In the middle of the woods in western Pennsylvania, a young girl experiences a spiritual encounter that will change her life. In other words, it’s another Good Friday. 

Small communities are a funny thing for a child growing up in one. Sometimes, you are told to do things that you do not particularly understand. Sometimes, you are told that there are certain things that belong to the inside, and other things that belong to the outside. Sometimes, you are taken behind closed doors, and responsible for keeping silent about the things that happen behind them. Sometimes, you’re told that your imagination gets the best of you. Sometimes you agree.

Children interpret such events in fascinating ways. These interpretations are often rebutted, degraded, and dismissed by those around them. Sometimes, this is because the way children interpret things is not seen as particularly appropriate for the occasion. Silliness, weirdness, discomfort, inconsistencies and all – this work embraces these maligned apostles with its arms wide open. It sees the valuable things that lay inside children’s daydreams – eggs, waiting to be hatched. 

This work was made possible through digital animation and compositing. It started from a daydream, then turned into a story. The work parallels my research into the colonial origins of Easter – both in its roots in Europe as well as its start in Pennsylvania. I found repeated violences in the colonization of pagan traditions, the colonization of children’s innocence, and the colonization of the land. I hope you consider these parallels in the viewing of this work.

I hope that you are comforted. I hope that you are discomforted. I hope that you are reminded. I hope that you forget. I hope that you see. I hope you turn a blind eye. I hope that you find it. I hope that you don’t.