“Potential”

About: A dear friend of mine lost a baby. And while I know miscarriage is common and that several women in my family and close circles had experienced it, this was the first time I really sat with the loss of the potential of a tiny person. He lost his daughter. The beautiful and the hard and the gory are so often all swirled together. I paint to process, or rather, I often find myself processing while I paint. I thought a lot about the tribe of women who bore children and made our present moment possible. I thought about how children push our imaginations into the future. I thought about hope, about biology, about personhood. I thought about potential. And I felt connected to all the people who came before, all the people who almost were, and who will come in the future. Me and this little baby girl, we are somehow a part of this big, human existence.

The Found Objects: All of my art is about noticing the things we often overlook. As part of my practice I collect found objects. In this piece, I sewed many items, found on my work commute from Reading, MA to downtown Boston (near South Station) in one day. This piece has feather, a train ticket, some little objects: little religious icons that seem to have fallen off a piece of cheap jewelry, a safety pin, a razor an unknown metal hardware piece… I included them because they were the everyday mundane things I passed as I was learning about this miscarriage. The event was just another unseen, unnoticed part of the day for all the people passing me by on the train and in the street.

Since making this piece I’ve had 2 of my own children. They were both delivered, one after a wrought pregnancy and one after a very healthy pregnancy, via emergency C-Section. And I have had many more close encounters with friends and family experiencing loss, infertility, and hardship in bearing children. Meanwhile, the discussion over abortion and women’s bodies in our country has become a central focus. In these personal and cultural contexts, the razor blade in this piece adds a lot of tension for me. Compositionally, it isn’t a significant character in the piece - no more than the feather or a bold stroke of color. It is my lived experience that has shifted my feelings and questions with this work over time. I certainly didn’t make this work to cause emotional turmoil in myself or others. But I also don’t want to shy away from the more difficult (sometimes tragic and very visceral) sides of childbearing. For me this piece now has a new layer, it functions as a reminder to slow down and recognize when I, or others in my life, need to share childbearing stories and receive tenderness. It is not a sad, or a rough, or a shy piece, but a vibrant, and very layered, and open one.

In that vein, I’m open to continued one-on-one dialogue. If you’d like to talk with me about the work, please reach out.

Thank you so much for spending some time with this piece and these topics.

Some related themes and thoughts are more discretely embedded in my most recent project. Take a peek if you’re interested.