From the Waiting Room
On April 1st, 2023 I flew to Duluth, MN to be by my father's side during his final days. He was put on hospice care due to terminal lung cancer. I found myself not really knowing how to process the information or how to be supportive of him or my mother through this trying time. I did my best to be present. After his death, I began to process my grief. As a lens-based artist, I relate my experiences to images. I often find myself looking back through old photographs as a way to reconnect myself to times past. Naturally, I found myself scrolling back to the images in my phone's camera taken during the week that I was with him in the hospital. There were no photographs of my father or any of my family members-- only arguably mundane images taken looking out the windows of the hospital or snippets of my surroundings. I have printed these images on fabric and hand stitched them using embroidery thread. There is a contemplative nature to stitching- a time to process, reflect, and allow myself to revisit the environment I was in that held so much meaning. The images become objects that hold significance and purpose and are transformed from snapshots in a cloud of digital space to artifacts with tactile weight and presence in the physical world.
