Martha Glowacki’s Natural History, Observations and Reflections Martha Glowacki’s Natural History | Page 25

Figures 8 and 9. Martha Glowacki
(American b. 1950), My Arcadia, 2000,
mixed media, wood cabinet, 79 x 62 x 34 in.,
Elvehjem Museum of Art General
Endowment Fund purchase, 2000.88.
riences into homes and classrooms in orderly, structured
ways. Glowacki has long pushed on this form of material
rhetoric to explore the limits of representation.
My Arcadia (2000), in the permanent collection of the
Chazen, employs the tools of the scientific cabinet to or-
der more intimate concepts related to the artist’s autobi-
ography. It moves beyond what is perceived to what may
be understood or implied (Figure 8). Individual things
take on their own logic and feel sturdier when they
are sorted in a cabinet. The drawers contain historical
images, bones and specimens arranged to suggest a range
of personal interests and tangentially related narratives
designed to fascinate and engage through close looking
and the act of physically pulling out drawers—whether
to reveal a desiccated cat or a dismantled daguerreotype.
On top of her cabinet, three bell jars contain metal plant
sculptures that suggest an alternate cycle of life: a tree
that has been heavily pruned to inspire new growth, a
carefully manicured plant, and another that has died,
but has bees on it to suggest the possibility of new be-
ginnings (Figure 9).
21