1″ x 1.5″, glass and found objects
It’s not just that the winter is dark, but that it’s gloomy. Even the brightest sunshine doesn’t make colors jump the way the summer sun can do. And when the sun sets at 5 PM, all I want to do is curl up and go to sleep. Appropriately, the lighting for this photo wasn’t behaving, but in the end it’s as dull and disturbing as the light outside.
1″ x 2″, stained glass and found objects
I’ve been spending as much time as I can with my grandmother, who has dementia and lives in a memory care facility. Our hours together go best when she begins to look at photos of people she loves or talk about the house where she grew up. She’s lost all sense of time, but knows that she’s close to 100 years old. She marvels at her age, wondering aloud how she’s survived so long and why she’s still here. All of her older memories are peeking out, clouded and rough around the edges, but still there. The passing of each hour is meaningless and it’s the memories that keep her going.
1″ x 2″, found objects
Some days I look at my calendar and there are fifteen things on there. Little colored rectangles that each represent a whole host of actual tasks. Meetings, doctors’ appointments, project deadlines, and reminders. They look like they just can’t be contained by the little day-of-the-week square. In fact, they often overlap each other so much that I can’t even read them. Today I accidentally had two virtual meetings running in different tabs simultaneously, so as I listened to one conversation, comments from the chat in the other popped up on my screen. It felt like my brain had landed on the monitor. I made this pendant with the idea of representing the fullness of my days and my brain. I didn’t mean for it to be so literal, but when I saw the typewriter key that said “margin release” it just said it all. If someone could just release my margins, I’d be all set. Maybe a few more hours each day? A brain that could hold just a bit more at one time?
1″ x 2″, found objects
As the pandemic rages on and we exist within yet another surge, all sorts of containment procedures have been put back in place. Parents can’t enter schools, grandchildren can’t see their grandparents, and everyone’s behind a mask again. In some ways the virus containment procedures are comforting, but when they keep people apart it’s hard to see them as anything but barriers. And, as this pendant represents, on each side of the barrier, it doesn’t matter how pretty your surroundings are, you’re still alone.