My series How the Light Gets In was created in response to my friend's terminal cancer diagnosis, which landed like a grenade while also witnessing the relentless stream of war, un/natural disaster and political chaos. Searching for a way to express my overwhelming grief and society's collective despair, I used my art as a therapeutic practice; running to the arms of Mother Nature to search for meaning in a dark time. I immersed myself in the Japanese concept of Mono No Aware, which takes in the exquisite beauty of living things even as they are decaying or passing into nothingness. The emotion evoked is not just sorrow, but a deeper, more nuanced feeling that includes tenderness, empathy, and the bittersweet acceptance of impermanence.
My wise friend told me that ancient peoples once believed the stars were holes in the sky where ancestors looked down from above, eyes shining. Knowing she would soon be among the stars, she believed that the thousand pinpricks of pain we experience in a lifetime are also the places in us where we grew wiser and more courageous; each wound a portal to our full humanity.
Hearing the words of a Leonard Cohen song one day, a message crystallized-
There is a crack, a crack in everything-
That's how the light gets in
In this work I layered my original photography with paper ephemera into unfixed collages representing life’s fragility and sudden shifting nature. After painting on an abstract pattern of disintegrating dots, I rephotographed the pieces and pierced the prints with hundreds of tiny cracks; creating places for light to get in and love to shine out. Mending these wounds with gold leaf in the style of Japanese Kintsugi, I honored the many imperfections; celebrating resilience and the journey from hurting to healing to transfiguration.
This cathartic alchemical process of creation and destruction/ wounding and mending synthesized my creative and spiritual practices to transmute the dark materials of grief into light.
