Summoned by the Spring
Women and Wood: The Metaphorical Use of Form Katonah Museum of Art, June, 1993 "All of Byars's work refers to a kind of natural stillness, to the stillness of the listening animal, and to a passage from one form of life to another. Her work also refers to a historic time when deer walked boldly through unpeopled spaces and the word 'forest' had magical connotations... the lyricism of Donna Byars's Summoned by the Spring requires a slower approach, a meditative apprehension of the mystical nature of the animal world with which we coexist." —Corinne Robins |
"I dreamed that an elk was born from the earth, as though from a seed. It crashed up from the ground fully grown. Do you know the line from an Emily Dickinson poem, 'summoned by the spring'? It was truly an Elk Seed, maybe that's what I should have called it? But no, it's the poem, it was, Summoned by the Spring."
—Donna Byars, 2013
—Donna Byars, 2013