Jennie Beth Banks

   “Mugs” 

Assemblage

Everyone one of us has a cupboard of our mugs. Many mugs have a story - perhaps bought for us by a lover, a friend, for a birthday or Christmas gift. Some we bought when we moved house and wanted to project 

the idea of a new life beginning. 

These mugs are the great witnessers of all our sorrows, our pain, our tears, our sicknesses. They serve as vessels for our comfort drinks to get us through the hardness of life. They hold the stains of every cup of tea or coffee that saw a difficult day. And also the good. Some we keep just for guests, because we wouldn’t dare give them the stained ones, stained by the reality of our challenging life and the daily grind we ‘live’ behind closed doors or harrowing pains we experience alone at night. 

Our mugs are a portal to our pain and a portal to our joy. 

As I grappled with sickness recently, I considered again, “I may die soon. And how much longer do I have to drink from these mugs?”

What will happen to them when I am gone? Who will buy them from the Goodwill. Will my friend’s keep one as a keepsake. And will they spend hours of their precious time, scrubbing my stains from the mug they picked? Will they reflect on my stains? Will they remember me in all my entirety? 

 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.