“In loving memory: Edward James Brannon III (1960 – 2023), James Shepherd (1943 – 2019), Phyllis Shepherd (1943 – 2024)

I can’t tell you how I knew — but I did know that I had crossed the border. Everything I loved was lost / But no aorta could report regret…And blood-black nothingness began to spin / a system of cells interlinked within / Cells interlinked within cells interlinked / Within one stem. / And dreadfully distinct / Against the dark, a tall white fountain played. / I realized, of course, that it was made / Not of our atoms; that the sense behind / The scene was not our sense. –Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire 

Cells Interlinked is a story of grief, both personal and collective. Inspired by science and post-apocalyptic fiction, including Nabokov’s Pale Fire and the Blade Runner films, mutated soft forms and strange quilted landscapes visually express grief for the world we once knew becoming unrecognizable. 

In this work, Laura Brannon explores how tactile, slow making creates space to process both personal loss – of their father and three grandparents – and collective loss – of the natural environment. The climate’s devastation is contributed to and mirrored by the destructive forces of our political landscape. What happened to the imagined “American Dream” for all, and where does it leave future generations? 

In order to work through these overlapping griefs, Brannon uses soft sculpture and quilting to imagine possible futures that parallel their own experiences. Cells Interlinked follows the story of Sybil: a young adult living in the year 2,135 during the post-apocalypse. Quilted landscapes and fragments of writing record Sybil’s journey through their newly scarred world. Despite the fear and strangeness of the world they find themselves in, Brannon uses the softness and familiarity of textiles to imply the hope of safe haven in their hostile environment.