My assemblages highlight the beauty of wild things and human memories.
S.E. Cayleff and her Wild Things
I moved to Provincetown in 1973, and it has been my sacred home base ever since.
Years of cooking and retail work there helped pay my way through graduate school (Sarah Lawrence and Brown University). I recently retired after 37 years teaching at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, and in the Women’s Studies Department (first in the nation) at San Diego State University. Throughout my academic career in women’s history and women in medicine, my creative outlet was fueled by teaching and writing six books. But my “outsider art” created in my spare time fed my soul. I am now devoted to making art in my retirement.
I have loved animals all my life. Since childhood I’ve roamed woods, beaches, mountains, deserts and streets scavenging nature’s gifts: naturally-shed antlers, feathers, wood, bones, glass shards, rusted metal, and stunning ocean wash-ups. We have driven cross-country many times, and I gathered treasures from Indian country, the Anza Borrego desert (east of San Diego), the Badlands, New Mexico, and on Route 66. Dear friends in Alaska, Minnesota and Maine led me to shed antlers.
I curate these natural beauties with materials I collected in metal junk yards, construction sights, and from flea markets, swap meets and shops specializing in ubiquitous bins of items from bygone eras. My assemblages use all of these materials to highlight the beauty of wild things and human memories.
Click on photos for enlargement.
Where Things Came From
Not a single creature was disturbed or interrupted in its daily life. All remnants of sea creatures washed ashore and dried out. Plant life fell on the ground. Deer antlers are shed each spring, and one can tell shed antlers (versus from trophy deer) by the “knob” at the end. The portion of the elk antler was taken from a whole shed antler.
Antlers: Maine, Alaska, Vermont and Minnesota
Fox skulls: found sun bleached in the Anza Borrego Desert, east of San Diego
Sea creatures: Provincetown, Falmouth, Buzzards Bay, Galveston, Texas, and the Florida Everglades roadside
Salvaged barnwood: sawmills and construction sites near and far
Nautical artifacts: friends and family, flea markets, beaches, metal recycling sites and junk yards on Cape Cod and in Maine, Rhode Island and Southern California
Rusty metal: salvage yards across the United States, parking lots, dumpsters, beaches, and abandoned dump sites on Cape Cod and elsewhere
Bottles: beaches, abandoned dump sites, medical historians’ professional annual meetings and flea markets
Clock and watch parts: Las Vegas, San Diego, New Orleans, the Alaska highway roadside stops, and Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (best name ever!) and elsewhere
Architectural salvage: Indiana, San Diego, NYC, Portland, OR, and Newport, RI
Stained glass: remnants from a New England studio–cast-off pieces, or “beautiful mistakes”
Beach erosion fencing: broken up in the road, or aged in my yard
Miniature figures and items: there’s whole world of Fairie Gardens (true!) and dollhouses out there
Singular items: animals in wood, bronze, metal and so on. Collected from roadside vendors since the 1970s
Vintage drop lines and buoys: traded for in exchange for other items
Feathers: were found on beaches, beneath birdfeeders, in an ostrich farm pasture, along wild turkey pathways, a friend’s chicken coop, and from molting parrot