Written by Leah McMichael, story-teller and artistic collaborator.

I spent the winter giving second graders language for a vanishing world. “For ‘threatened,’ stand on one foot. For ‘endangered,’ stay on one foot but close your eyes. When I say ‘extinct,’ roll over on your back.” 

We played a matching game, too, pairing pictures of Indiana mussels with colorful names like Sheepnose, Snuffbox, Pigtoe. Because mussels live by filtering water through their bodies, they act as the canary in the coal mine: the first creatures to vanish from polluted waterways. Most of Indiana’s mussels are endangered. Some are extirpated, or locally extinct. I wanted my students to say their names, to catch a glimpse of this wonder even as we lose it. 

My fifth graders are already grieving. They draw pictures of vaquita porpoises and condors and Karner Blue butterflies, asking me anxiously if art can do anything to save them. I tell them, Sometimes. I tell them, Love counts for something, even in loss. They ask me why people don’t care. 

This is the best answer I can offer: we do. The charismatic decals here are Species of Special Concern in Indiana. Not yet endangered, their populations are falling steeply—often due habitat destruction.

The urns of this series depict those habitats, the funerary forms reckoning with the possibility of their loss. Each urn is home to some of the many creatures on Indiana’s endangered species list. Some, like the Karner Blue butterfly and the Orangefoot Pimpleback mussel, are already extirpated—extinct in Indiana and endangered elsewhere. Yet the sgraffito carving of each urn imagines a habitat in its wholeness: prairie and farmland, forested caves, dunes and wetlands, and waterways, every place brimful of life. The dreamlike haziness asks if these are the ghosts of a lost world or the visions of what’s yet to be. 

We love all we stand to lose. We stand up for all we can still save. 

Click the images below to explore other facets of For The Love Of!