A Fable For Tomorrow

After my mom introduced me to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, I spent weekend mornings in Middle Earth, far from my bed in rural Wisconsin. Tolkien’s worlds are rooted in early Germanic, Finnish, Celtic, and Christian myths and stories. His works are powerful because they faithfully reflect the joys and pains of the human experience. 

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected and recorded German folktales in the early to mid-1800s. These images to offer a visual narrative applicable to our own times. They draw upon the Grimm brothers’ writings, the stonework of early German settlers in the Midwest, and the woodlands and prairies that supported their new lives. Light and shadow, pigment and paper embody the observation, uncertainty, and faith of those first German families. They learned to live with great changes in their land, climate, and culture brought on by a 4,000-mile migration. We are learning to live with similar changes over time without leaving home.  The images ask which fables or stories are we adopting/adapting to help us live successfully? Which ones will we pass on to our children?