Dr. Jill Biden
Anna Mueller
Watercolor and paper on wood
Not For Sale
Artist Statement
When creating this piece, I started by focusing on how politics felt this year, and how I felt every time I saw Jill Biden on TV or in the news. I read her memoir and combined the messages I gathered from her memoir and her past, with her very unique role today. My primary goal when writing this piece was to capture Jill Biden’s calm, kind personality as a force for hope in a time of unrest.
Her heartbeat is out there
Next to yours
Didn’t you know?
It’s running beneath the heat of the sun
It's steadfast in her soldier's arms
It’s beneath a banner of hope
Throbbing with your cries for help
Her heartbeat is in here
Next to theirs
Can’t you see?
It’s warming over the kitchen stove
It’s caught inside a book
It won’t falter under the suffocation her grief creates
It's holding her family while the world shakes
Her heart beats next to yours
Like music
the energy of kindness doesn’t fade quickly
Like a lighthouse
For insurgents to the currents of injustice
Their strength born of that very same storm
We won’t fail
At forgiveness
The perpetual pain of one presidency
Ended
And I was 17
And I was looking at her face
With the huge bible in both hands and I felt
My cynicism
My disgust in our division
Lift slightly
Up and away
The inauguration had the tempo of a triumphant march
Like a collective heartbeat
The human spirit swirling in an ocean-bound wind
It calls us to close our eyes and strip the hate from our gaze
It begs us not to break our stare with the revelation of justice
and kindness hurling across the waves
An idiosyncratic synchronization of hearts to find forgiveness
Reverberating through hundreds of millions
Thank you
Jill Biden
For being
You
About the Artist
Anna Mueller is a junior at West High School in Madison, Wisconsin. You can almost always find her reading, writing, breathing the fresh air, or all of the above. Anna hopes to make an impact with her writing and use words to celebrate unacknowledged success and struggle in women’s history and other stories that inspire change. You can find more work by her in a Teen Art Exhibition at the MMoCA this spring.