The Memory Palace

Cicero tells the tale of a poet who was attending a banquet when he is called away to meet with two young men.  After leaving the dining hall, the ceiling collapses killing all those who remained.  The poet was asked to identify who had been in the room.  He is credited with creating a system of mnemonics, a method of remembering, when he identified who was in the banquet hall by mentally placing them in their location at the table.  The term "memory palace" was coined to describe this method of recalling although it is often called the Method of Loci.  It is frequently used in memory competitions where you select a place you know well like a childhood home and mentally place objects in various rooms in unusual relationship to each other.  You then walk through the rooms and gather the objects.  The basic premise of course is that memory and spatial perception are closely linked.

 It occurred to me that my mother's home was a memory palace. I lived there from age 3 to age 17 and continued to return there for much of my life. When my mother was still alive, I began to go through the house and take pictures of the nooks and crannies within the house. I realized that there already were odd juxtapositions. On one shelf I found a figure of the Spanish princess Marguerite who was painted by Velasquez. The figure was next to a ceramic walrus from a trip to Alaska. In front of it was a menorah. All of this was set against a tray from my grandfather's surplus store in New York.

I never got very far pursuing this concept while my mother was alive and it took on a poignancy when she died and we began to dismantle the house. Recently I began to implement my idea. My objective is to create one foot by one foot paintings of different areas of the house and combine them to form a larger painting. The name of course will be the Memory Palace.

The central painting will be one of the chairs she sat on when she composed her collages. A nearby chair has her sweater over it with the framework of the chair showing through. It is a painting of absence and yet presence, as if she has just stepped away for a moment.

Other paintings I have completed include her plates that sat in the windows with the light filtering through them. Some of them now sit in my window and I look at them through her eyes. Trees form a lattice behind them. In her lifetime those trees sprouted buds, leafed out and changed colors as they passed through all the seasons.I think of her at each new season, savoring the changes on her behalf.

On her bookshelf she had a winged figure, arms raised overhead holding a torch. On the base it says 1986-87 Beverly Manor School, Perfect Attendance. My mother taught first grade for just shy of 20 years. One day when I was visiting her she came into the living room in her flannel pajamas holding the statue cupped in her hands. I of course took a picture, her smiling broadly. It represented a period in her life that she loved. Behind it are books on opera, my father's passion, and nature field guides that were my mother's.

The last one I have completed so far is of her spoon collection. When we traveled together she would always get a spoon for each place we visited. Our travels were a very special part of her life and the spoons represented her memories of them.

When you paint a series of paintings you need to have some common element that connects them visually. When I painted a similar series on the former Jewish community of Radom, Poland, I used a limited palette that echoed the tones of a photograph. I wasn't sure what the linkage would be for this series and thought I should start painting and see what emerged. The first two paintings were very airy, the next two much darker with brown tones more dominant. Even in the two that were airy, brown was an accent, either the structure of the trees or the chairs. I am going to keep that idea in mind and try to create a mix that either uses brown as a structural element or a dominant color. I've since painted two with more golden tones that you can see in interaction with the other paintings below.  I now have a grouping of these six paintings hanging together on my studio wall in this very changeable composition. 

Beyond My Ken

I returned recently from what was probably my last visit to my childhood home, certainly the last while it holds a vestige of what it was. Now it is almost emptied, soon to be readied for sale. It has been six decades since I first lived there. I remember how excited I was when I turned ten and could say I had lived a decade, a word with all the richness of history. Then I could never have imagined six decades during which that home was always a kind of home base.The idea was "beyond my ken" my mother would have said, beyond my sight and understanding, far out on that horizon line on which I now perch. 

We were a family that loved words, their layers of meaning, the rustle of history in their folds. When I was young I used to take a word and ponder it until it disintegrated before my eyes into a vast wasteland, a desert void of meaning.

Desert source link

I was going to write of childhood homes and instead I seem to have followed a trail of words into a desert. I write in the early morning, partially awoken by my dreams of that childhood home, lost in the desert of memory. I follow a trail of words to an understanding still dawning, just out of reach, beyond my ken.

Photo by AimeeLow at morguefile.com

I rebuild that home in memory. I am doing the hard work of reconstruction, waking at 4 AM after mentally reconstructing rooms filled with phantom objects, reconstructing thoughts that once filled rooms and held up their walls from within. It wears me out. I wake with confusion to find myself here in my present.

I mine words looking for clues. Did you know that "ken" is called a fossil word? That means it is obsolete, no longer in common usage except that it is embedded in this phrase, "beyond my ken". My childhood home is a fossil home. It no longer exists as it once did save for being embedded in memory. Even this phrase, "beyond my ken", is a memory, my mother the only one I've ever heard speak it. Now she too is memory. Her solid bulk, warm and soft, all memory.

Yesterday I awoke thinking of my mother's everyday plates bound for Goodwill unless I rescue them. "Have they been sent to Goodwill yet?" I text my sister. "No" she replies. I need to make room to keep these memories, those of tactile form. To do that I must empty my cupboards of my husband's old plates that preceded our history. He graciously agrees to release some of his memories so I can cling to mine. I am struggling with this more than I expected.

It has been a year since my mother died. I have spent that time processing her loss and belatedly that of my father. I've written of going through my parents' papers, rediscovering them and seeing them through the eyes of their correspondents and through their own recorded thoughts. Processing the loss of a person should be much more difficult than the loss of mere things. And yet things contain their presence, place contains their history. It is a sequential loss, first person, then things, then place, the place that contained the person, the things, the memories, and both their history and mine. I remove each layer of loss only to find yet another, a Russian Matryoshka doll of loss, nesting within and within and within.

My father's loss was less challenging because my mother remained, still the vessel of memory ensconced in a familiar place. She was my placeholder so I didn't lose my place. Now she is gone and soon place will follow. It is a foundational shift, the tectonic plates that are parents shift and our world is reshaped, the familiar no longer recognizable. Pieces wash up in my cupboards and windows and dreams, trinkets that remain as memories, taking on new meaning in my world of today.

A Holiday Tradition

My family seems to sync with holidays. My brother was born on St Patrick's Day, my sister's birthday often hits Thanksgiving and I claim Halloween and Election Day. When I was a child my mother used to make little witches for my birthday parties with Tootsie Roll heads and a crepe paper skirt under which was hidden a cup with a stash of candy corn. I never really identified with Halloween, but as an adult I often spent my birthday doorknocking for my Presidential candidate. I must admit those holiday associations do make it easier to recall family birthdays.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that my parents, who missed out on that birthday tradition, claimed their holidays in death. My father whose name was Phil chose the holiday of his namesake Punxsutawney Phil, Groundhog's Day, and my mother very appropriately chose the Fourth of July, appropriately because in life she loved flags and her country.

Last July we were doing the death vigil at this time of year. I never fully comprehended that being on one's death bed is more than a turn of phrase. I had come down to Illinois to visit my mother for what turned into an unexpected wait for her demise. It had an air of unreality to it, but as the Fourth of July approached, I knew that would be her departure date. 

When I used to go for drives with my mother and we passed American flags waving in the wind, she would point them out in delight. She put flags in her planters, on her wall where she hung the things that spoke to her and of course on my father's grave.

On her wall she also had a photo of the Statue of Liberty and often spoke of how happy she was that she was born in America where she could get an education. Her mother had been born in the Ukraine where she was not educated, something that had always saddened my mother. My mother had loved learning and going back to college as an adult had been a highlight of her life. She associated that gift with being an American. The Fourth of July is a happy holiday to associate with her, a celebration of things she held dear.

I used to think of my mom as being a bit Pollyanna. In addition to loving flags, her country, and education, she lit up around children and frequently summoned us to our kitchen window to see a bird or a sunset. She didn't have a jaded bone in her body. My father called her The Original Innocent, perhaps because she had a purity of spirit, a genuine joy in the world around her that us more jaded souls have a harder time summoning. 

I have a picture of her in my mind that is associated not with the flag, but with another Fourth of July tradition, fireworks. I had taken her on a trip to Barcelona. We stayed in a hotel on the Ramblas that overlooked a Miro mosaic, a circle set into the pavement. At night the fire swallowers would come out and position themselves on it, drawing a crowd until we would hear the DA-da DA-da of the police coming to disperse them. Our balcony gave us a front row seat. 

That evening we had already had our floor show of fire swallowers when we heard a noise and my mother returned to the balcony to see what it was. As she stood there in her nightgown, we realized it was the opening volley of a fireworks show from a nearby street. I picture her in her nighty, her face illuminated with the light from the fireworks and an expression of pure delight.

As I watch fireworks this Fourth of July, I think I will hold that image close, her looking at the world with joy, illuminated in its glow.

Welcoming the Community

We recently concluded Art-a-Whirl, the largest open studio event in the country. During eighteen hours over three days, thousands traipsed through studios in NE Minneapolis. Occasionally I weigh the convenience of a home studio with our space in an artist building, fifteen miles from our home. There are winter days when getting in the car to go there seems daunting. Art-a Whirl then rolls around and reminds me of the value of opening our doors to a slice of community we might otherwise not encounter.

I've always said it is a great way to throw a party without the housecleaning flurry that accompanies guests in one's home. We need only complete enough paintings to cover our walls, frame, hang and label them, print cards for sale, send an invite to 300 people, stock up on wine and food and open our doors. Easy!

Many friends do come through and we love their visits. I fill up my calendar with dinner dates for the following weeks. I am a bit chagrined at how poorly I would sustain my network of friends without periodic open studios. I am also reminded of how diverse my network of friends is, drawn from so many different parts of my life and my history.

Every year I have returning guests, people I don't know, but who remember my work from a prior year and are genuinely excited to encounter it again. "l want you to tell my friend the story you told me last year about this painting." one woman says. My work encompasses both story and artwork, each reinforcing the other. I am pleased when it is memorable. So often I wonder if I am spinning my wheels. I work in solitude so much of the time that the response of others is truly heartening, reminding me why I do what I do.

This year I had more work on memory. It falls in three sections: 1) my mother's experience with memory loss and the creativity that she still was capable of exhibiting 2) the experience through a daughter and caregiver's eyes and 3) memories others shared with a loved one who lost memory. The last category is fed by others' contributions to a memory jar.

At last year's Art-a-Whirl I was moved by the many people who shared their story related to memory loss with me. I decided to try to capture that all too universal experience with a memory jar. I invited others to share a memory they had shared with a loved one who lost memory, one for which they are now the keeper of the memory. It got off to a slow start. Last year I had to cajole entries, explaining the concept over and over. This year I had paintings based on others' stories hanging on the wall. Every time I looked up someone was standing deep in thought by the memory jar, pen in hand. I was touched by the love they expressed, the memories of loved ones they honored. I had people thank me for including that, giving them an opportunity to engage and to honor. I think I'm onto something. Ideas start by reflecting on my own experience, but I am never sure if what speaks to me has a broader reach. Now I feel quite certain that it does.

Ding!

Ding. I jump slightly, looking for the source of the noise. A text. No doubt from my sister who is emptying out our late parents’ home and sending me photos. Late parents. I am still getting used to that vocabulary. I always want to say “late for what”. After I got married I used to struggle with the term “my husband”. Our life changes are marked with new vocabulary that feels unfamiliar.

My sister, bless her, has taken on the chore of getting rid of things. I spent two weeks sorting through papers and dealt with all the finances, but I must confess I am out of my element with things. I come from a family of pack rats who have a tendency to hoard. If one is good, two is better. “We might be able to use that some day,” we think. Much we keep because of sentimental attachment. We are softies at the core and we love our own history that makes us who we are. But this is my parents’ history and part of my difficulty is that things hold a person’s presence. It is hard to let go of my mother. When the house is emptied and gone there will be less of her on this earth. It is that next step and part of me resists it.

Fortunately my sister, while equally sentimental, has a tougher skin for this. She also has daughters who are helping and this week she has my niece as a supplemental strong back, hands and a bit of moral support. My sister sends me texts as she makes new discoveries and empties rooms. I am one of the few who can appreciate what she is accomplishing and I stand in awe.

Sometimes the discoveries bring my mother back to me. Now my sister has sent me a photo that I enlarge so I can study it. I whoop with astonishment when I decipher it. It is in my mother’s handwriting. On one side she has written Obama, Romney on the other with 2012 above. Under each column she has recorded the states that they won in the election. At the bottom – "President Obama Won- Yaaa! The Best is Yet to Come". I calculate back to consider what her condition was then. She was going on 86 and several years into Alzheimers, but she retained enough of herself to follow politics and have an opinion, a strong one. My mom liked Obama. I feel a frisson of admiration for her even in her then diminished state. I always admired her engagement. She used to watch both the Republican and Democratic debates because she wanted to be informed and arrive at a thoughtful decision.

Ding,

Another handwritten piece titled My Motto. "Take a Piece of the World and Make it Shine!" She then lists out her address and notes that it is her piece of the world. "And Oh! Does it Shine!"

Even as she was fading she found joy in her surroundings.

They feel like messages from the grave. Happy messages that bring a piece of her back to me.

In between there are pictures of rooms now hard to identify at first glance. Once filled to the gills, now emptied. It is an odd thing. I lived in that home from the age of three until I left for college. For years until my mother turned 80 we returned there each year for Thanksgiving. Then as she diminished I spent weeks there at a time. I can picture her in every room.

Ding! "Remember this bad boy?" She texts along with a photo that I have to study to identify. "Oooh! She sewed all our Halloween costumes on that." I picture her sitting at the kitchen table with the sewing machine before her, constructing a rabbit, Red Riding Hood and even a princess out of old blue brocade draperies doing double duty as Queen Esther at Purim.

One evening this week my sister and niece were going through my parents' wedding album and sent me a wedding photo of my parents with my aunt and her husband. I recently connected with the daughter of my cousin. She had contacted me because she was interested in family history and I am the family historian. My aunt in that photo was her grandmother. My cousin's daughter reminded me a bit of my niece. Both thoughtful, articulate young women in their 20s and the two people in our family who have expressed interest in family history. Of course I introduced them. My sister said I was a bit of a matchmaker. I have a soft spot for the idea of family despite the challenges of the reality. Having tracked down second and third cousins I like the idea of branches staying connected. I was glad to hear that they had been in contact. "Send her a copy of the photo," I suggested. My sister replied, "She's sending it right now."

All of this is part of the process. Letting go of things, holding parents in our heart and connecting the next generation. Ding.

Posted with Blogsy

Cut From the Same Cloth

And another memory from the memory jar offered up by a viewer at one of my shows.  As you will recall I've asked people to contribute memories they shared with someone who lost memory.  This memory read ...

I reminded my mother about our first trip to the greenhouse at Mount Holyoke College when I was two years old and she wore the plaid coat she had made me out of extra cloth leftover from the one she had made for herself. 

What I liked about this memory was its visual nature, but also the way in which something from her mother is repeated in her. 

To begin this painting I did some searching online for images of both this greenhouse and others to capture the sense of profusion of greenery and the latticework of the ceiling.  I ended up with the painting above.

I had actually contemplated several ways to approach this image.  The challenge with any painting is just as we explore one option we close off others.  The first mark we make on a blank canvas takes us one direction, rather than another.  As someone who has always liked to keep my options open and resisted being boxed in, I especially struggle with that.  It dawned on me recently that while I can't easily make the same painting serve multiple options, I can explore them independently.  Nothing but myself boxes me in.  After all Monet didn't feel he could only do one take on the Rouen Cathedral or the haystacks.

The other box I fight is the representational one.  When I tell a story, I want the viewer to get it.  While non-representational images often attract me, they seldom communicate a story clearly. I am a feet on the ground person.  That is something that makes me well prepared for shows and talks, but that I struggle with in creating artwork.   I need to get to a place of experimentation that takes me beyond what lies in front of me.  There was a time that I worked from reflections or took pictures through fish tanks in Chinese restaurants for source material, merging tables and fish into one whole.  These are vehicles to force a feet on the ground personality to play.  I've come to realize that I was never very good at playing.  What we don't learn in childhood we revisit in adulthood.

I've hit on a new approach and I'm interested to see how it works.  I decided that I should first go with my natural instinct to paint these stories as I first respond to them, get it out of the way so I can begin to play.  That is in fact a long tradition among artists. So I don't fight my nature, but consider it a step along the road of a longer process.  The approach of taking a sentence or two from someone else and constructing a painting out of it is already a bit of an experiment.

After an initial painting of each memory, I plan to tackle each painting from a different vantage point, literally. The original greenhouse painting placed me within the greenhouse.  What if I create the viewpoint from outside and let the glass steam up?  A misty, scene presents itself.  Then I take my finger and write in the steamed glass, "Cut from the same cloth".  The parts that fall within the letters are sharper, little glimpses within.  I took a first run at it and came up with this initial result. I already have some ideas for the other paintings in this series.  While it is part of my larger memory series, I can imagine exhibiting it by itself titled From Another Vantage Point.  Hmm, perhaps a bit ahead of myself...now to paint.

Things, Just Things

I pulled on my winter coat yesterday and reached into my pockets taking inventory by shape. Hmm, that round form must be the ear muffs I misplaced last year. Then I felt the fur of leather gloves and a shock of recognition ran through me. A month earlier I had been cleaning out the home of my late mother, filling bags with winter gear for Goodwill. In the midst of well-worn hats and scarves were the gloves from Italy. Now these were not just any gloves.  I remembered when they were new as I stroked the velvety leather in the Florence marketplace, soft white fur lined their interior. Market stalls surrounded a statue of a boar, his nose shiny from being rubbed by so many hoping to return. A rub of his nose is said to make that occur.  They were easy purchases, luxurious without taking up much room. We discovered the same size fit us both. These gloves were now well worn, bearing the imprint of my mother's hand. I slipped my hand within them seeking my mother's embrace. Hand in hand. I pulled the gloves off and slipped them into my pockets. And forgot about them until now.

Things that carry the residue of a much loved person. As if I could conjure her whole from this clasp of hand. I've been thinking a lot about things that carry my mother's imprint. Seeing the world through her eyes. When Hanukkah began this year I decided not to light our more modern menorah. I opened every cupboard searching for the one my mother had given me. A mirror image of her own. Frantically I opened cabinets, fearful I had misplaced this trace of my mother.  When I lit the candles I used a matchbook from a wedding she had attended with me. I had loaned her an eyebrow pencil in the restroom. Such odd things we remember and what an odd chain of associations.  Mom-Menorah-matchbook-wedding-eyebrow pencil-candle.  Now as I said the prayer over the candles I thought of her and sought her presence, wrapping her around me.


I've brought back little tokens of my mother's house. Many things that I had given her. Our taste was similar so she was easy to shop for, already part of me. She used to put glass plates in her window and colorful pieces of glass for the light to shine through. They now grace my kitchen window and I think of her when they glow with light. This fall the tree outside that window was a beautiful red orange. I looked at that with my mother's eyes, remembering how she would gather colorful leaves and use them in her collages. I took a picture and sent it to my sister. "Mom would have loved this."

On one of my visits in my mother's last year she drew me into her bedroom and pulled out her jewelry.  She didn't have much of value, but she wanted to make sure that I knew of two pieces in particular, one an engraved locket my father had given her when she was 17 with a photo of her on one side and him on the other, the other an engraved ID bracelet she had given him in return over seventy years ago.  I polished the tarnished silver and at Thanksgiving I gave them to my nieces, the next generation.

When I opened the locket, I inhaled deeply.  A familiar scent wafted out, that last trace deeply imbued in this cherished memento.

Things, just things, but laden with meaning.  Holding a spirit within them.

Greetings From Beyond

Today is my birthday and the first one in my lifetime with no parent left to offer birthday greetings. I have a painting in my memory series which suddenly seems very relevant. It is a portrait of my parents called Greetings from Beyond. I wrote of the story some years ago, but never shared the artwork. To recap...

Four years ago my husband and I went out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. When we returned, my phone was blinking. A message. I played it back and there were my parents singing "Happy Birthday" to me. My mom led and my father's gruff voice picked up the melody. "Ba da bom bom" my dad added at the end. Then silence. "What should I do now?" my mom asks. My dad replies, "Hang it up". It still makes me chuckle when I hear that, such a typical exchange.

Both of my parents had lost memory. My dad had been losing memory for years, my mother's memory loss was just becoming apparent. For years my mother helped my dad, together since they were 16 and 17, she had always been the keeper of their memories.

Then my mother's memory began to deteriorate too.
I was amazed that they were able to call me and sing. That seemed like a complex task beyond their abilities. My mother had stopped making long distance calls. My father bought phone cards with lengthy codes to input. The whole process intimidated my mother even when her memory was intact. Now it presented an insurmountable obstacle. My father would never have remembered a birthday without my mother's prompting. Together they were able to accomplish something that they could not individually.

Exactly three months later my father passed away. The message was preserved by my phone answering system and I saved it on my computer. When my next birthday rolled around, I started the day with that bittersweet recording. The following year I was at my mother's on my birthday. We were going to Israel, a trip she had always wanted to do. Anxious to begin our trip, I woke up at 5am, I heard my mother awake as well. I went into her bedroom. "Are you up?" I asked quietly. Together we perched on the side of her bed. I reminded her that it was my birthday. "Oh, Happy Birthday!" she offered enthusiastically. She no longer remembered birthdays.

I played the recording of her and my father singing together. Enough time had passed that it was now more sweet than bitter. "I play this each birthday" I said. "It's my birthday ritual. Someday when I'm your age, I'll be listening to you and dad singing Happy Birthday to me."

It dawned on me then that it was a milestone birthday for me, one of those decade markers that reminds one of aging. I turned to the mirror and took a picture of us in her bedroom, a "reflective" moment my husband termed it. I wanted to capture the full surroundings, cluttered bedroom and all. It was one of those strange moments where I was in the moment, but also looking at it from a distant point. I was thinking of myself at my mother's age looking back at my relative youth from a far more distant age, much like I view pictures of me in my thirties now.

She passed away this year and on this birthday I once again played the recording four years after I first received it, both parents now gone, but singing to me once again.

When I decided to paint this I thought of the components, my parents, the old wall phone they had when I was growing up and a curved row of birthday cakes denoting birthdays through time. Always with my parents raising their voices in song. Candles cast the glow of memory. Flickering them into the present, my birthday present.

Always an Artist

I recently spent a week beginning the disposition of the belongings of my late parents. It is an odd project to dispose of a lifetime of things, things that conjure the two people who were central figures in my world for much of my life. What to discard, what to keep? One thing I don't plan to discard is my mother's creative work.

I've written of my mother's collaging, or as that former first grade teacher termed it, "cutting and pasting". She began this activity in the fall of 2013 and concluded it a few weeks before her death in 2015. With roughly one a month she left 20 albums, a "legacy" she termed it. She began this project when Alzheimers robbed her of the ability to pursue her favorite activity of reading. Each morning she eagerly awaited her newspaper so she could begin to cut it up and paste it in her notebook. At the time we were just glad she had found something that seemed to engage her, but as I carefully perused her albums I was struck by how her style evolved. I could see her mind working and felt her presence surround me.

1

Carefully I went through each one, page by page. I put them in date order so I could better see their evolution and took photos of those that struck me the most. My plan is to frame some of them and perhaps show them along with my painting of her cutting and pasting. They clearly underscore the fact that creativity can be sustained, perhaps even enhanced, as memory fades. With this perusal, I found myself analyzing her composition, her juxtapositions and repetition of forms. Often I felt as if she was perched on my shoulder, especially as I read her little notes jotted amidst her collages.

I was touched and intrigued and thought I'd share some of her efforts with you.

2

Her albums began in October 2013 with a few pages recapping her life, her children, her teaching career, my father and how long she had lived in her home. Then she began with her first effort. Her early work was very simple, she took images that appealed to her and pasted them on a page with white space surrounding them. You can tell from the content that it was fall and she was already beginning to paste leaves in as well (1).

Soon that morphed into a more overlapping style and this is where I began to notice some interesting things. She clearly had a fascination for faces and repetition of forms. Notice the upside down burger mimicking the pumpkin face (2) ? You can see how she was using grapes to create a sense of flow in the image, drawing your eye along with it. Now her work was beginning to overlap creating a denser image.

At the end of that first book was a note that she had sung Happy Birthday to my sister and my sister told her that it made her day. I felt a surge of satisfaction. I talked to my mother each morning and my sister spoke to her in the evening. She was no longer able to remember birthdays, but I had reminded her of my sister's birthday. She had said, "But I don't have anything for her!" I had suggested she sing to my sister and the suggestion had stayed with her all day, a long time in Alzheimer time.

3

She often included newspaper articles, sometimes about sports; she was an avid basketball fan. She told me she included anything she saw about Obama who she firmly supported. A newspaper article might find itself enhanced by visuals, often with repetition of form, notice the hands of the M&M guy and the basketball players (3).

4

Mom was drawn to images of families and it appears that she had a fondness for William and Kate. Here they are adorned with a gingerbread house and Tinkerbell, filling out their world with sweetness (4).

While she had begun to overlap images, she hadn't firmly shifted from individual images yet. She was often conscious of the relationship between opposing pages and might divide images to get some repetition (5). She often used her pages as a notebook, noting important things like her breakfast or the fact that her paper hadn't come yet. This was the high point of her day and if it hadn't arrived by our morning phone call, I immediately called the paper to urge them onward.

5

Her work often had a bit of whimsy in how she separated images. Notice the child reaching for a tidbit just out of reach (6).

6

About six months into this activity she began to overlap imagery in earnest and make use of full page spreads (7, 8).

8

7

Now she was hitting her stride turning out imagery which merged black and white and color (9) and using swatches of color like mosaics (10).

11

10

9

13

12

I've been teaching classes in family history collage and on one visit I brought in printouts of family pictures and decorative papers. She did a collage while I was there, but then I left her with a bunch of family images out of which she did my favorite creations - the crowns of strawberries for her mother and my sister. It made me regret leaving images of me out of the batch I provided her.

14

She continued her work for another ten months and while not everything worked, the ones that did made me take a second look. She always had an artist's eye and I admire not only her sense of purpose, but the creations that came out of it. Here is a sampling from the remaining months of some of my favorites.

15

16

Of Blessed Memory

After my mother passed, I stepped into the whirlwind of activity that accompanies a death. Having done this with my father I knew what to expect this time and with two weeks of waiting we actually had done many of the necessary things.

I had dreaded the funeral, thinking of it as something I just had to get through. Somehow I managed to deliver my remarks on my mother without dissolving into tears. I was touched by the people who shared memories of my mother. Their experience with her in the public world was the same as mine in the private world of family. So many people present a different face to the public. My mother had a consistent presence and was so often described by her kindness. She was an easy person to love and admire. I still have trouble describing her in the past tense.

Our drive back to Minnesota felt like a separation from the hard reality in which I had been a participant. I could almost tell myself that my Mom was still back there living her life. I don't think the reality has fully hit me yet. The finality of it all. It was fascinating and mysterious, but oh so final. I've heard from readers of this blog who experienced some of the mystery that I too observed. It has changed my understanding of death and left me more hopeful that our energy continues in some form. I guess I'll find out some day, but as I used to say to my mom when she talked of death, "No hurry".

What I had not expected was this wave of fatigue. For almost two weeks I had camped out in my mother's room in hospice, waking every two hours as nurses checked on her. Now I cannot sleep more than two hours at a time. The hospice social worker calls. They continue to reach out to family to offer support. Very solicitous, but my stoic self can't imagine how I'd draw on what they offer.

In the midst of this my computer gets a virus, sending errant emails to my email list. I want to wail,"Leave me alone! Don't you know my mother just died. Go pick on someone else."

I throw my energy into my to do list, filled with post-death financial responsibilities. I check off my list diligently, taking comfort in these tasks I know how to do. My solace is always in action and there is no shortage of things to do.

Once again I pick up the threads of my life that had been abandoned as I waited in that hospice room in Illinois. Tonight I have an opening and have spent the day assembling the pieces around my paintings. The work is focused on memory. Once my focus was loss of memory as I watched my mother lose pieces of her memory, yet retain her identity. Now the theme of memory revolves around my memories of her.

I have written in these pages of a memory jar that I once gave my mother, filled with all my precious memories of our time together. It felt symbolic to retrieve it from her home and bring it back to mine. I am indeed the keeper of our memories.

The Jewish Artists' Lab show that opens this evening is on the theme of water which I of course tied back to memory.  Because I couldn't stop at just one painting it turned into a diptych inspired by a quote by Toni Morrison.

"You know they straightened out the Mississippi River in places... Occasionally the river floods these places. "Floods" is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was."

Water is often used as a metaphor for memory. We speak of waves and floods of memory. Of memories submerged or bubbling up.

In the beginning God's breath hovered over the water. Then God divides the water into sky and sea, then land from water. The creation of the world has to do with differentiation. A flood signifies a returning of water to land, a remembering of its origin. The sky offers its rains that roil the waters and overtake the land, joining firmament, ocean and land into its original whole.

My artwork examines the parallels between memory and flooding, identity and creation. My work on memory explores the persistence of identity that also develops out of differentiation, an echo of the creation story. We are this, not that. Even as memory flees, we continue to seek the familiar boundaries of our one-time identity just as does the river when it floods.

In front of my painting is a memory jar. I am asking people to contribute a memory they once shared with a loved one who may have lost memory. I will develop a series of paintings of memories that are shared. The series will honor those who are kept alive in memory by those who love them. I will call it "Of Blessed Memory", what more fitting conclusion to my recent tumultuous weeks bidding goodbye to my mother.