Is it about the stuff?

This last year has been tremendously difficult going through the contents of my childhood home. I come from a family of collectors, keepers and savers of family history and assorted magical things.  Everything we associate with our childhood.  Things that are now becoming collectable.

Of course none of us can keep it all.  One of my siblings lives in NYC the other in the UK.  I still live in the city where we grew up but I never wanted to live in the house we grew up in I am too independent for that; I need to create my own space.  

But what made it so difficult to go through the contents and get the house ready for sale was my parents designed their house.  It's mid-century modern design; in the suburbs, with alot of land not necessarily well suited for any of us, perfect for my parents.

You learn alot about yourself when you go through your family's belongings.  My mother died 18 years before my father and as we went through things she came back to me so vividly.

I learned how lucky I really am to have had such amazing parents, to be in this family as tough as we sometimes are as opinionated.  We think about things we do things we make things and we laugh at things.

Yet in many ways I am tormented about what we left behind for the estate sale, or what went to auction.  Did we keep the important things?  Not the "valuable" things but what has great significance to our family, who we are now and who we once were, who we will be.

I have been working on a series of things we found in our parent's house.  

Here's something we found that we couldn't keep so instead a photo: 

 

Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh

What an incredible last few months it has been which is why I have neglected the blog for so long. This has been my year to co-chair exhibitions.  Spring into summer it was the The Associated Artists 98th Annual Exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum, juror John Carson.

What a time it's been. My siblings and I had to go through the contents of our childhood home and decide what to keep and what to let go of, a terribly difficult and intense process. 

Then I got married the high point of the year. 

Now I am co-chair with Laura Tabakman for Making Connections the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh. It opens today November 14th and runs through January 25, 2009 at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts .  

What a treat this experience has been.  Our juror was Nancy Davidson who makes incredible sculpture from inflatable weather balloons.  She uses humor to explore cultural issues, brilliantly I might add. Her work can be found on www.nancydavidson.com . Nancy's lecture on her work and discussion of her process was fascinating.  Spending the day with her through the jury process (work on site) was an incredible learning experience.  

For both of my co-chair gigs I have had the privilege of working with thoughtful and talented artists.

I was fortunate to have my piece My Dad's Pad's Things We Found in our Parent's House #1 chosen for the exhibit.

My father was a prominent physician who died in 2006.  I did a photo transfer onto fabric of his blank prescription from his prescription pad.  Each prescription is something he used to say often, quilted, and embellished.