Off view
American, b. 1961
Memento Mori (My Glass Is Run), 2004
Mixed media installation
Dimensions variable
Courtesy Mildred's Lane, Pennsylvania
Photo by Jeffrey Jenkins
This folly takes the form of a cemetery for famed naturalists who worked in and around the Northeast in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Jane Colden, a botanist who contributed significant scholarship classifying New York’s plant life. Along with their names, Dion has inscribed colonial-era imagery and epitaphs for these figures onto the tombstones that make up the work. The artist has noted, “This project brings together a number of concerns in my work, but more importantly, two great passions: the inquisitive, indomitable spirit that American naturalists shared, and the marvelous vernacular New England art form of grave carving and its sophisticated symbolism.”