Captured…

When I was dying cocoons with oak gall and walnut ink, tea bags and coffee grounds, I looked at all of the stained teabags and felt reluctant to toss them. This happens when I am captured by a material. At first I am not even sure what it is that draws me to it. Locked in at home all spring and beyond because of New York’s shelter at home orders, I knew I was fortunate. We were financially secure, had access to outside space and could work from home. I thought about the myriad lived stories across the world during this global pandemic. Each family with its own set of experiences. Children returning home, grandparents moved in for the duration – or worse, prohibited from contact with loved ones. Essential and health care workers on the front lines risking their own lives for others. I wondered what I would remember and hold onto from these long and difficult months.

Back in the studio

Puttering around my studio I sort through zip lock bags and containers of collected ephemera. Objects that resonate with me and evoke memories of people, places, and experiences. Sad and joyful, painful and bittersweet. I think about what connects us to one another. What threads carry through my own life from grandparent to parent to me to my children.

Forced to slow down, I muse in the midst of birds’ nests and thorns, eggshells and vintage dress patterns. Suddenly granted precious time and space, ideas begin to emerge, and possibilities assert themselves. Piles of vintage sheet music from my dad. Browned, faded, fragile and brittle with evocative discoloration reminiscent of watercolor scenes traversing the page. Empty milk weed pods, feathers, teabag labels, rusty pieces of found metal, burned scraps of paper. I remember my mother and I collecting milk weed pods on the side of a highway when I was 12 then sketching what they looked like in letters to my grandparents; making dried flower collages with my grandmother and learning to sew and embroider from my mom.

Meditations

I layer and collage materials onto the tiny tea bag canvases, then stitch and pierce with thread and thorns. I think of them as daily meditations, focusing on the task at hand, composing and reclaiming memory and personal history brought into my current experience. It feels reparative and healing, and acts as a psychological and emotional anchor in tumultuous times. Grounding. I find meaning through the making.

Initially, I thought I would do one for each day I was in lock down. As the weeks unfurled, and the outside world became more fraught, chaotic and intrusive, I decided to continue these until I am vaccinated against the virus, and able to see and visit loved ones without anxiety. Each is a physical representation of a moment in time.

Marking time

My ancestors lived through historic, brutal times. Now, people across the globe grapple with loss, fear and uncertainty; all of us, experiencing this separately and yet in conjunction with the entire world population. I collage and stitch in a stubborn insistence on hope, with resistance to fear, and in the knowledge that this too shall pass. Making do. Moving forward. Using what is on hand. One step at a time. I become aware of an inner refrain as I create. I am here. As witness, as attestant. I am still here.

Subscribe to receive email updates for new blog posts