“Journey Home” (mixed media on cedar)
This piece is a tribute to my matrilineal ancestors who along with my grandfather and great grandfather, emigrated to South Carolina from Lebanon after Aunt Frances (mama’s eldest sister) was born. This image of my grandmother with my two-year old mama and her older sisters inspired the work. Because my grandmother, Mariam, passed away when my mother was a little girl, I never got to meet her. And until mom found this photo of her, I had not ever seen her. In fact, I hadn’t even thought of her that much. But when mama brought me a small, framed copy of the photograph, I was moved to tears, and suddenly realized there was a void that I didn’t know existed until that very moment. When I looked at this tiny image of her, I was able to see myself, my mom, my aunts, my sisters, and my cousins in her face. The connection was strong, and I felt incredibly grateful to “meet” her. Her face was kind. When I saw her hands on mama’s shoulders, I had a vision of all our ancestors with their hands on our shoulders throughout the generations. And I remembered a photograph of mama with her hands on my shoulders that reinforced the vision of the ancestors in my mind’s eye. Because the image was so small, I scanned it into my computer so that I could see her face bigger, life size. I wanted to bring her to life within me, and to gaze into her eyes.
Soon after, I was invited to participate in an art exhibit at the Hui No’eau Visual Art Center on Maui. The theme was “Shrines: the Intersection of Art and Ritual”. I knew that I wanted to use this image of my grandmother and her daughters as the foundation of my piece. Working on weathered cedar planks, symbolizing our connection to the old country, I made large laser copies of the images and transferred them directly onto the wood. The carving of the hand at the base was the first thing I put into the wood, a simple representation of the ancestors within the hand, reaching into the future. Solvent transfers of my journal pages, an old letter to my aunts from a member of the family in Lebanon, and other significant, symbolic imagery made their way into the piece as well. In the niche at the top of the central plank, I carved a small doorway into the cedar, placing special items inside, as I would on an altar. I carved texture with my Dremel tool, and used a propane torch to create shading.
The poem was discovered online and it touched my heart so deeply that it became an integral part of the piece. It felt like a collaboration between the poet and me. Unfortunately, it was labeled as being written by an “anonymous Native American poet”, and it was years later that I discovered it was part of a much longer poem by Linda Hogan. She is, indeed, Native American, but she is no longer anonymous to me. Here’s the passage from her poem that touched me so…
“Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch, and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.”
This beautiful poem articulated perfectly the essence of what I was trying to communicate, and for that I am also grateful.
