Grandma
This work is inspired by Alice Walker’s In Her Mother’s Gardens. Walker’s essay focuses on the way Black women harbored their creativity in spite of the obstacles they faced. I thought of my Grandmother, Julian Magyar. She was born in 1910 on the border of Austria/Hungary. She lived through two World Wars and Nazi Occupation. She endured more than any person should experience but yet somehow, she survived.
By the time I met her, she was already in her mid-60s and continued to live as if she were in Hungary. As a young child, I spent nearly every day with her. She grew our fruits and vegetables. In fact, she made all of our food from scratch…I was never allowed to eat from a can or box. She made our blankets and pillows. She made our clothes. She made our knits. She mended anything fixable. She washed our clothes by hand and hung them out to dry. And I did these things next to her, in miniature fashion, learning the skills necessary to be a woman. I learned these gestures through mimicry.
In seeking the source of my own creative voice, I recognize how important this experience was to my method of working. The quiet creativity of these seemingly menial tasks inform my comfort in repetitive mark making and focus on detail. This series records the marks made by her activity, and by extension, my activity at a young age.
This is an ongoing project.
