OUT OF PLACE

Bibliography is an online exhibition I’ve been working on for months. It is now live.

More than once I doubted I could complete the project. I conceived and re-conceived it, rejecting each idea as poorly serving my drawings and their tale. I did not know how to bring the layers to life.

When we go through profound change, it feels large. How to tell that story?

(Stunned. Bewildered. Blasé. Shaken. Dizzy. Euphoric. Serene. Melancholic. Nostalgic. Altered. Shattered. Disaffected. Abnormal. Confused. Ordinary.)

For me, stumblingly.

I don’t think you would know that viewing, reading, and experiencing the exhibition.

In the thick of things, life can feel impossible. My daughter was ill and then she died, and somehow I had to go on: how do I even move my legs? I had a loving marriage for 30 years and then something was different: how can that even be? My life became increasingly unrecognizable as my own: who is that in the mirror?

Impossible.

And yet here I am, and only in hindsight is there any arc to this story.

It took so long to find it. To express it. To build Bibliography.

It’s a demanding show: it asks you to look, to read, to listen; to think, feel, and reflect. But I believe if you take time with it, it will give something back. There are layers.

For me, making Bibliography has delivered release and relief, for in confronting the grief, pain, and confusion haunting me in the wake of disasters, I find myself free of those hardships’ disabling grip: I can bear my sorrow, and joy is no longer elusive.

My story is finally shaped, and here I am: whole.