Rilke said that creating something is nothing but a profound act of remembrance. Mother, myself is such a remembrance. It is a universe of art and artifact, comprised of both family and found photographs, tracing the gestures of the search for my birth mother. The absence of a birth mother creates a powerful sense of longing and yearning. It is a primal wound, some part of which stays forever embedded in one’s psyche. Finding one’s mother is crucial to identity, and so is the search itself. As an artist, and only with the wisdom of age, have I come to understand that it was this very longing which shaped and authored my artistic life. It was the well from which I drew, even if I did not always recognize that place. It was the search, not the outcome, which was my oxygen. It is how I processed and acknowledged the unresolved loss, the longing, the missing center. The severing of this mother~child bond found its expression in all my work. And although this piece which I have created is not literally true, it somehow feels right, familiar, and resonates with me emotionally. And it has been healing.

Mother, Myself is a story that is told through its form. The empty center is ringed by young children, young girls, some of whom are actually me, who are then encircled by, embraced by, many possible mothers. My secrets, it seems, were pulled forward by the images which I found and brought home, adopted, over the decades.. We all are often pulled forward by something in the present, by an physical object, by a photograph, which sends each of us back to our own past. Old photographs have a history, and are washed in emotions and hidden stories. Each of these photographs I collected marked me, penetrated me, and thus, became the archeology of my past and of my perceptual process. Photographs like memory itself, are continuously transformed, disassembled, and reassembled with every new re-collection.

What we tend to see out in the world is what we carry in our hearts. So what we recognize, and pursue and obsess about, is our lens, our story. My life is my art. Your life is your art. Mother, myself is a deeply personal piece, but I have come to believe that the more personal work is, the more universal it tends to be because in revealing ourselves, we reveal each other.  

I am now 75 years old. I have still not found my birth mother. Mother, Myself is a remembrance of her spiritual existence which always lived within my search.

Mother, Myself is on view April 27th- July 28th 2019 at Artyard in Frenchtown, NJ.