in memoriam
Content Note: mention of s*xual assault and mental health
I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again: poets and artists can squeeze meaning from the most mundane objects.
I am both a poet and an artist. There is something about the artist’s soul that just bends our hearts toward the symbolic. If that sounds a bit twee, maybe it is, and maybe this missive isn’t for you.
I try not to force the symbolism, but sometimes I know I’m trying too hard; I just need to relax into serendipity, lean into the layers that are stacking up, and wait for the throughline to reveal itself. Other times it hits me in the face and I have no choice but to take it on the jaw. Or something. Forgive me, my metaphors are jumbling again.
Earlier this month (May 2024), I spent a beautiful week visiting Idaho and attending the graduation of my former students. This particular group of graduates had been my elementary students beginning in grade 1, and I had looped with them for several years. It was a joyful reunion of celebration.
I got home during the Memorial Day weekend, and I was immediately hit with a case of the morbs. What was the deal? I should have been refreshed from a mini-vacation, motivated for the opening of a group exhibition the first week of June, the release of my new collection, and happy to see my dog. Instead, I was battling intense pain and the melancholy to match.
Then, at 3 AM on Wednesday, I remembered: 20 years ago, on Memorial Day weekend, I experienced my first sexual assault. Despite all the healing, the growth, the movement forward, parts of me remember the last week of May even when I’m not actively remembering it.
Back in February, I anticipated this milestone and incorporated the 20th Anniversary remastered edition of Fallen by Evanescence in my playlist for the aforementioned exhibition collection.
And still, I forgot. Until I didn’t.
Back in 2004, Fallen was incredibly popular with my demographic (depressed college girls). This was the soundtrack to my mental breakdown. Between May and November of 2004 I became increasingly depressed, anxious, and withdrawn. When I listened to the remasters this winter, while preparing a 12-piece series on the ocean, I remembered that feeling of sinking, of drowning. On the one hand, it feels like a lifetime ago; on the other hand music has a way of making it immediately present.
And still, I forgot. Until I didn’t.
I don’t want the story to end there. I didn’t drown.
My last two series — Ophelia in 2023, and now the Tempest-inspired series in 2024—have started as one thing and evolved roughly halfway through the process: the pain that initiated the project alchemized into something almost triumphant.
I paint to give voice to the versions of me who need to get on to the canvas. But I am not her.
At the same time, She survived so I can be here today. My fear of drowning is as much a fear of the water as it is a fear of losing myself entirely like I did in 2004, of being so fully consumed by the trauma and the inner demons and the shame.
Water is always seeking balance. There is tension, literally, on the surface of water. And there is the tension between water’s abilities on two extremes: the ability to create and destroy, to lead to flood or drought. It’s absolutely essential for life, and it can kill us.
When I say that my art practice is spiritual, this is what I mean: my intention to create, my self and my experiences, and my inspirations all layer and flow together into something altogether more powerful than I could have expected when I picked up my first tube of paint.
Ophelia inspiration
Ophelia drowned; I didn’t.
