For the past 8 years, I have used my work as a tool to process, heal and release my trauma, creating art as a means to purge my pain from my body. I was no longer able to hide the burden of my bipolar disorder, to hold the shame of my sexual assault and childhood trauma. I needed to allow my pain to present itself externally, so that I didn’t have to carry it anymore. I dedicated myself to being radically vulnerable. My previous work, Com•mit•tal, a spoken word poetry album, and Through the Veil, a fiber assemblage collage, both purposefully expose generational illness and trauma within my family. The works shine a harsh light on the darkness that weaved through my history, attempting to reclaim the power it held.

After releasing that body of work, I wanted to focus on the light. I wanted to show gratitude to my loved ones who stood by me through my pain, and my subsequent healing process. My current project, infinitlovalie, is a multimedia installation with video projections emanating from inside of an altered dollhouse. Each room of the dollhouse reimagines the rooms I grew up in, honors members of my family, and pays tribute to tender memories from my childhood. Projectors are placed inside three rooms of the dollhouse, propped up by a foundation of books that have either made a significant impact on my life, or contain messages that I hope to convey to my family.

Selected footage from two time periods in my family’s history are projected as a diptych on the exterior gallery wall. The projection on the left hand side is footage that my grandfather filmed of his growing family between the early 1940’s to the early 1970’s. The footage on the right was filmed by my grandfather and my mother, and mainly captures me and my twin brother’s early childhood, from 1992 to 2001. My grandfather took great pride in his family, and was an avid historian. He had documented most of his life as a father, capturing his children and grandchildren’s early lives through film. He had meticulously transferred this footage from 8mm film reels to 8mm videocassettes and VHS tapes, which I then transferred to a digital format. The total runtime of the footage in its entirety is roughly 16 hours. In infinitlovalie, both time periods play on a 20 minute loop.

The two projections are vertically shaped by the obstructing window frames of the dollhouse, only lending the viewer a portion of the story. The rest of the video frame is visible on the interior walls of the rooms the projectors occupy, lighting up the surrounding room with memories of smiling faces, my great-grandfather’s flower nursery, my parents before their divorce, and my grandmother in all her loveliness through my grandfather’s eyes. On the opposing wall, a mirror image of the projected video is reflected from the glass of the dollhouse windows, offering yet another alternate perspective of the past. A childhood and lineage that I had previously been looked back upon through the lens of my trauma, has been reframed. The small glimpses into moments from my family’s past reminds me of my grandfather’s value for preservation and perseverance. It reminds me of the immense love I was (and continue to be) surrounded by.

On the gallery wall that straddles the projected diptych and its opposing reflected mirror image, a much larger video is projected. A stream of ten lines of text ebbs and flows, rippling and branching out, similar to a river. The text is staggered in orientation, allowing it to be read not only left to right, but vertically. The video art is based on a series of poems that I wrote while in a meditative state. Each poem is meant to honor a different member of my family: Saturn Return for my mother, Sounds of Nature for my mother’s side of the family and our cottage in New Hampshire, Little Jonny Appleseed for my brother, and Dear Ol’ Dad for my father. Each word or phrase runs into the next, never finishing the thought, while simultaneously starting a new one. There is no sentence structure, in fact, there are no sentences. Some of the words are made up, or a combination of multiple words. The first and last words of each poem continue the flow, so that the poem has the ability to repeat indefinitely. I call them “infinity poems,” and I believe they came from someplace higher.

I believe I was guided through this work. By my ancestors, by my higher power. It is a celebration. It is a “thank you.” It is a relief. Throughout all the stages of making infinitlovalie, there was no resistance. Materials, ideas, and solutions seemed to fall into my lap. I could feel the work filling me with a glowing warmth. A light. I didn’t need to purge anything, or shed a burden, or process anymore darkness like I had grown so accustomed to doing with my work. I just had to accept what lies on the other side of grief when you let go of pain: an infinite universe waiting to love and support you.