53 Dinner Plate in the style of Sappho

Hello!

In reflecting on Sappho’s poetry and the symbolism in it, I was inspired by the Judy Chicago Dinner Party discussion we had. More specifically, I used the themes of Sappho that fascinated me to create a dinner plate to be included in Judy Chicago’s dinner party. The themes I used were memory, nature, and grief. Specifically for memory and grief, I drew a winding clock, with numbers and lines getting less and less distinct, but ever-present and infinite. There is a certain fuzziness associated with both memory and grief that I wanted to capture with this clock. For nature, I incorporated ivy and lilacs into the negative space of the clock. The ivy is both a call-back to Taylor Swift’s song “Ivy,” which has a lot of lesbian undertones and reminded me of Sappho, and to the invasive nature love. Love can take over your whole being if you let it. The lilacs are a call-back to the innocence of love in Sappho, with crowns of lilacs being the prime way to spend an afternoon with your lover. For another element of grief, I included a bunch of lines between the hands of the clock (also the edges of the vagina). These lines are meant to evoke loneliness and the feeling of being lost. So much of Sappho’s own expressions of loss have been lost through time, and my dinner plate embodies this feeling.

With love,

Sarah