Your Mother is in the Basement, 2009
Your Mother Is In The Basement is a body of work that uses the basement as a site for metaphor in relation to the body, also bringing up gender in relation to space and memory. As I age my art work reflects the new places I inhabit, beginning with girlhood, womanhood, and now motherhood. As I age I also become increasingly aware of presence and absence and my eye and heart are acutely attuned to these phenomena. The magic in the mundane. The beauty in the repugnant. Absence and presence. These are the themes that I continue to wrestle with and explore in my work. The house as metaphor for the body resonates for me. The head is attic then down and down the stairs to the foundation and functioning of the body/house in the basement. What are our collective memories of home and spaces within the home? My memories of my mother in the basement are few and mostly related to food storage or laundry tasks. The title to this work was born from the answer to my children's question "where is mommy?"
;)
