Lady in Pain

Dial's Lady in Pain is a life-sized root sculpture of a woman wrapped in a floral print curtain. Fully clothed, she is giving birth. (The emergent newborn is represented by a broken pottery statuette of the Virgin Mary, the type of object found on African American graves). This Black Madonna, with her giant taproot head, is another tree of life, the one constant in the existence equation, ensuring the continuation of life while bearing the inevitable pain of death, and trying to reconcile those needs with her desire to be a modern woman.