Saturday, July 12, 2014

Purpose


This piece is from my two-person Tangled Memories exhibit.  The exhibit explored my experiences with my Dad's Early-Onset Alzheimer's. (He was diagnosed in his early 50's, when I was still a teenager, and died in 2000 at the age of 65).


Purpose

After my Dad could no longer work, he still had a desire to be productive, to have a purpose. My sister was creative in coming up with things for him to do. Each day he came over to her house she would fling mulch onto the driveway. He would arrive, show disgust at how such a thing could have happened, and get right to cleaning it up.

She would mix nails and screws together and have him sort them out. He folded clothes again and again and cut pictures from magazines. It did not matter that he repeated these tasks over and over. He did not remember. What mattered was that he took pride in each accomplishment and had a sense of purpose, even if only for a moment. 

When asking my Dad what he had been doing, his standard response was "Oh, thises and thats."

Size: (h x w) 14" x 24"
Media: Digital photograph triptych
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