Passing Away 2008/printed 2010 - 14

Passing Away was a collaboration of the artist and her mother, Mildred Louise Hayden, during the three months prior to her mother’s death in September 2008.  The close up photographs of her mother’s skin are printed on Habotai and Organza silk.  The images float on the wall in an ethereal ambiguity of existing both inside and outside of the body, in the cellular world or beyond.

The reason I chose silk is because it lent itself to a more ethereal existence. The transparency of silk matched the experience I had as my mother faded away.  As an image on the wall, the silk floats and moves with the slightest breeze, echoing the illusive and non-static nature of life and death.

Working with both color and black and white allowed me to move between the abstract interior body both physical and psychological in the black and whites and the more identifiable corporeal body of skin in the color pieces.

This was the first collaboration I made with my mother.  She was happy to participate.  She was 90 years old and felt good about her body, that she had aged "well".  I think that having established this trust between us in June gave me poetic license to  photograph her freely in August when she was transitioning from this world to the beyond.

Each print is 36 x 24 inches, pigmented ink on Habotai silk (color and black and white), signed, edition of 6, series of 20 images.