The Guardians have no names. Ann wants viewers to decide what to call them. Click a photograph to look closer.
For me, and those who know her, she is the eighteenth Guardian.Timothy McNeil, preface to the catalog
Bases included, the Guardians range from the smallest bird, No. 1, at 20 inches, to No. 16, the warrior with the olive branch, at six feet.
Arrange whatever pieces come your way.Virginia Woolf, the epigraph to the statement
Since early 2018 I have been creating an installation titled Guardians. The initial impetus for this series was deeply personal: my two remaining children had died within nine months of each other, leaving my husband and I childless, after raising two beautiful sons and a daughter.
These ‘pieces that have come my way’ are made of industrial detritus and bits of flotsam and jetsam that have washed up on the beach, coming from unknown places. From them I have created new beings that are composites of the disparate castoffs. These beings represent guardian spirits of protection. They also are a metaphor for myself: broken yet strong, always hopeful, salvaging what I can from tragedy and loss to rebuild my life. It is from the brokenness that all of us experience, that we create new configurations and move forward with our lives.
On a personal scale, Guardians is about building a new life from loss. Creating them helped me cope with my loss and grief. The meditative, incantatory process of building these figures enabled me to direct feelings of grief and loss to a more positive action. I found comfort in the care, thought, love and attention to detail I devoted to their creation.
On a larger scale, Guardians is about creating protection from the many threats the entire planet faces. All of us are facing unprecedented loss and threats, including climate change, species extinction, resource depletion, population displacement, and economic and racial injustice. And we are feeling vulnerable and under attack on many fronts.
I find the concept of spiritual guardians inspiring and hopeful. People of all persuasions, whether or not they believe in guardian spirits, can find comfort and hope in these figures. They are offered to viewers in a spirit of loving kindness, and in the hope that they will be comforted, inspired and reassured that there is cause for optimism even in the face of so many serious challenges.
Driftwood bodies carry the memory of forests and oceans, filled with brine and the bodies of tiny creatures. Their rings record birth, growth and death.
“I had only a concept, a word, and the faith that I would be able to create a series based on those.” Ann sketched each figure, then drew on a collection of driftwood, chair legs, shells, bones, fabric and broken metal. Furniture legs and branches became limbs; a soft drink box, a violin case or a tire shard became a torso; fishing floats, masks and bones became heads.
"I do that deliberately, so that my purpose is not glaring."
Ann hides things in the figures and expects viewers to walk around them slowly, top to bottom. Some details face the wall. Some can only be seen from behind. The three messages to her children inside No. 17 cannot be seen at all.
The Janus figure looks forward and back. Its front face follows the owl-faced artist in Remedios Varo's painting Creation of the Birds (1957).
Small robed figures fill the soft drink case. Ann placed her three children where the heart would be.
A model of the Covid-19 virus hangs in a rusted whisk, held like a lantern.
"May God Protect You," written in forty languages, with protective symbols from many cultures. "It's the anthropologist in me."
On the backs of the hands, two hearts marked D, for her grandchildren. Only visible from behind.
Three faces look out from a slashed tire shard.
A bluebird inside the violin case, the only blue in the figure.
Endangered animals are embedded in the figure's back, under the scythe.
Details: Photo: Ann Savageau
“A work of art is incomplete until you have the viewers’ reactions and interpretations.”
In a room off the main gallery, 400 visitors wrote a thought or a prayer in multiple languages and hung them on a display board. Religious Studies students at UC Davis wrote essays about individual figures; school children sat on the floor to draw them.
While there is no violin in the case anymore to offer music and life, there is still a bird inside who can sing to be that life.Grace Yang, UC Davis Religious Studies 1B, on No. 12
The Guardians spread outdoors. Design MFA student Edward Whelan laid a Poetry Path of stones and a Reflections Bridge; Niloufar Abdolmaleki hung Dakhil ribbons, a traditional act of devotion, for visitors to tie and write on. A call for poems drew responses from the community.
Preface by Timothy J. McNeil, essay by Rina C. Faletti, Ph.D., design by Gale Okumura, installation photographs by Barbara Molloy. Published by the Regents of the University of California, Davis campus, 2023. ISBN 979-8-218-37810-3.
Read the full catalog below. Use the arrows, the keyboard or the page strip to move through it.
Opened October 2021, on view for eight months, through April 24, 2022. Curated and designed by Timothy McNeil, installed by Trevor Pope-Lance.
March 24 to April 30, 2022. Poetry Path, Reflections Bridge and Dakhil Ribbons, made in response to the installation.
Bettiga Gallery, March 16 to April 27, 2024. All seventeen figures.
August 26 to November 2, 2024. Artist residency, the Robertson Lecture and a reception on October 23.
This catalog and project are dedicated to the memory of my children Patrick, Mark and Elisa Savageau, whose lives enriched mine forever and remain in my heart and mind every day.
“Arrange whatever pieces come your way”
VIRGINIA WOOLF
The concept of guardian spirits is rich with history, ritual and symbolism.
Broken yet strong, always hopeful, salvaging what I can from tragedy and loss to rebuild my life.
Offered to viewers in a spirit of loving kindness, and in the hope that they will be comforted, inspired and reassured that there is cause for optimism.
PROCESS
Her own photographs, as uploaded.
THE FIGURES
DESCRIPTION
In times of uncertainty and turmoil, people have turned to private and group rituals to seek comfort and a sense of security. In many different cultures and eras, protective guardians have played prominent roles. These include the totemic figures of Native American cultures, the Dvarapala statues in Hindu and Buddhist holy sites, and the guardian angels of Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions.
With the advent of science and modern medicine, the old ritualistic and sacred aspects of protection have waned in popularity and have been largely replaced by infrastructures and practices based on science and designed as control and protection.
But the more we endeavor to control nature, the more nature pushes back and reasserts itself; we see this in climate change and pandemics. As many writers have noted, life itself cannot be forced to be predictable or tamed.
So the act of creating guardian spirits has elements of irony and futility that have not escaped my attention.
2018 – 2021
TITLE
Guardians: Spirits of Protection
YEARS
2018–2021
TYPE
Installation
MATERIALS
Driftwood and found objects collected on beach; paint
SCALE
15 figures, variable dimensions
EXHIBITED
Morris Graves Museum of Art · Design Museum, 2021, opening reception
THEMES
Loss, grief, healing
