dad’s show
Gallery on the Green
Lexington, Massachusetts
January, 1991
In late summer of 1990, I was preparing to make a body of work for GG, as I called this wonderful gallery, for the fifth or sixth solo show that I would have with them. Thinking about an idea that would drive the work so that it would hold together visually in the gallery and also suggest the type of work that I would do, I settled on the idea of power. When I asked friends what they thought of when I said power, they responded with words such as electricity, storms, sexual relationships, government, and from a seven-year-old girl, being a princess.
Not long after I was beginning to solidify my ideas and to develop the work, my father, who had had cancer for ten years, was told that he had little time left. My parents lived in Indiana and I told them that I would cancel the show scheduled for January so that I could be of help. They adamantly said no, I was to continue with the work.
And so the process of making this work was also the process of my family’s coping with my father’s demise. He died on January 5 and the show opened on January 9. The work was profoundly different both in the making and in the response. It changed everything..
