On a wet day in February, I met artist Crystalle Lacouture in Wellesley. Bundled in our coats, we strode into the sodden suburban wilds of Wellesley College’s campus, her rescue terrier-mix Moo making sniffing loops ahead and around us. Though a quick walker myself, I struggled to keep up; Lacouture’s long, swift lope is a lot like her paintings and prints: sweeping, seemingly automatic but also thrumming with intention, marked by direct lines and unexpected turns.
We had come to walk the labyrinth. Marked out in handlaid stones, the maze looked old, though it was constructed by the college just a few years ago after its predecessor, formed by split logs, started to decompose. Lacouture watched from the edge as I took a dizzying pass on my own, then joined me, so as we talked we coiled around each other, our eyes trained ahead on the narrow twisting path. Revolving, we discussed rituals ancient and modern, the physical and existential processes of grief and healing, and how Lacouture’s art practice—be it through painting, assemblage, photography, or all of the above—works to consecrate the familiar by asking us to recall what is essential in our lives.
