A Totem. A cairn.
A place marker, marking my place.
We are our own totems, our own cairns
wayfinders
forging from the paths upon which we have paced.
Collections of decisions, of stages, of rages, of places.
We are our own stacked tower of earth,
our own balanced but shaky, sturdy yet fragile reminder of our own direction
and
occupiers of space.
I began my most current body of work at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, around March 15th 2020. At the time, like so many people around the world, my family and I were scared, confused, unsure of how to balance our safety and health with living our lives as we had been thus far. Early on, my husband, a pediatric nurse working in Manhattan, and I sadly realized that in the absence of any real knowledge of how the Covid-19 virus can truly spread or be contained, he would need to distance himself from me and our two little children. So, during his long stretches of laborious shift-work, he stayed in a friend’s apartment in the city, and I stayed home with our children, one of which was thrown into homeschool while simultaneously being stripped from her friends, routine, and extended family. Our lives were pulverized. We were sad. We missed each other. The kids missed their Dad. The kids missed our family being together. I missed having a partner to help me raise our kids. And this was hard. Really hard. We spent lockdown traveling between the floors of our house finding new ways to use old toys, finding new ways to breath, laugh, play. In moments of calm, when our six-year-old and 18-month-old played together in our play room/art studio, I managed to hang some watercolor paper. I managed to mix some colors. I managed to paint. In fleeting moments, I added to several paintings hanging on the wall, all in progress, all slowly morphing. And day after day after day, we kept to our lock down pattern. And I, kept painting during those moments when the kids entertained themselves, during the naps, after bedtime, any chance I was given.
In finding a way to escape from the repetition and the fear and the unknown, I found an outlet through painting, in the form of these totems, these cairns, these vessels, these stacked forms of moments, of glimpses, of fragments of thoughts. Weeks passed, months passed, I kept adding, changing, adjusting my moves in paint, slightly shifting my own patterns and leading myself, and being led, in a new direction. All this while, we drudged on day after day after day. And then, one night I took out all these paintings, these stacked wayfinding paintings, and laid them upon the floor of the studio. A body of work, something solid, something with movement and direction and energy. Something like this amidst a time of standstill. A window into another place that of which I could make sense and to which I could bring change.
The forms have evolved from solid stacked fragments to windows, to forms unable to discern if one is looking out, looking in or moving forward or back. Maps of an emotional progression, cairns of my own direction through an unprecedented moment in our world’s history and that of my own.