To artist Mayme Kratz, gardens are places of memory and chaos. Long House #1 captures the artist’s childhood experiences planting a garden with her mother. Natural processes of growth and decay felt like magic, and their attempts to control the garden were met with unexpected results—vegetables grew in places they had not been planted, and some flowers flourished while others withered. As she grew older, Kratz’s mysterious experiences in outdoor spaces faded, replaced by the scientific explanations of natural processes she once thought magical.  

The artwork’s title, Long House #1, may suggest the longhouse structures of Native communities of the American northeast, including the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). The artist herself has said that the shape of a house with a gabled roof symbolizes place and belonging, and the sunflower represents a guardian. Kratz takes what she learned from planting a garden in her youth and applies it to her sculptures: attempting to impose order can sometimes incite chaos. Resin can react badly with the natural materials in Kratz’s sculptures, requiring her to relinquish her attempts to control the process, instead embracing disorder and mystery. 

-Linnea Seidling, Assistant Curator of Glass