“The Family Within”, was a sound-and-light performance presented at 2:00 pm on May 12, (Mother’s Day) and again at 7:00 pm at the May 17th closing reception. The script from this performance (transcribed with quotation marks) can be read in the following notes.

Artist's statement: This exhibition interprets mothers’ collective life experience in the last half of the twentieth century. The gallery is separated into two realms - the Head and the Heart - with a centerpiece Mandala. In the Head are the things we know by observation and experience. They form our expectations. In the Heart are the things that are hoped for or believed through intuition, and also unresolved feelings carried deep inside.

THOUGHTS FROM THE HEAD

Feel/Think

You cannot control events, but you can choose how to react.

The Door Is Open

Nothing is more powerful than your own belief about possibility.

For Women, the Progress was Undeniable.

Why We Love Chocolate

It is not so much the gift,but how it is given.

Real Champions

The true Olympic feat is keeping the world clean daily, so why is it so undervalued?

Women’s Solutions

...or you can ignore it.Corset Drawer

When does a woman decide to never wear an instrument of torture again?

Under Nana’s Hat

“Eccentric” Was the Euphemism

Gris Gris

The soul of a family’s Life can be divined from what remains.

White Glove Test

You kept a clean house for me. Why is it so difficult for me to do the same?

Help Wanted

A dream to work outside the home becomes a nightmare when one discovers the true nature of office culture.

Tatoo 5” x 19” x 14”

“You know, tatoos are the bomb. Can’t get enough of ‘em. The guys, they really love freaky chicks, yeah, and I feel so special with my special skin. See this one? Oh God, it got so infected - God, I thought I was gonna lose my arm, you know gangrene or something. But then when the fever was past, I thought, ok maybe just a little one on the other side. Things just kinda build up, you know, it’s kinda like a collection of shit that will never go away, even when you are ninety. I mean, they are sooo cool...”

Blonde Ambition 39” x 17” x 12”

“I have always hated my straight mousey brown hair. Now it is starting to go gray! Well, thank God for my hair dresser. If he didn’t fix my hair every few weeks, I would hate myself! My golden mane - it defines me ... doesn’t it?”

One-Year Anniversary / Bedroom Mystique

“I have not been able to figure out how to put romance into my marriage. The kind you see in the movies. My husband, he’s a good man and I do love him, but... I guess we’ll eventually have children. How sad if we will only make babies, not love. Sometimes we hold hands, and sometimes cuddle at night. But don’t ask me to talk to him about sex. I just can’t.”

Daily Offering

“Reciprocity - it’s hard to establish, and impossible to maintain.”

Dogma Feeds No One

Empty Nest

“It used to be that I would have killed for a little peace and quiet, a little time to myself. Now I wonder, where did everyone go?”

She Is Just a Housewife

My father used to tell me “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” but I don’t think that he really believed it.

Unintentional Bride

“ I could not marry the boy I loved in high school. He was a Catholic, I was not. It was out of the question. One evening in a protestant church meeting, I met Jacques. He was a bit of a boor, but very persistent. So one thing led to another, and before I knew it, we were married.”

First Feeble Thoughts of Escape

How do we get from yearning to real opportunity?

The Alternative

“I hated the idea of becoming a mother. I really didn’t want to be married to anyone back then. But if I had stopped the pregnancy, I would never have had my beautiful daughter.”

A Mother’s Tears

“He was never here when I needed him. No, either at the Lion’s, or the Elks, or in Pittsburg selling machine parts. At least he made a good living and he brought it home. It’s too bad that’s not all he brought home. I could smell the other women on his dirty laundry. Sometimes I’d have liked to run him through the wringer with it! We’ve been in twin beds for years now. Thank God for my son. Such a handsome, intelligent young man. Such a comfort...”

Her Father’s Touch

“Sometimes in the evening her girl friends would come by to pickup my daughter to go to the ballgame. I always made sure I answered the door. Those fresh faces, those new curves under their sweaters. I could not keep my hands off of them, off her. I would kiss each one on the lips in greeting, and slowly draw my hand across their breasts as I moved to the next face. How could they complain? I was her father.”

Lap Dance

What a difference two generations make!

Gender Identities

Here’s what consititutes real balance in relationships.

Object of Their Attention - 1950

During World War II, women kept the country running while all fit men went away to war. When the men came home to reassume their positions of dominance, women were obliged to reassume their positions in the home. With so many professionally capable women ushered back into domestic confinement, how does it feel to be a child in the spotlight of their sharpened attentions?

FEELINGS FROM THE HEART

The Affair

The desire is great and the risk is real, but you won’t know it until you’re caught.

The Price of Ignorance

Amazing how just one piece of missing information can stop everything.

Refuge

Sometimes there is no other choice but to just stay in bed and wait for bad times to pass.

To the Women of Afghanistan: Please Persevere

Blocked

Pigs and Pearls

We issue to our children a never-ending flood of good intentions and warnings, well aware that they generally resent our input.

Parenting

Like the practices of psychology and medicine, parenting is just a game of sustained observation and good guessing.

Expecting the Worst

In raising teenagers, it doesn’t matter what you do, how many books you have read, or how many counselors you consult. All you can do is anticipate the next wallop.

Shepherdess

When my daughter becomes an inner city school teacher, I apprehend the difficulties she will encounter. I pray that she will be protected and be strong.

The Parents Play/Ply/Pry/Pray Station

We’ll try anything to harmonize with our children. At first it is enough to give physical care, to play with the baby. When the child discovers she can influence the direction of events, the parent is trained to ply with treats in exchange for cooperation. When no treat we can offer is attractive to the teenager, and we live in fear of our child’s self-management, we learn to pry. With the ensuing breakdown of trust, we find that we are left with nothing but faith - believing not so much that all will be well, but that we will all survive this.

Bless Our Children - May They Evolve

I once heard a Russian philosopher on French television say, “Irony is hate amusing itself.” Though I don’t think myself to be hateful, I do employ a fair amount of irony in my work. Things may look playful, but get too close and you’ll be bitten. I speak often about what the women can or can’t do. For instance, mothers are expected to always take the high road and to demonstrate the unconditional nature of Mother Love. You are not allowed to call your children “idiots” or “brats”, but you can call them “monkies”. In parenting’s darkest hours, when we cannot even recognize the our own child’s humanity, we must trust, “If we evolved, they will evolve”

Meiosis

At first it is as though you share the same breath. Then they begin to have their own ideas. Before you know it, you hardly know them. If this is natural, why am I so sad?

Aging

“There was a time that I would sweep the floor every evening and wash it at least once a week, more if it was the holidays. Now I can hardly get out of this chair. But don’t you send me in some stranger to clean. Strangers can’t be trusted, and besides, I could not afford it. But some evenings, when I sit alone here in the dark, I feel I am slowly but surely being swallowed up by this house.”

Inhospitable Nest

I cannot stay in this place, where every dream is broken and no loving word is breathed.