On the Cover: "Prayer for Justice and Compassion"
Artwork by Mary Lee Eggart
Over the course of her long career as an artist, Mary Lee Eggart has developed her own allegorical system, layering ancient symbolisms upon her renderings of the natural world. In this piece from her 2021 series of works created during the coronavirus pandemic, she sees messages of justice, compassion, and friendship in the woodpecker, the bleeding-heart flower, and the periwinkle. In the passing of food from mother to chick, she sees a generational transmission, a message and a task being passed down: “make your world better than mine was”.
In our 2024 Gardening issue, we find these messages woven through the work of Louisiana vegetable farmers exchanging knowledge and support in a changing world, in dreams of a more sustainable local food system, and in the hope and promise of a seed, and the future it holds.