Jennifer Rodgers Created Artistic Maps As She Walked Through Her Grief

In 2014, artist and high school art teacher Jennifer Rodgers began creating artistic maps after losing her father to sepsis. Sepsis is a condition caused by the body’s response to infection, resulting in inflammation that can lead to tissue damage and organ failure. The progression of her father’s illness was a “truly devastating” process to watch, Rodgers says. A month after his death, while in the throes of grief, she turned to art to help her through the period of deep mourning, and started creating pieces of art she called “maps.”

The Last Day
Credit: NPR.org

One of these artistic maps is called “The Last Day” and reflects her experience of the day her father died. Splattering black paint on a large piece of paper, she then tore it up into pieces. She drew short black lines to represent the steps she took walking down the hallway of the ICU during her father’s hospitalization. She says the red in the piece represents sepsis and what it did to her father’s body.

Jennifer Rodgers’ art was inspired by a book called “The Geography of Loss,” by Patti Digh, which speaks of loss as a landscape we must navigate. Rodgers was particularly moved by one quote in the book: “We are broken open by some of our human experiences,” and refers to “The Geography of Loss” as her guidebook during that era. Rodgers sought to reflect through her maps the ways she had been broken open by her father’s illness and death.  

 “A map organizes a place in a certain way,” Rodgers said in an interview with NPR. “My maps have become a way to get from a point in my life where I was very much grieving to another point where I came to a resolution with some of it.”  

The first piece in Jennifer Rodgers’ series of artistic maps is called “(Annealing) Strata of Memories,” and is a nod to Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. The word kintsugi means “golden seams,” and the philosophy behind the technique says that the broken pieces of an object are not something to disguise but rather to display with pride as part of the object’s history. “The gold heals the broken piece of pottery and actually makes it more precious and more valuable,” Rodgers said in her NPR interview. Her piece “Strata of Memories” represents the most shattering experiences of her life. Her father’s struggle with sepsis is set off to the side and surrounded by a white that reflects the gauze used during his time in the hospital.

(Annealing) Strata of Memories
Credit: jenniferrodgersart.com

When asked if it is difficult for her to look back on these images, Rodgers says: “To look at them, not so much. To talk about them and actually think about what was happening at the time, that is definitely difficult. At the same time it feels very healing to me.” Rodgers hopes to raise awareness around sepsis through her beautiful art.