Mourning
A reflection on the journey through loss and letting go.
September 2023
Mourning can come along for many different reasons. The loss of someone, loss of love, loss of self. The palbability of the loss I experinced in a span of a year was so prevelant I could mark the start and end of such a shift.
A reflection on the art I made while I was feeling big things.
June 2022 - July 2023
Grief has its own timetable
Its looming near by
Feel it coming on
Like an irritating stye.
Like water it will find its way
Through a crack,
Seep through a wall
Leave my structure in dismay
It takes a will,
nobody is out here to help you
Let me rest my head a little
The murals around me painted blue-sky.
Maybe we can live in them
Claim this world for now
I Birth of Venus
No one would ever see us now.
“Maybe I’m a fool to settle
For a place with some nice views”
And I’m swathed in a netting
Covered in bright little nerve endings.
Grief will open them and see my secrets
Grief will see my deep cuts
Grief knows I drown it out with Frank Ocean deep cuts.
“I’d rather chip my pride
Than lose my mind out here”
Grief has its own timetable
Can’t lose my mind out here.
A poem I wrote about grief. Normally when I write poetry I free write. I don’t try hard to rhyme or write deeply metaphorical verses. I did put in a bit more effort this time though.
Screenshot of Instagram story post.
An unforgettable week indeed.
The death of more than one ego. Death of a version of me that was afraid to be fully seen. But most importantly the death of the version of me that sought validation from my work and had pride in my work ethic (non art related work) and marked an important shift towards my art career. The destruction of an old foundation.
The Heartstrings Project :
Three part series about loss, grief and radical acceptance.
Presented on Instagram
The Heartstrings Project was the closing of this transformative year. The project was the only way I knew how to process and create closure for myself. It was named so because of the feelings and experiences that pulled at my heartstrings, the deepest emotions and affections within myself. Never in my life had I felt such immense love and joy from unexpected but beautiful sources, such pain and frustration from unexplained situations I was not in control of and such reverance for life’s unpredictability. Numerous broken hearts, numerous ego deaths, numerous lessons, endless memories.
A commission painting titled Heartstrings I (acrylic on canvas) followed by an excerpt on the description of the piece written for the client.
“I hope that the details of these beings presented in this piece can remind you of who they were in this time stamp, who they may be later, and feelings that manifested in the deepest part of your connections. I hope the ambiguity of them can remind you of the fleeting moments, the fleeting versions of them, of you and the encouragement to love without fear despite the temporary.
I hope the differences you see between these beings remind you of our multifaceted selves, our surface plane (black outlines), our deep, more vulnerable, loving plane (red outlines) and our deep, darker shadowed plane (blue/yellow silhouettes). I hope that it encourages you to move through all of them in harmony as they coexist within us. As soon as we can accept these versions of us and allow them to take place when they need to, only then can we grow to have a deeper understanding of ourselves and others.
I hope that this painting reminds you of the interconnectedness that we have whether it's explicit or in a much deeper spiritual sense, as every being is overlapped and can be seen as one in the same.
I hope that this painting can remind you of the joys of dancing and the love and peace that we have felt and witnessed through movement, as every being represented was photographed dancing.
I hope that you also see that you are the most powerful and strong being as you are seen in the center of the piece, not just the center point of the collective but even amongst the elements that make up the whole. You have strength within you, you are the epicenter of love and beauty, power and grace. Just as you are capable of giving love, you are deserving of receiving love.
I hope that you can see that love is always there (red mist, red thread) not just within you, but amongst your family and friends, it connects us. And if you may ever falter, believe that we will always be there to lift you right back up and remind you of what it feels like to be cherished so long as you let us.”
Photo of art display I made representing grief. Process video of this piece was titled Heartstrings II and was accompanied by a voiceover of myself reading a poem I wrote for the piece. Go watch it on my Instagram.
Three cyanotypes connected together by red yarn. The yarn is a representaion of heartstrings or emotions felt strongly in the midst of loss and grief.
The yarn is stitched down the tounge of the top cyanotype image to represent the dichotomy of inspired spoken word of an artist yet the numbness of grief leaving you silent, wondering when you’ll have the strength and courage to express.
The yarn is then stitched on the eyelid of the second cyanotype image of an eye. The concept of eye-opening experiences is then presented. The thoughts running through a mind and the transcendence that can be brought on from feeling deeply can only create an understanding of self and allow new paths to new foundations and new perspectives.
In the midst of the new we mourn the past. The yarn appears around the bottom of the eye and out the tear ducts in representation of mourning tears. Yarn was stitched Sashiko style, inspired by a traditional Japanese embroidery technique. Inspiration taken by tailors prevalent in my life at the time of creating this piece.
Hanging as the last image, is a zoomed out presentation of where the pain at this time was being felt and expressed. A lot of venting and crying in my therapy sessions. My emotions were being released through tears and through efforts to articulate my feelings and process the experiences that had taken place within the past year.
Screenshot of video titled Heartstrings III. The most vulnerable of all three pieces as it includes clips of chapters in my life that I was actually mourning.
The video is a chronical of the encompassing reflection that birthed the Heartstrings series to begin with. It is stitched together by three different types of video.
The first being a continuation of clips of self that I recorded in the midst of this process from the start of it all to the messy middle to the reflective end. In some clips I am on my own, in some I am with friends and loved ones (Mukki the handsome dog, because we love them so).
The second type being a road trip in representation of the choice but almost inevitable journey we can make to trudge forward and enjoy the scenery as best we can. We can choose the paths we take, we can pay attention to what is passing beside us, and we can look back and smile at the journey and what we may have to leave behind.
Finally, the third type being memories I could only look back at fondly. These clips were intentionally edited to be low contrast and reversed to present them as dream-like flashbacks and the unraveling (much like the yarn in Heatrstings II) of relationships, beliefs and old versions of us.
All intertwined and happening at the same time.
These three pieces as a whole were also presented in an intentional order. They were to take you through the motions of the beginning of something beautiful with the softness and loving concepts of Hearstrings I, followed by the sudden shift and the reality of grief and loss through the pain and rigorous making of Heartstrings II. And finally the closing of such beautiful things with the more introspective and accepted reality of Heartstrings III.
