WAITING FOR FAIRIES TO GROW by artist Samantha Jane Mullen

Pyrography with graphite and ink accents on basswood with plywood marble run, 16” x 8”

As a child, I was always half naked, covered in dirt and reeking of garden chives and sun ripe tomatoes. I had a collection of marbles I would “plant” in the garden and tend as seedlings, convinced they would sprout into fairies. Every time a precious marble was lost to the earth I knew it was not a failing of memory, but a miracle of life. A fairy just missed.