It was a perfect day to work on my project today. Constant rain. So, both the rain outside the window and my tears were running down as I worked on today’s piece.
I listened to the same CD over and over again, I am still listening to it right now. Beautiful, tender, touching...
So now the hard part. I worked today with a picture of my Grandmother. Soon five years will pass since she died. I wasn’t able to look at this picture for all these years. For my project today I used a fragment of a picture I took the last time I saw her. A few months before her death. On the picture my Grandmother was sitting on a chair with me and my mom standing behind her. My 8 month old son was sitting in his stroller close to her. I flew 10 thousand miles to see her, because I knew she was dying. She had just underwent surgery and was happy to see her grandson for the first time. A few months later she passed away.
That is all I can tell you. That is all I can tell myself.
When I look at the alerted photo above I cry. The image is too powerful to bear. It is also something I didn’t expect would come out. I started a new class at the university last week called “Grief & Loss”. One of our assignments is to use various exercises to cope with grief, there are many, but using art is something I process deeply, so this is why I chose to do a collage. My plan was to do something beautiful, cover my Grandma in flowers, especially the scar on her face, make her look colourful and free as a butterfly. I think I wanted to alter my memory of what happened, I wanted to create a new way of remembering her. A new meaning. But it failed. It failed because I’m not ready. I still remember... and what I remember is still very sad.
However, I like to think that one day I will be able to see her coming out of the cocoon, and flapping her wings above me. Maybe a butterfly, or maybe an angel...
Since I couldn’t stand this sadness facing me today, after staring on the image above, I decided to add something, to cover the feelings, or maybe to deceive myself a little longer... So here She is... slowly morphing into an unknown form. Transforming my feelings with her own change.
As I often do in my artwork, I used a page from an old book, bought once on sale at the public library, to create my Grandma’s body. Then I panicked for a moment, because I don’t know the Czech language and I though that maybe there is something inappropriate written there. So I tried to search for some clues.
I found only two.
“Kate” which was my Grandmother’s name, and “bolest” which sounds very similar to Polish “boleść” and means pain, wound, sadness...
Sylvia
P.S.
This beautiful brooch with a missing piece, you see below, is the only material thing I have after my Grandmother, but it suffices ;)
