Linden Friend’s View: Tea in the Wild Series

Linden Friend's View: Tea in the Wild series, Detail
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Linden tea grounds the Spirit, soothing the nervous system and helping cool fever or overheated conditions. It’s Bird medicine, through and through…especially good for Jays and Bluebirds.

Why? You ask.

I’m glad you did! Linden helps us take command of our story when we’re feeling out-of-place, ungrounded, and overwrought. It shows us we’re at home no matter our surroundings. It helps us reconnect with our inner voice. For Jay, Linden is a balance to the Tricky energy that creates both a wonderful and chaotic experience for everyone, including the Trickster. Linden helps Jay, and us, to calm ourselves back down and see the world as it really is…and make peace with what we see.

As I worked on this piece, I was aiming to communicate Jay’s perspective on Linden. I combined hand-dyed cotton fabric with commercially dyed cottons and wool. I used a three-dimensional technique for many of the leaves to communicate a bit of the depth that Linden trees offer and the airiness.

  • Materials: Cotton and Wool fabric, cotton and polyester threads.
  • Series: Tea in the Wild, #2
  • Size: 30 inches x 30 inches, horizontal (76 cm x 76 cm) (approximate)
  • Completed: June 2022
  • Current Location: New Zone Gallery, $842 contact gallery to purchase
Linden Friend's View: Tea in the Wild series
Linden Friend’s View: Tea in the Wild series

 

My Thoughts on the Work

As a second in the series, I wanted to give we humans a more center-stage spot in the work. Linden, after all, is widely beloved in parks and in herbal traditions among our kind. For me, Linden has been a true friend when I’m traveling. The way we travel today, flying from one climate and place into another within hours, is wildly disorienting and ungrounding. Linden has always helped soothe my nervous system and show me how to re-orient once my feet are back on the ground. I often wonder how it is that migrating birds can fly for hours on end, just like we jet across the country, then land somewhere entirely new and manage to stay sane in the process.

In this piece, I love the perspective. I imagine myself as a Jay looking down at the person on the picnic blanket below. The leaves flutter in the wind obscuring the view, yet I can still see the cup of tea and the cryptic marks being made in that journal. What does that Trickster think of us as we try to make some sense of our world?

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