Rocking Chair focuses on Rowe’s most striking symbol of death, the empty chair. Apparently, this piece was created shortly after Rowe was told she had cancer and is probably her first use of the empty chair as a metaphor for death. Although the interior scene is lively and animated, there are repeated references to death. Rowe, who had quilted earlier in her life, constructs the drawing like a traditional African American strip quilt, each panel containing its own set of design elements, symbolic objects, and stylistic conventions, all combining into a unified and balanced composition. There are many identifiable components, all of which imply impending death and all of which can be found in other Rowe works of 1981. Among the more obvious are an angel, dying plants, butterflies, and a black dog. There are others more complicated, private, and esoteric, among which are a simple flowerlike fan blade, (the life cycle, presumably); a small animal plucking the fruit from a vine (Rowe uses this image to denote various indignities to woman, not the least of which is the perforation of her body); a checkerboard (life as a game of chance?), next to which is a cat playing with a target-like ball, a variation, perhaps, of the “life is a game” theme; and a root, a forked stick, growing out of a small foot, with one branch culminating in a doll (Rowe was a prolific dollmaker) and the other ending at a dancing figure representing Rowe as a little girl. When Rowe contemplates the end of her life, she frequently employs imagery depicting its beginnings.
