When I learned about our current CiC prompt, my thoughts started racing from one possibility of interpretation to the next. On and on for weeks. Should I go easy and work abstract, maybe look back and pick a point in my life where I changed my mind for better or worse, or even see it under current political focus?

Then, a new point of view opened, – what about the physical change of mind? 
Every cancer patient can confirm, Chemo Brain is a real thing. An Alzheimer’s diagnosis of a friend’s husband in his late 40’s hit that mark hard, and in a current twist of fate, – a new reality sets in with rapidly aging family members overseas. This fast progressing dementia seemed a bit to come out of nowhere, but with mental backtracking to events as early as 2011, I can see milestones not recognized as the beginnings of a longer, dramatic turn. First it was the missing social “filter” in an elevator talk with strangers, then at every visit, too often a dead-stop in the middle of a sentence with no recovery of words. How much of it is normal ageing, and when do you have to be concerned? The loss of memory goes in lockstep with loosing independence, and the unpredictability of behavior is deeply unsettling. My heart is heavy thinking of the loved ones far away. 

In my studio, I keep a precious stash of hand dyed cottons from a former local dye artist.  She was prolific and skillful in hand-dyeing, and I was a happy customer of the “Yard-of-the-Month” subscription for many years. Her daughter-in-law lives close to me, and I rather recently learned that Judy R. had not “just” retired, but she is suffering from advanced dementia and lives now in a care facility. 

In this work, my aim is to replicate with color the life a person had, or still has to diminishing degrees, and how it gets interrupted by darkness and blank spots. First little by little, but becoming a dark cloud of muddy matter.
When had I sliced, sorted and pieced back together the parts, I looked at the work from the far end of the room, then, the re-arranged strips appeared as re-shuffled DNA. I created unconsciously the breakdown of a human life.

Gray Matter, Dark Holes
20″ x 40″
Hand dyed cottons (by Judy Robertson), silk organza, fusible web, embroidery floss
Machine pieced improv arrangement, fused applique, machine and hand quilted