My mother and I share a garnet as our birthstone. My whole life she has worn a matching set of these stones around her neck and in her ears. As a little girl, I was always enamored with these stones and how they sparkled, asking my mom over and over if they could be mine. Each time I asked, I was met with her laugh, and told that they would be mine after she dies.

The summer before I started my college career, my mother was in a coma. I remember driving her to the hospital, pushing 100 mph in my Toyota, as she faded in and out of consciousness. It was just the two of us that day. I was 19. I remember standing over my mom, unconscious in the hospital bed, looking smaller than I’d ever seen her before. And I thought of all the things I would give up for her to be okay again. It was then that she abruptly woke up and asked me to put on the stones I’ve dreamt of since I was a child. But now, they did not sparkle anymore. The life had been sucked out of them, and out of my mother as well, as she fell limply back to the bed.

Within my work I am interested in creating complex narratives focusing on family dynamics and home life. Previous projects have done this through a focus on the passage of time represented through recreations of childhood photographs, and interviews with family members detailing ideas of love and loss. Purgatory explores themes of nostalgia, love, and grief within the domestic setting while preserving my family’s evolving stories dating back to the 1920’s. I am exploring these themes through the artifacts that belong to the people and places that made me who I am today. This experience has driven me to appreciate the little things: furniture, jewelry, and old pictures, all of which are my muses throughout this project.

I want this work to be a reminder to people that life is fleeting, and to cherish it at all costs. While my mother did ultimately recover after several failed diagnoses and many weeks, it is that one day I come back to, time and time again in my memories. I have watched the spark of life go out and then return again. While I had to face the reality of mortality in that moment, I realized where there is grief and loss, there is love.