There's No Place...
This body of work is a multi-series, mixed media collection developed in 2007 under the influence of teachings by Mikita Brottman, Regina DeLuise and Lynn Silverman at MICA in Baltimore, and then continued throughout 2016, with installments added yearly.
The collection is the foundation of my acceptance of the absence of my father after his death in 2002. This is the only family home I have ever known, and I have seen it evolve along with the grounds it sits on and the city it it situated in, and this particular series continues to inform and resurface within all areas of my life and practice.
The space has always had a piece missing from it, and this longing created the desire to investigate, and invest time in lasting relationships.
The photographs investigate home in detail and in ephemera, and how this creates an imprint within a person, and their relationship to a space.
Retrospectively I have looked back at this work as a young adult processing trauma-although I did not fully know this at the time-and hold this body of work close to my heart as it was my personal road to acceptance.
A final edition to the series, Home Again, was created in 2023. The sculptural work is an ode to this road to self-discovery, and is a sculpture of the exterior walls of the house, to hold a light within, and a single flower.
Heart of This Home
Examinations
This work is a series of color photographs representing the 5th anniversary of my father's death in 2002. The photographs are presented sequentially, as they were taken in a 24 hour period.
It is peculiar to note the first photograph is the reason for the series entirely. The tree in the photograph was among my favorite in the setting outside of the rear window in my home in Jersey City, and the sky was just the perfect amount of blue to make me want to grab my camera - no life changing moment, I was just drawn to beauty and I didn't think I would even end up printing it. The next morning, on the anniversary of my father's death, I woke up to loud thumps coming from the neighbor’s yard. The tree had been cut down. I took this as an opportunity to capture the rest of my day's fleeting moments and small signs.
Time/Frame: 2009
From an artist statement in 2009: Time is cyclical. It is an ever present and ever invisible force that binds you and marks your memory with chronology. It is in this way that we can begin to note changes in life, whether abrupt or long-term. Often, thinking about the past can be more satisfying than acknowledging the present. Along with the passage of time comes the inevitable wisdom and understanding of specific memories you may have had that, as they were occurring, did not, or could not, resonate.
The Mirror
I have always believed that the mirror was the antithesis of the photograph, whereas a photograph is a moment frozen in time , the mirror represents life as it happens, contained only within a frame when being observed and the experience is reflected. Your reflection is ephemeral. This series was an attempt to insert myself within the frame of my home, and finding I was unable to confront my own identity.
Burn Marks
When I moved my mother into the first floor apartment from the second floor, I was saying goodbye to this space. I had to dispose of the mattress that had been in use since my family had moved into the home in the 70's. I paid close attention to the cigarette burns, as these photographs are now the last artifacts of my father's physical impact on this mattress. The mattress had become much more than an overused/over-kept household item, but the stage from which many of my works surrounding this room would derive.
Mother's Room
This collection of photographs and videos are a love letter to my mother, Betty, for whom this room belongs, and which my father left her from. Re-enacted scenes were a a way to activate the space through memory, and the ultimate departure from the room was something I handled with much care. Emptying this space which had been the same for over 35 years, I was emptying a photograph.
Confrontation at Night
My home was without power for a number of days after a fire that occurred in the basement. All of the tenants in the house, including myself and my mother, had to find other housing during perhaps the worst time in recent years for Jersey City, Hurricane Sandy. It took forever to get our house back up and renovated. As we spent time away I would visit the house in its complete darkness and call out into that abyss to see what might turn up. I kept photographing as we slowly emptied the house.
Home Again
The series had finally come to an end once I realized I had been a person living with and experiencing trauma. The loss created by losing a father at such an early age, through addiction, disease, at around the time of 9/11, I was at a great loss. I carried this loss through my life in all my actions and it came through in every facet. The work itself lead to this realization, and I became self-aware of the pain I may have been causing others in the process. This ceramic sculpture is a luminary which may contain a light within, and a water basin with a trunk for a single flower, a memento mori.