Tending

Tending, an exhibition by Morgan Binkerd, is on display in City Gallery. Tending is an exploration of placing roots and the places where we coexist. Exploring - no, that's incorrect - she is painfully aware of what it takes to tend to a life and coexist with people and the spaces that we inhabit. 

When talking with Binkerd about Indianapolis and the theme of the show, we discussed what it means to tend to something. It can be a verb in landscape - tending a garden, tending to something that grows, but we spent time thinking about how tend is a core part of other words that all connect to this theme. Specifically, we talked about a shared admiration for the Kile oak tree in Irvington. Binkerd sees Kile as a sheltering presence, someone, something to be in attendance with, as a ritual for developing relationships with the places that we call home and that care for us, as we return the care to them. 

This show explores not only Binkerd's relationship with the land but also with architecture and urban spaces. Moving from Anderson to Indianapolis has been a big part of Binkerd's life and artistic development.

The work in the show explores how we love and care for the places we call home and how we share a relationship with the places we live in and inhabit. The work itself explores tending, tending as a phenomenon - not painting a landscape, but thinking about figures, tenderness, care, and phenomena of nature. 

Continuing to look at the work, this show is an examination of what it's like to care for oneself and tend to an artistic practice, and how the relationship between art and artist develops, evolves, and is revealed. It's a symbiotic relationship; both need each other to exist, and for that, they depend on each other to reap the rewards of seeds sewn. Beyond initial growth, life needs tending to to thrive, which is what Binkerd is doing. She continues to push herself as an artist and challenges herself to be exactly where she wants to be.