Andrea Bowers

This large drawing includes the lines of a poem by Deena Metzger drawn along with the contour outlines of native plants of California, the state where the artist lives and works. Bowers was inspired by the words of Metzger (an American poet, activist and healer), whose lines of the poem, “Now that we know,” begin with:

Now that we are sequestered,

an entire globe aware

we are sharing a common fate,

which has always been the case,

now that we, so frightened

without our things,

know we are all mortal,

while grabbing our last meals

from the emptying shelves,

imagining our last suppers,

how we will spend

the final weeks of our lives,

Now that we are aware

that the gift of breath

we have always received from the trees

may not serve us --

Is it because we

relentlessly cut them down?