Dovecote 2.0, Silkscreen on hand dyed cotton, ink painting on Sekishu kozo paper, aluminum leaf, marbling, artist made maple hanger, 5′ tall X 5′ wide. Photo taken at the Nave Gallery in Somerville, Massachusetts, 2025.
Dovecote 1.0, Silkscreen on hand dyed cotton, Silkscreen on Sekishu kozo paper, aluminum leaf, marbling, artist made maple hanger, Bose L1 compact inside with sound piece, 5′ tall X 5′ wide. Photo taken at the Arts League of Lowell, MA in July 2024.
Anni Albers wrote about the extra-aesthetic value of textiles due to their lightweight qualities of portability. I wanted the Dovecote to fill the space of the John Greenwald Gallery at the Arts League of Lowell, and yet to pack up small and light for shipping if necessary. Master carpenter David Mattuchio helped me design and make the hanger that would hold the textile and paper panels, using recycled maple from my children’s bunkbed which they had outgrown.
Video Documentation of Dovecote 1.0 with Soundtrack
Pigeons of Molodemak, artist’s book with marbled end papers, photographs and text by the artist, silkscreen on linen covers, linen thread, hand bound. Edition of 3 plus 1 AP. The text is included in the Dovecote 1.0 soundtrack above.
Endpaper, suminagashi on paper 
Title page 
“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what sotries make worlds, what worlds make stories.” – Donna J. Haraway, Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene 
Columba livia | Linnaean strategies | colonizing binomial nomenclature | does not alter cliff divers who form lifeong bonds | and see the light we cannot see 
Greek kolumbos | diver | Sanskrit kapota | companion species 
brought to the Dawnland in sailing ships | raised for food, fertilizer, friendship 
message bearers | slipped into a niche left bare | clouds of passenger pigeons reduced to one | then none 
Martha cooed for no mate | laid no eggs 
Merrimack – Molodemak | Chief Rising Eagle Libby | led us to the banks of Molodemak saying | “Isn’t she beautiful?” 
a place with other names | older names | Dawnland, Ndakinna | the place to which we belong | who belongs on stolen land? 
I would build a dovecote | to lessen the loss | of other species 
“Home, is where I want to be | But I guess I’m already there | I come home, she lifted up her wings | I guess that this must be the place” – David Byrne 
they don’t belong here | any more than I do | ancestor – 17th century colonizer embarks | with a basket of birds 
yet here we roost | i in my saltbox house | you under bridges of concrete and metal 
descendants of an enslaved species | escaped their primate keepers | iridescent divers of the urban landscape 
iridescent from Iris | flower | messenger sent by a vengeful goddess 
not pigment | molecular structure of the barbule | refracts with the angle of intent 
mirror world | a few clouds | a light rain 
axe wielding pigeon keeper | family secrets | lines of inheritance | did Lizzie name her birds? 
unerring instinct for home | homing | if only i could find my way so easily 
i fly | into space | this vast floating world | symphony in gray 
Arabic numeral 7 | invoking the complex mathematics | of population and resources 
twist of an allele | scale turns to feather | dinosaurs fly over terrapolis 
third eyelid | nictitating membrane | waves of light forbidden to primate eyes 
mirrored surveillance | dragfly eyes are blind 
layered realities | hidden in plain sight | the world is one thing | then refracts | into something else 
we and they? | all stardust 
entangled at the root | mycorrhizal networks infiltrate the oculus | what divine madness harbors fantasies of separation? 
dreams of flight | rooted in the breast | where muscle attaches to bone 
sleeping in fluorescence | dreaming of cliffs an ocean away| no return 
Gratitudes 
End paper, suminagashi on paper.
Deborah Santoro 