Posthumous Collections

(works in progress)

I stopped making art when I became my mom’s primary caregiver during her final two years suffering from Parkinson’s and dementia. She lost her ability to verbally communicate during the last year of her life. I miss her voice. After she passed, I brought her artwork and the objects she treasured into my studio and began work on a series titled “Posthumous Collections” – creating from the things she lovingly touched countless times. The series explores the powerful relationship of mother and child and how time, aging and illness led to a role-reversal of the caregiving dynamic.

During my mom’s final years, she spent entire days staring at playing cards, touching and tearing them, holding them tightly if anyone tried to take them away. New cards were introduced when the old ones started to fall apart. Instead of throwing them away, I saved the remnants in a box.

Many of the “Posthumous Collections” series of artworks were created by re-assembling and repairing decks of my mom's playing cards using her embroidery thread. She loved to embroider and continued until she was no longer able to hold the needle and thread. The process of repair was painstakingly slow as many of the cards were in pieces or missing.

My mom was an accomplished biologist and a lover of the natural world – some of my fondest memories are of the moments we spent combing beaches for seashells while watching seabirds dive for fish. She liked create jewelry and artwork using her collection of seashells and we once collaborated to create a shell artwork together. The Posthumous Collections series includes individual artworks and conceptual ideas for variable installations conceived of and created from her massive collection of shells.