The mystery of death leads us to confront our fundamental relationship to life.
… how to contemplate the mystery of loss?
…how to reconcile our incompleteness?
…how to heal from grief?
This installation, Altar of Acceptance, was made for my Master’s of Fine Arts thesis at Pratt Institute. I had not originally planned on making this art work; my graduate work was supposed to be painting. But what came out of me was this installation. I had lost three of my siblings due to drugs and alcohol. Since then I have also lost my step brother. They were all in their 20’s and 30’s when they died.
The Installation was meant to be viewed as a journey of the grieving process. From the initial altars, the following pieces were seen sequentially, circling the room, ending at a point close to the beginning.
The installation started with:
3 Altars are closed suspended triptychs.
The viewer would then proceed to:
Withered Flower … the underside is a beautiful rich blue velvet that has deep crevices and folds. The topside is sheer fabric, exposing a rusted crumpled wire framework nestled in soft fluffy cotton.
The next work:
Soft Altar. This was a performance piece. First this soft quilt-like altar was closed. Then slowly, I gently opened it up, revealing many of the books I had read during my grieving. These were books about death and about life.
The next piece was actually three pieces:
Green, Deep Blue, and Carrying Wood Altars show the gradual stirring of the inner world.
The closed altarpieces are transforming into what looks like swimming fish.
The culmination of the journey:
Two large Teardrops is a new landscape… after one has cried all the tears that one can cry… after the dark night, morning comes. You’re standing on the edge of a new world. The crystal doorknobs on these large tear shaped altars imply that these doors can always be opened.
Finally:
Soft Green Family… these pieces are soft belly shaped forms that playfully stand together. Like the other suspended forms, they also hang from black cable, but their relationship to it is quite different. They slide along it – their location is flexible. The sense of isolation in the earlier altars has been changed to a feeling of connectedness. The forms relate to each other organically. The multiple lines arc upward to a single point.
This was my journey of grief to acceptance.
