“Sister,” 2020. Metal fencing; wool dyed with lac, cutch, madder, avocado, and logwood; source images taken by the artist in 1999. 24”x70.”
My much-older sister, Lisa, lived in Boston. When I was four, we went to see her. I can count my memories of her on two hands; this is the first. I documented the trip on my red and blue, plastic, Fisher-Price 35mm camera.
Lisa passed away. We came from different moms, grew up in different generations, and ultimately didn’t know each other all that well. Yet genetically, I am more like this woman than I am like almost any other.
If I could know her now, as an adult, what of her would I recognize as myself? Are there clues to those commonalities hidden in my handful of memories? If make my old negatives into pixels, and the pixels into stitches - remember, knot, rethink, repeat - am I finding the truth or losing it? Does it matter, if doing it helps?