The Alchemists
2025
To maintain my soul in a time of destruction, I find solace in art as a therapeutic practice; turning to the ancestors to search for light in the darkness. Inspired by the old Leonard Cohen line- "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in," I layered my original photographs of the natural world with found photos of women taken during the 1930's and 40's in an occupied country at the time of a totalitarian regime. I then composed these images atop collected paper ephemera into unfixed collages that represent the fragility and fleeting nature of life. After painting on an abstract dot pattern, I rephotographed the pieces and poked hundreds of tiny holes and cracks in the resulting prints, adding places for light to get in and love to shine out.
Approaching my work as both artist and historian, I sort through the past, looking to our ancestors for clues to surviving the present, while also seeding the work with glimmers of hope for a better future for my daughter and hers. These images synthesize my creative and spiritual practices to alchemize the dark materials of despair into light.
Empires rise, petty kings fall, but the women, we carry it all in our purses and we go on.
