The Thicket + The Clearing
Schlaifer + Wassenaar Collective
Central Public Library, St. Louis, MO 2025
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You come to a clearing A clearing is a place you enter into after having been lost within something like a hedge maze or a thicket or a forest of thought but before you’ve actually found your way out A clearing is not a way out In the clearing things you had lived without— direct sunlight sky rainclouds open air The thicket is around you but you photosynthesize automatically Animals appear spotlit like a parade— an elephant a Siberian tiger hippopotamus oryx zebra —but miniature like kittens And the clearing now so immensely vast All of these emerged from the thicket All
of them were in there with you Lesser Animals by Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer
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Stephanie Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar create hybrid, site-responsive environments that merge visual art and writing. Working with the poem
“From the Cabinet of Unconsciousness (Lesser Animals)” from Schlaifer’s collection Well Waiting Room, the artists created an installation in the large glass vitrines of the Fine Art and Poetry spaces. The contained spaces address ideas of self-imposed confinement—being lost in “a forest of thought,” as the poem (above) suggests.
“From the Cabinet of Unconsciousness (Lesser Animals)” from Schlaifer’s collection Well Waiting Room, the artists created an installation in the large glass vitrines of the Fine Art and Poetry spaces. The contained spaces address ideas of self-imposed confinement—being lost in “a forest of thought,” as the poem (above) suggests.
The Thicket, 55 x 36 x 19" graphite covered clay, insects, vinyl
In the Thicket, layered text by Wassenaar creates a dense blue environment with selective openings to peer through. Phrases from the poem, including a long list of animals, hide beneath and between the layers. Stacks of black clay beehives by Schaifer cluster in the interior, ornamented with delicate insect carcasses.
In The Clearing, a radiant yellow text circle spans the top and sprawls over the sides, opening up in the center to reveal a hornet’s nest, discarded snake skin, animals bones and stacks of beeswax-coated sticks. The vitrine is stuffed with wolf-like fur, pressing up against its edges. Repeated text from The Thicket circles the bottom perimeter.
