Oly and the Mammoth with Mother Quilt

Oly and the Mammoth, by Karen Bodeen, fabric artist, AKA “Mother Quilt”, riding the Mothership into the Sierra Nevada Mountains to deliver her landscape collage toTim Bodeen on his 47^th Birthday. Karen Bodeen is a long-time student of ancestry in addition to her quilting. A bell ringer for many decades in a bell choir, Karen’s music emerges in this film driving the Mothership and dreaming the artist’s way.

KAREN AND THE MANY VISIONS

OF THE MATTERS OF FACT

Of course, It’s Tule Lake, she says,

echoing No-Gate that was her name

before she was named. Of course.

The one driving away drives toward,

arriving somewhere new.

Navigating quilt woman, threading

her way. Weavers and quilters,

always working, dreaming at work.

Look at my fingers.

Working on the dream.

Bringing it back in pieces.

Bringing it back in thread.

You think she would be easy to live with.

She is only pleasure.

Gold? Liver and stomach upside down.

Holding absolute gold in her hands,

she asks, What flames? Where?

Something like deliverance.

A man and a dog.

A man and a dog and his mother.

Mother Quilt!

La vida continua/ La vida continua.

Like music on the radio.

What a station! What a station!

I would have missed this but for you, Karen.

There is also a man in the moon, she says.

And in this quilt.

The quilt with the mammoth and the dog,

that one, there is also a man.

Jim Bodeen

24 March 2018