She Was/Is Here
Chelsy Lynn Walker
- Medium
United States
ca. 2019
Wood, resin, gold leaf, and bronze
When Walker’s grandmother passed away when she was 13, “it felt like a deep and irretrievable loss,” said the artist. “But the more I remember her, the more I feel her presence.” Her grandmother comes to her in the scent of a favorite meal, the dress she wore (and her grandmother made) for her baptism, and in the stories told. The memories that “run through us like blood somehow shape who we are and determine who we will become.” It was her grandmother’s “verbal assurances of the reality of a loving Father in Heaven, as well as her lifelong example of faith in the face of adversity,” that continue to speak to Walker’s soul.
This sculpture is both a portrait of her grandmother and a tribute to remembering “the help that comes from the other side in the moment of our earnest need.”