Washingtonart interviewed Martha Tabor in September 2003, during her show at the Metropolitan Memorial UMC near Ward Circle, in northwest Washington, DC. At the same time, Martha's work was included in a group show at Eleven Eleven Sculpture Space, in downtown Washington.

washingtonart: Martha, one of the striking aspects of your sculpture is the strong feeling of dialog with the materials. In her review for Ken Oda's Koan website, art criticTerry Parmelee talks about your piece called "What's Inside," describing the "wool winding around and through the willow wood that implies intestines, the softness of a person's insides versus the strength of the bones that support them..."

Martha Tabor: I love the materials of sculpture, the reality and feel and heft of wood, horsehair, wool, bone, whatever comes to hand. The "thingness" of the material, especially wood, is wonderful. And I believe, as a friend has expressed it, "The more the hand is used in the creation of work, the more the work of the spirit comes into it." I've tried making prints on the computer, but ended up really missing the process of mixing inks, the feel of paper, the tactility of materials, especially those available for sculpture, which includes about everything in the world.

washingtonart: Please talk about the materials in your new piece, Spirit Boat III, which is displayed at Metropolitan Memorial.

Martha Tabor: It's made from a large piece of hollowed- palonia log loosely filled with gill netting. The netting I found on the shore at Broadkill Beach in Delaware. I want to make some oars or paddles for it which should, as the scythe does, give it more a sense of the vertical. The scythe is fine as an independent, separate piece of work, but combined with the boat it's just too heavy-handed. The netting speaks enough about catching, harvesting, in a really light sense.

washingtonart: I'd like to quote part of your statement from the brochure for With the Vessel in Mind, the exhibit at Eleven Eleven Sculpture Space curated by Binnie Fry. You say that you "have been making from wood simple objects—ladders, wheels, boats, scythes, and so on—objects that are clearly the thing itself, although not functionally constructed, but also objects that refer to larger issues, conditions, states of mind, states of body." Can you talk about the state of mind, and/or state of body that is referred to in Spirit Boat III?

Martha Tabor: This piece is just the most recent in a series of boats I've been making for the past three or four years. Boats are, for me, objects of transition, change, movement. As to my "state of body," I've been ill with endometrial and colon cancer now for the last five or six years. This experience of repeated hospitalizations, surgeries, radiation, various courses of chemotherapy, and all the spill-over in the form of side effects from treatment is probably informing my work in ways of which I'm not aware. I think of this piece as unfinished--I've accidentally cut some holes in it, but now I think I'll open it up a bit more, make it more permeable, make it lighter both psychically and physically. I could just get in the boat and float off, or maybe be cremated in it, since it's not going to float with these literal holes in it. That's one of the interesting thing about art, you "screw up", or so you think, but then the unintended takes you in new directions.

washingtonart: So it's finding a way to let go of the need to control...

Martha Tabor: Acceptance helps. Both of the physical process of making sculpture and the physical processes in my body. I don't have a lot of choice right now until or unless the docs come up with some new ideas. So it's: "Okay, let's see what I can do with this." I could never be a cabinet maker or do work that required a high level of precision. I like to work with what's to hand and in the hand.

washingtonart: Your work is being shown a lot in spiritual settings, places of worship or prayer--is this an area of special interest for you?

Martha Tabor: In the last five years or so, my work has been finding its way into more spiritual or institutional settings, which is not something I had ever imagined, but it does please me. If a piece of work can "live" in the life of an institution or organization and speak to those living with it, that feels about as good as it can get to me as an artist. The Washington Theological Union now owns three of my large pieces and it pleases me enormously to hear the various interpretations and sets of meaning that those who live with the art pull from it. Certainly I hear ideas that I'd never thought of and that push me into some new currents of thought.

washingtonart: Terri Parmelee ends her review by saying that "The links to nature in the drawings and sculpture of both artists...are models for both to express a sense of wholeness and well-being in a fragmented world." Is this what you feel your work expresses?

Martha Tabor: While I hope that it does speak to that, I believe my work is primarily about time: its fleetingness, the transitoriness of life, the mystery of its brevity. When I was working in screenprinting and also photography I made several series of images that dealt with aging, change, death, the workings of time on us.

washingtonart: Some of your more recent work seems to refer to time as well.

Martha Tabor: Yes, in the past few years I have made tools used for harvesting - grain cradle, scythe, and tools used for movement from one place to another - a whole passle of ladders short and tall, light and heavy, wheels, a chariot ...

washingtonart: And of course, the boats...

Martha Tabor: A seeingly endless series of them. The boats imply movement from here to there, from here to the hereafter, wherever that is, from the fragility of the life we currently lead to another unknown. Nothing is just ever itself. I feel that as I look back on my work that it is about time, a sense of its passing, of change, and how the awareness of that impacts each moment of our lives.

washingtonart: I want to finish by quoting again from your Eleven Eleven Sculpure Space statement, because I find that it is so beautiful; you were inspired by a poem of Jane Kenyon's called "Otherwise," and you say: "We are all changing, departing, moving towards our ends, and no matter how engaging the present, we know that someday, things will be "Otherwise"..." Thank you, Martha.

Gallery shots of the Metropolitan Memorial show
"Spirit Elements"
with Sculpture by Martha Tabor and
works on paper by Susan Pearcy

Spirit Boat III ( by Martha Tabor)
palonia log, found gill netting, cedar logs, 112" x 24" x 23"

(left) What's Inside ( by Martha Tabor)
1999, beech trunk, wool 34" x 71" x 19"
see larger image
(right) One More River to Cross ( by Martha Tabor)
1999, curly willow, cedar, maple, plywood, paint, 60" x 18" x 12"
see larger image

above: by Martha Tabor:
Spirit Boat
wood and curly willow
below: by Susan Pearcy:
Field Series #20, Field Series #25, & Cicada Wing
charcoal & pastel, 42" x 30," 42" x 30," & 44" x 30"
see more work by Susan Pearcy

Spirit Wands ( by Martha Tabor)
materials & size
see larger image

work from the Eleven Eleven Sculpture Space show
"With the Vessel in mind"

Spirit Boat IV( by Martha Tabor)
wood, curly willow, horsehair