Rebecca Pyle

Gift Bowl With Clock and Moon Mask#

Artist’s Statement#

This bowl of objects is fairly called an assemblage.

This collection of objects suggests turn-of-the-year parties and merry-making: the eye-mask decorated with a fat sliver of moon, promoting the anonymity and the playfulness of the wearer; two somewhat ancient deep cream-colored pottery cups; a five-dollar alarm clock from an Asian grocery store; Tangerine Zinger tea in a box with the word Celestial in its brand name; a hollow baroque star; and two empty, nestled, hand-carved Asian bird-bowls.

One fall I was asked to contribute anything to a charity auction, and my goal was to contribute something odd, not very useful. Someone did bid for it, took it home; my hope each time I see this image is the person who took it home was someone serious, perhaps quite depressed, who needed a New Year’s Eve to dream about, to look forward to, to bury many over-serious memories in a long sequence of over-serious years. Who needed something emblematic to help them try to start anew.

If nothing else, their hope of choosing someone to invite over for a cup of tangerine tea, on New Year’s Eve, was waiting.

About the Artist#

Rebecca Pyle is living, most of this year, in France. Her photographs, oil paintings, and drawings are in many art and literary journals, including MAYDAY, Dream Noir, New England Review, Gris-Gris, Blood Orange Review, La Piccioletta Barca, and West Trestle Review. Rebecca Pyle is also an often-published creative writer, her written work appearing most recently in The Los Angeles Review, Cagibi, Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, Flying Island, and Brink. Find her online at https://rebeccapyleartist.com.