Museum of Snow Angels

by Andrew Aaron Valdez

after

Gravity Feed

by Patti Fields and Ray Juaire

If you had a museum dedicated to a singular type of something, what would it be?

Would it be a museum of light bulbs

Flashing their brilliance

Like the sun on a cloudy day

Would it be a museum of clouds

Condensating and precipitating onto patrons

As they thundered across the exhibits

Socks soaking in distress

Would it be a museum of dis-dresses

Every dress you’ve ever worn that has

Insulted you by its very existence

That the mere sight of it calls you

To say dis dress??!

Like the gift a distant aunt brings to clothes the distance of your relationship

Would it be a museum of un-given gifts

Hallways filled with wrapping paper and bows

Statues and paintings adorned with name tags reading a vistores name

Given to them by someone who had loved them so much they ensured that even in their passing

That the fruits of their love still bore gifts

Would it be a museum of fruits that

Only had rooms dedicated to carrots because

Fuck your expectations

Better yet a museum of carrots left behind by snowmen as

They melted on springs eve

A plaque sitting at their exhibit

Dedicated to the joy they had brought to its sculptor

My museum would be a museum dedicated to snow angels.

I wonder if heaven is a conglomeration of all our own personal museums

If so, I wonder if God keeps a museum for all the snow angels we’ve made on earth

I wonder if my snow angel would most resemble that of Obama’s or the person who cut me off on the highway this morning

And if we all come to heaven, just to gain entrance into these museums, into my Snow Angel Museum, just so God could teach us that we’re all capable of drawing the same set of wings

I’d hope God would have the foresight to move my Snow Angel Museum from heaven to earth

Because the greatest un-given gift to us is not more angels on earth

But the reminder that anyone on earth could already be one.

Patti Fields and Ray Juaire, Artists: Sculptors Patti Fields and Ray Juaire often transform a variety of media to create artwork that, at times, symbolizes their professional and personal relationship and explores issues of place and memory. Their work can be singular or done in small series that play with balance, utilizing dynamic forms, conceptual narratives, and a re-imagined history of the objects they incorporate in each of their pieces. They suggest new histories in the combinations of fabricated and found objects and work to create metaphors for the nucleus of human, scientific, and metaphysical relationships. For the first time, the couple is showing a few solo works together, carving out new territory.

Andrew Aaron Valdez, Poet: Andrew Aaron Valdez (he/him/his) is a Chicanx educator, administrator, poet and theatre artist from Donna, Texas. Andrew is a C.A.R.E. Teaching Artist at Cleveland Playhouse, educator for the Indigenous Cultures Institute, Steering Committee Member of the Latinx Theatre Commons, a 2019-2020 Americans for the Arts Arts & Culture Leaders of Color Fellow, a 2019-2020 Cleveland Public Theatre Premiere Fellow and a 2020-2021 Artist in Residence at the Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center.

Andrew is a Terry Foundation Alumni and received his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts – Theatre Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

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