picture. She would sit in the rocker, fingertips metallic from fussing at the chainmaille rings, complaining grandmother’s armor wouldn’t fit me right without adjustments. She wouldn’t like what we’re doing now, but she isn’t here to scold.
Death stays close, at my shoulder. I worry when the lantern dims, but it casts enough light to make out a path. The angels keep following. I think they’re curious. Just children. They like to play with car batteries and tease the old gods, like we used to. Death says they won’t grow out of it.
They point to the place where two skies, day and night, touch at the seams like a radioactive patina. Viy’s domain, they call it. The border between the spiritual realms. They offer to show us the way, & warn us it’s a tourist trap.
Artist Statement
This work examines Slavic folklore’s death figures as vessels of modern obsolescence and natural decay, posing the classical allegory of the skeleton beside Boschian monsters and contemporary technologies.
About Lee Maskarinec
Lee Maskarinec is a painter, printmaker, and writer from Tucson, Arizona. Her work explores
materialistic memory, soft apocalypses, and the myths of Slavic folklore. Her writing has appeared in Howling Press Magazine and in the Pacific Basin Research Center student publications at Soka University of America. Her visual art has appeared on street corners, cardboard signs, and stairwells.
MFA in Visual Studies
