What Fun!

Mediating Memory reception

I started the evening with the very good intention of photographing everyone who came but, as with most good intentions,  I lost track of my mission sometime after the first hour.  Thank you to everyone who came to the reception for Mediating Memory at Axel's last Friday night.  I apologize to those of you who weren't photographed, but perhaps you are just as happy to have escaped me! 

This being the first time I showed the Heirloom series I was nervous but delighted to hear everyone's comments.  During the artist's Q & A I was asked, Why twelve (meaning why was my series based on the year I turned twelve)?  To which I said,  it was a year of transition from childhood to teenage/quasi-adulthood and I was becoming more and more aware of the political, social and environmental upheaval in the world around me.  The year was 1969 and as I turned my attention away from my immediate family I witnessed how the world around me was changing, being transformed through race riots, war protests and environmental disasters.  This sensitivity to national events would come to shape my conscience and attitudes permanently.

The Heirloom quilt pieces deal specifically with how my newly formed global interests affected my role within the family, specifically my relationship with my mother.  She began losing her position as center of my universe and lacked the experience of how to navigate that uncharted territory.  Heirloom is a reflection of the confluence of cultural and personal forces that moved into my family relationships.