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frogsong

Project Type

Exhibition, Medalta Artists in Residence Program

Date

May 2025

Location

The Yuill Family Gallery, Medicine Hat, AB

What happens on the year the frogs fall silent? When the dusty grumbling of grain trucks is not echoed  by algal orchestras chirping from the pond? When your teenage self is jolted out-of and into existence at the onslaught of a silent spring and the only music you hear is coming from a set of broken headphones?

I was always told that if I was ever lost in the forest that I should look to the moss. Folklore says that moss grows on the north side of the trees and it would guide me home.  As I looked through the aspen and wild roses of the shelter belt to the endless horizon just past the fence I realized that all I wanted was a forest large enough to get lost in. 

At weddings, funerals, and piano recitals perfect porcelain platters hold delicate configurations of finger sandwiches and dainties that would rival only those of royalty (according to my great-aunt, at least). Egg salad sandwiches are the only good thing about funerals, and what does a sandwich taste like on the day the frogs disappeared, anyway? 

frogsong is about being from somewhere and yet not having been from there in nearly a decade. Where are you from when your roots are shallow? When the moss that was supposed to guide you through forests isn’t as reliable a navigator as you had hoped? It’s about life-amid-decay and folklore and strange traditions. frogsong is about seeing beauty in an artificial grassland when all you wished for was a forest.

© 2025 by Melanie Barnett. Proudly created with Wix.com

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