Jennie Beth Banks

   “A Life” 

Textile Art & Photo & Ephemera Montage 

The central piece uses buttons from the old button collection of my friend’s mom, Betsey. Betsey was born in 1948 and died in 2024. Her daughter cared for her in the last 6 years of her life, before she died of lung cancer and COPD, age 76. She loved horses as a young woman. Her daughter gave me her photo albums and scrapbooks from 1963 which show life through Betsey’s eyes - the horses, the ranches, the people she met along the way, the letters, the places she stopped, on her journeying. Betsey herself is in three of the photos. 

Using her buttons, the textile piece represents how we are bonded together to our mothers. Her daughter explained to me how she feels more bonded to her mom after she died than she did when she was alive. As I worked on this piece, I couldn’t help think about my own mother who is still alive, 

but may leave me any time soon. 

Feel free to carefully pick up and read the letters on the table from Betsey’s collection or rummage through her button tin. 

I hope we can all remember Betsey today. 

And all our mothers. 

 Artist Bio

Originally from Sheffield in the north of the UK, Jennie currently lives in Olympia, WA, with her two beloved rescue dogs, Mun'i and Xena. She is the Creative Director and Founder of Death Dancer and likes to refer to herself as a Soul Doula, helping and supporting people with their end of life experiences and reflections. 

Death Dancer was born not long after she experienced carbon monoxide and gas poisoning, along with B6 Toxicity in 2021. She thought she was dying several times, which led her to reflect deeply on her own mortality and the inevitability of death. Two years into her recovery, she started working on a documentary idea and began interviewing Death Professionals to help her process her own death anxiety.  

Inspired by this reflective process, she then went on to create conceptual mixed media art pieces related to Death & Dying, Loss, and Living, which led to the curation of an art exhibit for the Fall Olympia Arts Walk in October 2024. Her art practice has developed ever since and more and more ideas keep flowing to help us open up the conversation around death and dying and grief. 

www.deathdancer.org