Paper Dolls, paper work

This piece, in progress  for a year, is finished.

The image is from my grandmother's photo album, of her two girls. 

 The older is my mother. 

I am the younger of two daughters. 

My mother's sister died in childbirth, in her twenties. I was three.

My mother says, her sister is always 20 now; she'll never age. 

For the rest of us, time repeats, changes, ends, begins again.

Meanwhile I'm wrestling with my mother's finances - taxes, paperwork. If I could get them in picture form, would all these intersecting numbers make more sense to me?

3-D fabric: Small scale, big thoughts

I've been photographing small works that will be on exhibit

 at the Andover Memorial Hall Library this March.

This piece, "Juggling," was made  a decade ago, 

for the exhibit "We Wear Many Hats," at the Lowell Memorial Library.

 I still love it.

The photos are from family albums. 

Myself, my sister, memories of times long gone: still big themes for my art.

Me, fearless in red overalls, 1957

Why does it suprise me that themes and techniques persist over the years?

My sister takes me riding, 1957

The love of bits of lace, text and hand-stitching, even  the painting on top of printed images:

 it's all here, in embryo.

 

We change, but some how at the core we remain the same.

Painted

I have been revising old ideas with new thoughts.  This small piece was completed almost a decade ago, when I first started printing.  Year's later, I decided the image ached for color, which  needed to expand to the frame's edge.  

 

Several passes later, it is more enigmatic and more personal, with a central image that is less clear, more dreamlike. 

 One idea sets another going. 

Can't wait to get back to the studio tomorrow.