Good Feelings
Samantha Hirsch Link
Collage
$35
Artist Statement
Many sources on the life of Elizabeth Monroe emphasize both her outward elegance and private reserve. She is known for bringing European glamor to the American milieu during the new country's "Era of Good Feelings" while avoiding many social functions due to health concerns, understood today to have been epilepsy. Also striking in her biography is the recurring role of fire. The Monroes moved into the White House, and the symbolic power of residing there was delayed by ongoing repairs from the wartime arson of the building. Soon after her husband's retirement, Elizabeth suffered a seizure and serious injuries by a fireplace. It is said that upon her death, James Monroe destroyed by burning all of her personal letters. Her influential visit to the imprisoned Marquise Lafayette during the Monroes' ambassadorship in revolutionary France remains a fiery highlight of the sketch that history has left us. In this piece, an ornate gilt frame of fleurs-de-lis and flames encloses a heat-marked paper canvas to complicate, through the lens of Elizabeth's contrasts, the phrase by which the Monroe legacy is known.
About the Artist
My practice in printmaking and book arts explores nature and culture, tradition and technology, words, and images. I enjoy "recycling" historical materials for new interpretation. I create at home in southern Wisconsin and as a member of the cooperative studio Polka! Press. My work has been shown at Madison Public Library and Woman Made Gallery (Chicago).