A close-up of some of the objects Norton keeps for their formal qualities or their personal significance. At the far right is the cage a queen bee inhabits before being introduced to the hive. Norton’s parents were, at one time, beekeepers. She had a pretty unconventional childhood, growing up in a valley of the Blue Ridge mountains between West Virginia and Maryland, the daughter of hippie homesteaders. Norton says her parents now find it hard to identify with their back-to-the-land past — exactly the sort of existential shift that ties into her work.