Victoria Knorr
Hand Built Ceramics
“The Swan of Tuonela”
In Finnish folklore, the land of the dead is called Tuonela. It is a cold island in the north surrounded by a river that runs black. When a human dies, their soul crosses this river to get to Tuonela. There is a revered swan that lives on the river. It sings as it paddles and watches souls cross, and its song is said to have a haunting beauty unmatched by anything, in any plane. Tuonela is referred to in the Kalevala (the Finnish national epic), which contains stories primarily focused on heroes and their journeys. This piece shifts the focus and perspective instead toward the swan, inviting exploration into its emotional experience, having watched and known death most intimately, and destined to carry this weight forever alone.
There is a swan who lives on a river that runs cold and black. A gentle, powerful creature older than time. Alone and unnamed, she drifts and dreams of the sun, of the dazzling beauty and warmth she has always known but never experienced. No, she is at home under the eternal ink-black sky, on the river between planes. Stars blink down on her, and she feels the rain in her bones. The stars cry too, destined, as she is, forever to watch souls cross from warm and sunlit places with their loved ones to this cold, remote island. Good and evil mean nothing to the swan and the stars. There is only love and loss, warmth and chill, together and apart, this world and the next. The wind riffles gently through the island's trees, and they shiver quietly, naked but for a soft robe of snow. The swan's song is carried on this breeze and echoes throughout Tuonela. It's hauntingly beautiful and holds within it the ageless wisdom only this sacred creature knows truly, entirely.
She is filled with a desperate longing for the warmth of a world she will never belong in.
She paddles gently along the river and watches the souls. It is not her place to help them across. She can only watch and sing, but sometimes one of them stops in the river to take in her song, to drink from that knowledge which transcends language. Some souls get a taste of this knowledge in life, that of love and loss. The swan holds all of it. And though none can fathom the depth of pain she must endure to carry it, those that have glimpsed moments of it breathe a sigh of relief as her song washes over them. They are no longer alone.
"Jolene, a Votive”
I think about the places we go when we are grieving or afraid as inward and down. But I believe that going there orphans parts of ourselves that cannot survive in the dark. This piece is about the grief and fear that drives us inward and down, the gentle but isolating protection those places offer, and the courage to climb out,
step by step,
to find our orphaned parts
and bring them to safety,
together in the light.
Parts of me
scream
for each other,
to be reunited.
Jolene, are you still up there?
I miss you,
I'm coming for you.
“Table and Chairs 1”
My brother had a way of throwing his head back laughing like Amadeus, a crazed look in his eye, playful invitations at an otherwise desolate dinner table. They called him Sunshine, and not for nothing.
I was 19 when I learned that lasagna means someone died. When he died.
...The ocean is where I go to say goodbye.
Indigenous peoples here have said,
"When the tide is out, the table is set."
It's not so much the table itself
that haunts me, as
the number of empty seats around it.
This piece is about the loss of loved ones, the void they leave at the table, and the deafening silence that no other laughter can fill.
“Table and Chairs 2”
Sometimes, things just
fall
apart.
“Bed on Fire”
There was nothing worthy left in this world for her to love.
And so I watched my mother lie down
beside his lifeless body,
in a bed of flames,
consumed.
“Lemminkäinen’s Death, and a Mother’s Grief”
In this story, our main character (and embodiment of hubris), Lemminkäinen, has attempted to kill the sacred swan of Tuonela to win the hand of Louhi, daughter of the North. He is punished severely for this attempt, destroyed into pieces and cast into the river. His mother’s grief propels her to action when she hears the news. She makes the long journey to Tuonela and immediately sets to working all the magic she knows to try and bring him back to life. She painstakingly retrieves each piece of her son from the river, and carefully reassembles him. But as hard as she tries, she is not able to breathe life back into his physical form. This mosaic of ceramic shards in glass represents Lemminkäinen’s body as his mother works her magic during her most grief-stricken days before a magical bee lands and finally brings him back to life.
“A Starry Night, and Petunias”
...on a night you were gone
she brought me out in the yard
to look at the stars
and tell me how much she loved us
(she'd cross a galaxy for you)
and when she came to our house,
the very last time,
she brought starry night petunias
she had planted in a basket for me.
She loved me, she remembered.
She found me.
This piece is dedicated, with love,
to Bonnie Fleck.
“Deep in a Hole”
Grieving alone, I collected what I could,
Built the nest I needed around myself,
And settled in, piece by piece.
As I did so, the hole grew deeper,
And time itself collapsed.
I lie down to rest at the bottom,
protected, alone, trapped.
I could no longer be reached.
“Oxygen”
The man I hate
starts his day with four cigarettes:
one for each of his parents,
whose pain he still carries
(and carries out
on us);
one for the life he never
quite had,
the beauty he never
quite saw;
and one for the mother of his children,
the mother I should have had,
I could have had,
were it not for the many, many cigarettes.
Artist Bio
My work features themes of death, loss, grief, loneliness,
and relationships with mothers.
Death, dying, loss, and grief are formative experiences that shape emotional landscapes. For me, this began in earnest about 15 years ago, when my brother, Christopher, died at the age of 24 from brain cancer. I was 19 and learned quickly that death and loss are topics that make many people uncomfortable, which unfortunately added a thick layer of loneliness to the pain of loss. Grief is meant to be experienced in community.
In 2021, my then-partner and I moved in with his family to care for his mother, Bonnie, who had developed lung cancer. While grieving a relationship with my own mother and coming to terms with her impact, Bonnie’s love and presence in my life became critically important. While I was better able to support her transition to hospice, and then into death, than I was for my brother, it was incredibly difficult, and I found myself largely alone to process this loss too.
I started making art in the hopes it would help me communicate during these times, when language didn't feel accessible or adequate, and seeking more direct connection and support felt impossibly risky. The focused motions of hand building, the space to create and make a mess, and the way everything else has to melt away for a while for the piece to come together -- ceramics as a method of expression was exactly what I needed. I found in this the ability to explore and speak from liminal spaces; the wounds deeper than language, the invisible dance between brains, and the interstitial glue that holds disparate parts of ourselves together.
Since starting to work with clay, I began to access language better, and I started writing short pieces as a way to process and eventually connect as well.
I like pairing the two, and my hope is that sharing my art and these pairings will facilitate connections with you who have also lost loved ones or experienced disenfranchised grief,
so you may feel a little bit less alone in your pain.
If you are interested in seeing more of my work or talking with me directly, please reach out.
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