1  a : gate, door

    b : (1) : end, boundary

(2) : the place or point of entering or beginning

| on the threshold of a new time or experience

2  a : the point at which a physical or psychological effect begins to be produced

 b : a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place

and below which it is not or will not

doors and windows are thresholds that separate interiors from exteriors.  they separate us from spaces beyond them.  they separate us from each other.  yet, even when considered closed, some things get past these barriers.  sunlight filters through dusty panes of window glass, slips around corners and through the tiniest of gaps.  flies, wasps, spiders are tiny enough to crawl inside – whether invited or not – but don’t always find safe passage back out.

the works in my “threshold” series were created with these ideas in mind, inside the old farmhouse at kuerner farm in chadds ford, pennsylvania.  the farm was the first place away from home that i spent a significant amount of time after the many months of isolation during the covid-19 pandemic.  it became my place to explore ideas about interior versus exterior, persistence versus decay, loss and recovery.  the marks left behind by those who’d once lived in the farmhouse, long since gone, spoke like the voices of ghosts:  paint worn away in the pattern of a swinging latch, so many times hooked, unhooked by ancestral hands.  odd nails protruding from window frames, pounded in with purpose by someone no longer here, their purpose forgotten, lost to time.  the wear and tear and love that we leave behind, evidence of lives lived.

my work in the farmhouse has become a meditation, an opportunity to reflect upon isolation and the strangeness of reemergence into a world forever altered, but often pushing us to behave as if everything is still the same.  my hope is that these pieces offer spaces for a viewer to pause for a moment, to consider what is inside versus what is outside, what is accessible versus shut away from us, what is safe and what is not, what remains and what is lost, the things that invade whether we wish them to or not, and the marks that persist as reminders of what came before.

– stacie leigh bumgarner
2023