Long walk back

Quite suddenly, my mother died last month. She would have been 86 this August.

She is about 7 in this piece. Her sister, who died when I was three, stands beside her.

Mourning is a kind of stillness, washed through with grief. 

The work of every day -food, shopping, teaching- makes no sense. 

And senseless new work of official endings needs to be done.

I've been on the phone a lot.

Many many thanks to the friends who've reached out.

I've had an education this month in the value of just showing up, saying "I'm sorry," and leaving something to eat later. Thank you all.

Fiber as sculputure

With the air dry and cool, I am putting the last details on my sculptures. Long-ago lessons in making armatures reawaken. Plus secret knowledge gained years ago, when I interned at the RISD museum's textile department, about how bustles stayed up.

Both pieces are thoughts made visible. What is memory? How do we assemble our identity? How to we incorporate loss?

I also made a series of sticks and stones wrapped in old lace and fabric. I have disintigration on my mind. The real shock is how large-scale ideas emerge as I finish these smaller ones. I want to make whole trees from fabric. I can see them in my mind. Lace, sheets, silk. I can see it. How to get them to stand up? How to move them? Where to install? First I have to solve the problem of hanging these.