Threads of memory. . .

In late 2000 my mother died. To console my grief I began working with images of my mother and articles of her clothing. I wanted to hold her in my hands, and smell her fragrance that lingered in her clothes. As I began to stitch her images onto her clothing, I found myself stitching counter clockwise, perhaps in my unconscious attempt to turn back the hands of time. With each stitch I reached back into my mother's memories and linked them with my own. Holding her dearly within my heart, I pieced together fragments of her life, sewn together with my memory of her. Weaving the threads of her life together with my own, I pieced together a life re -membered.

Time passed, and I often found myself in the need of my parents for their sage advice or warm comfort. Having lost both my mother and father, I realized that I must turn to my memories of them to assuage my fears, worries, and to provide me with an imaginal sounding board, if you will. And so, I once again turned to remembrance...reflecting on aspects I knew of their lives and bits and pieces I could only imagine--those times before I was yet born. I, therefore, have continued working with images of my mother and father, creating new works that invoke remembrance, memory, and the shadowy territory of how we shape our lives with known and unknown realities.