Page Turner, The Women’s Movement: Rings of Her Asking

Artist: Page Turner

Title: The Women’s Movement: Rings of Her Asking

Medium: Digitally printed photograph on canvas with found, manipulated, and handmade objects

Dimensions: 23 x 14 x 2 inches

Price: $600

Artist Statement: This assemblage responds to Carol Lynn Pearson’s illustration “The Women’s Movement: Liberation or Deception?” from the Summer 1971 “Pink Issue” of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. I remade Pearson’s drawing in my own Appalachian material language. Her domed arch becomes a shrine, holding sacred space for the questions surrounding women’s faith, identity, authority, and freedom. At the center, concentric circles represent the tree rings of the Tree of Knowledge, recording growth, time, injury, and survival. Knowledge accumulates through experience and ripples outward from one woman to another. I grew up among Mormon women in the Blue Ridge Mountains who quietly circulated Carol Lynn Pearson’s poetry. They passed her words from hand to hand, often in secret, recognizing truths they could not always speak openly. Like tree rings, their understanding grew as it moved outward. These women taught me to sew, preserve food, tend the land, practice faith, and care for my community. What they shared carried the residue of sisterhood. Each woman added another ring of memory, labor, belief, and lived experience. The shrine is filled with eggs, nests, seeds, thread, buttons, handmade vessels, and rolled pages. These are objects of birth, work, creation, preservation, and possibility. Some appear protected. Some have been broken open. At the center is an eye, awake and watchful. She is looking, learning, and discerning for herself. The Pink Issue gave Mormon women a place to examine their lives and speak for themselves. It asks for equality on every page. More than fifty years later, I gather its questions into a new assemblage. My Mormonism informs my feminism. I do not believe liberation and faith must be opposing paths, or that spiritual devotion requires a woman to surrender her knowledge, power, or voice. The rings continue to grow. The questions continue to ripple outward.

Artist Bio: Page Turner is an Appalachian assemblage artist based in Roanoke, Virginia. Using heirlooms, domestic tools, preserved natural materials, sacred objects, and remnants of women’s lives, she creates intricate sculptures exploring faith, feminism, memory, and inherited knowledge. Rooted in the Blue Ridge Mountains and informed by her Mormon heritage, Turner’s work honors women’s domestic skills, spiritual authority, and personal power. She was featured in the book 50 Contemporary Women Artists: Groundbreaking Contemporary Art from 1960 to Now. Her work has been exhibited nationally and published widely.