Reliquary
Over the past couple years my family has dealt with a great deal of loss. One of the most difficult was that of our family home. Although we’ve since found a new home the grief that came with the transition lingers.
I was unprepared for the emotional impact leaving behind this physical space would have on myself and my children. I discovered the home had, at some point, become a part of our family, a quirky character in our story, and even with all its flaws, I had loved it and was so grateful for all it had done for us. It had provided us shelter and safety as we lived our lives. It cradled my babies as they grew and kept them warm from the snow and dry from the storms. It's walls muffled the sounds of the thunder and echoed the sounds of their laughter. It seemed every memory we shared was within that hallowed space and leaving this sanctuary was really no different than being torn from a womb.
I realized quickly that this loss was most evident in our family photographs. When I looked at them all I could see was what we had lost. It was like they had rotted. They turned into painful reminders of what we had left behind. I noticed myself actively avoiding looking at any of our old photographs. My impulse was to move on and never look back. But that wouldn’t be fair to me, my children, or our archive of photos that have become my life’s work.
I decided to create this body of work as an exercise in self-soothing and self-exploration. I wanted to create in such a way to help me cope, heal, and hopefully move on. Art as a method of therapy. I began with the most difficult images. The ones of my children happy, comfortable and at ease in our home. I removed the backgrounds like their foundation had been removed. I then printed them using the cyanotype process. When allowed to be printed for it’s maximum exposure time the negative space of a cyanotype becomes a deep dark blue. It provided the perfect abyss where the heavy void left by our home can be felt. But I found by isolating the subject it brought simplicity and peace to the image and forced the focus to be on what remained. I took that further and painted gold leaf halos on the subjects to emphasize their significance, symbolize sanctity, and to be representational of their saviorhood to me personally.
This body of work began as a memorial to what I had lost but became a tribute to what I have.
