The diptychs presented here are the linked dob/dod series. These serigraphic drawings are images of deceased people known to me on patterned grounds representing domestic and institutional spaces. The dob (date of birth) series pattern is based on the pattern of the wallpaper of the house I grew up in, printed in two colors on Stonehenge cream. The dod (date of death) series pattern is based on a standard hospital gown issue, also printed in two colors on Stonehenge pale blue. Paper size is 12.5" x 10", upon which I drew with crayons through halftone photographic images on a silkscreen.
The photographs belonged or were provided to me by some of my closest friends. The prints include my friend Gerhard, my mother Ellen “Ellie” Mae, my friend Matthew, my friend Lisa’s friend Mitch, my friend Steven’s mother Sharon Ann, and my friend Lisa’s mother Rita Ann. In some cases, images are of the deceased alone, in other cases they are pictured with others: with me, with Lisa, with Steven, Lisa’s sister Dorrie, and my friend Alyssa. In one diptych an empty frame in the middle of each print invites the viewer to imagine their own person in the frame.
In the past year while on sabbatical, I had proposed and created work focused on relationships between trauma, the body, and the environment. This project extended longstanding investigations of human experiences of loss, absence, displacement, and fragmentation. My intention with this work has been to consider how traumas, internal and external, contribute to these perceptions and states, and to identify intersections and alignments of trauma and environment with the body.
For many years I have felt an imperative to create images that call attention to dying as a part of, and aspect of, living. As the daughter of a geriatric nurse, I grew up hearing about, and witnessing, illness, death, and dying, and hearing stories of those abandoned in such moments. Caring for a close friend dying of AIDS at a time when many AIDS patients were abandoned by public health officials and politicians, I experienced rage and frustration at our government’s indifference to the losses of human life. In 2008 after the death of my mother, I consciously began life review, a body of work memorializing my dead mother and dead friend. The term life review refers to a process described in psychology and gerontology in which individuals purposely and purposefully reflect upon and revisit life experiences to reconcile differences; to achieve resolution, understanding, and clarity; or to accept states of uncertainty.
As I was creating the dob/dod prints in October 2019, I could not imagine the trauma our world would be experiencing just six months later. As I write this text Monday, September 28, 2020, I hear Judy Woodruff’s voice on PBS Newshour: “The world is on the cusp tonight of one million deaths from covid-19 including some 205,000 here in the United States.” Today the imperative to create work that calls attention to dying as a part of living could not be more present.