Strong
12x12 Archival Inkjet Print © 2008

Shipwrecks and Other Challenges

Much of my work over the past 10 years has focused on the areas of family, memory, and juxtaposition of the past and the present. The question of how memory creates our ongoing selves is of continuing interest to me.  As in other recent exploration, it becomes apparent that as children, we live in the moment of experience with all of its discovery and anxiety. We do not have the words perhaps to label our experiences, and most certainly do not have the tools to always understand them.  However, when we look back from our adult perspectives, there may be new and different reflections which surface.  A few months ago, my mother presented me with a cardboard box filled with slides from years of our family vacations and events.  While this clearly created a goldmine of opportunity to my mind as an artist, I did not have any idea how the images would ultimately be resolved into pieces of art. I spent a lot of time looking at them, and allowed myself to remember details that I would have thought were long forgotten and buried, never again to be resurrected.  What I have found as I continue in this series, is that the memory itself, lodged in some Motel 6 of the mind all these years, and stimulated by the image,  provides a link to the events, thoughts and memories of that long ago childhood.  I can’t believe that I remember the name of the place we stayed in Monterey when I was 8 years old, when I have trouble remembering people’s names 30 seconds after I am introduced. Seeing my mother on a bench that was immediately recognized as Disneyland
forcefully brought up the visceral fear I felt in the cave on Tom Sawyer’s Island.  From my perspective now, I am able of course to see how my feelings as a child contributed to my on-going development as a person, and live in me even as an adult.  I can only imagine how as a child, without benefit of perspective and developed emotional awareness, I felt and enacted those struggles that seem so clear to me now.