Séduisant  . . . 


3 x 2 x 14”


Some time ago I was given these "erotic" 1915 French postcards that were stored inside a weathered cardboard box, long forgotten.
Juxtaposed with antique Belgium lace and reclaimed wooden boxes, the resulting sculpture perhaps reminds us that we often replace one box for another in a repeating pattern in our lives.
  
"Séduisant" reveals one obvious threshold to the way out, or in . . . perhaps ignored.

This piece sold at Gallery X in New Bedford and I often wonder where it lives today.  

Abandoned places have always attracted photographers and I am no exception. While exploring an abandoned medical library in a Massachusetts insane asylum built in 1874 I opening a storage compartment to reveal these old reel to reel tapes of information that were probably state of the art in its day. 

I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.


~Tom Waits 

​Cocoon


The struggle to leave the cocoon is what strengthens the butterfly’s wings so she can fly. From there there are infinite possibilities that await.
Connecting to the real world is what we have been missing lately when we shelter inside our own cocoon. At what point do we leave our safety, in another indeterminable metamorphose and fly?  

“Play it fuckin' loud!”
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~Bob Dylan

Taking a moment from our modeling shoot, yoga instructor Kim Vareika interacted with my Irish photograph, "Clearances".  Kim owns Vareika Personal Training and Yoga and is kind to host some of my work in her studio.
https://www.vareikapersonaltraining.com/

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Clearances
36 x 24”


"When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses."


~Seamus Heaney, excerpt from Clearances


With the linoleum floor as the backdrop to my shoes and the percussion of small talk, utensils, pots and pans as the soundscape, I remember helping my mom in the kitchen with the family meals.


It has been a few years since my mother passed. At my mother’s memorial, I heard many versions of that old platitude, “Time heals all wounds.” Experience has taught me that time doesn’t offer a linear healing process so much as a slowly shifting perspective.


She died from suffering. In many ways, my mom and I share similar temperaments. After her death, I worried I was also destined for an unhappy outcome. This is one of the many tricks that grief plays: it makes you think you don’t deserve happiness. Grief makes us better equipped to weather the other life losses that are sure to come and personally, I have weathered a few. 


Death is the only universal, and grieving makes beginners out of all of us.

Where to begin . . .