For most of my life, my mom worked hard and long hours in front of an adding machine at a desk about 3 blocks from Dream Farm Commons. She was contained by patriarchy and economics and was kind, dignified, and quiet, bravely facing many things alone. While she continually worked to contain me, she also celebrated my uncontainment and, I believe, wished for a world of more interconnection, safety and adventure.

 

In the early morning of June 27, my mom died. This body of work is made in honor  of and in conversation with my mama; my bereavement is confluent with our collective experiences of loss and grief,  for which time is not so often afforded,  and with our inter-related bursting needs of care and community in an increasingly strange world.

 

I believe my mother has a message for us to stay steady with the work and to love and care for  each other now, more than ever. We have some messages too about poetics, surfing precarity, travel to other realms, protest and activism and the sacred engagement of making art.

 

This space of this installation is both domestic and an odd work world, a transposition many women float between; it is also an art work space which is also often an odd biosphere.   The installation began with my painting  on the wall and oversized spoon,  a telephone and my mother’s adding machine, two chairs made by Kico le Strange, a mystical cloud formation by Glenna Cole Allee, and  a sculpture by Stacey Goodman. More artists have created works to add to the installation: sand and velvet Grieving Organisms by Jillian Crochet; Metabolic Rifts and Domestic Interiors, plantings by Alicia Escott. Other works by Teddy Milder, Joseph Hurtado, and Mia Feuer will be joining over the month.  It is collectively a body of work made from the squishy heart space engendered by loss, transcendent of usual boundaries of time, gravity or ego; a surreal  place where grief and tenderness reside; where  loss, fragility and impermanence are bed partners with work, love, and care for the present. It is mama love bouncing untethered, shifting clouds and relationality.