Still Within Reach

Artwork

Dec 1

A few years ago, my daughter Katherine arrived with a box of vintage children’s books. They had been chosen for her over many years—stories that had once belonged to her childhood. Knowing how often I gather old books and papers into my work, she asked if I might want them, to give them another life.

Of course, I said yes.

As we looked through them together, we came across a small book of children’s parables from the 1950s. One story was called “Katie’s Dream.”

“Maybe you could make something for me using this,” she said.

So I did. I filled the piece with fragments of that story, with images that felt like her, and with small phrases from her childhood that only a mother would remember. It is still her story—but one I had a hand in shaping. I gave it to her for her birthday.

Years later, for my son Sam’s birthday, I made another piece. This one held colors, imagery, and fragments of Japanese text. Like Katie’s Dream, it rests beneath a sheet of clear plexiglass. The layers beneath hold the textures and memories of childhood, visible through the transparent surface of the present.

These pieces belong to my children, of course. But they are part of my story too, and I wanted to share them here.