What We Fund

2021 | New Orleans

Material: cast bronze and stainless steel

“Growing up on a farm near the Alabama River, nature was my first teacher. Life was intertwined with the magnolia tree in our backyard; long family meals enjoyed in her shade, weddings celebrated, deaths grieved. I felt protected and nurtured under her arching branches. Though ancient and strong, storms came and took parts of her but come Spring she always bloomed again. Like trees, humans are both fragile and resilient. In times of loss, we somehow find a way to navigate the challenges back towards growth and new life. After the waters of Hurricane Katrina subsided, boats landed in treetops, giving life to the imaginary images in my art of boats flying through the air and ether like mythological vessels. Like hurricanes, COVID has forced people to reflect on the course of their life's direction, and many have become nomadic. Moorings have been cut and people find themselves in new and unexpected places." – Raine Bedsole

About the Artist

New Orleans-based artist Raine Bedsole received a Master of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Bachelor of Fine Art from Auburn University. She is a prizewinner in the Florence Biennale and the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation public sculpture grant. Her work is in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, South Carolina Museum of Art, and the Mobile Museum of Art. In September 2018, her 27-foot steel sculpture, Justitia, was unveiled at the newly constructed U.S. Federal courthouse for the southern district of Alabama. In 2017 Bedsole was selected as a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, and in 2019 she served as a visiting artist at Kent State University.