Portrait documents common garden flowers found in Portuguese, Japanese and American neighborhoods.
Representing both the diversity and similarities that unite modest household gardens and communities, flowers are cross-cultural mementos of love, loss, and remembrance.
In December 2020 and January 2021, I created a window installation for a Wisconsin gallery addressing how COVID-19 deaths in all of Japan were surpassed by one American state, the state I was living in, Wisconsin.
On Feb 6, 2021, I lost a beloved brother-in-law to this virus. In October of 2021, I held a small exhibition from the series in Porto.
In 2022, retired museum curator Tony Trehy asked architect Maurice Shapero to design a museum for a novel he is writing. He asked me to consider an imaginary Portrait wall for it. I loved visualizing a reverse printing on glass, in darkness and shadow, backlit. There are so many beautifully shadowed, contemplative spaces in Shapero’s imagined museum!
On May 5th, 2023, the United Nations World Health Organization officially ended the COVID-19 health emergency. The world had been on its highest level of alert since January 30th, 2020.
During this time, Covid-19, in tandem with other infectious diseases, has contributed to 6.9 million deaths worldwide.
I thought Portrait, as a project of over 2700 images, would end with the WHO declaration. Yet I find myself still gathering images, though not with the same intensity. I think this is because of the contact I’ve had with sufferers of long Covid.
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