Passage

With the closing of our one and only 55-year-old home base, Passage investigates not only the loss of my mother, but the end of an era for my sisters and me. This happened quickly and during COVID, which made the loss lonely and somewhat surreal. My sisters and I live far away, so there is no longer a connection with this place, this home or this neighborhood. The loss of a family structure and base is something that we will all face in one way or another. This portfolio, which is part of a larger body of work that includes poetry, represents the passage of both the progression of time away from my family foundation, and our bodies and lives as we move through it. The work began during my mother’s final weeks and what I express is loss, followed by the slow accepting of our new normal. I investigate both the reality of the moment, but I also look back on the evidence of a life lived. I search memories that go back 84 years as I dig into my mother’s past and my childhood, performing the traces that remain in the space, but that are wilting with each coat of white paint. My parent’s house was an anchor for the family, and that, along with the life that I knew is now a closed chapter. Passage teases out the remaining memories hidden in night shadows and rays of fading light.