My father has been battling cancer for the last few years, and it emotionally has taken its toll not only on myself but my family’s farm.
In many ways, a barn represents a farm's life and the farmer who takes care of it. Old barns will slowly decay and eventually fall unless they are adequately cared for. As long as I have lived, my father has dedicated his time and energy to maintaining their 160-year-old barn so that it still stands today. However, the way I see it, is this disease doesn’t just affect my father’s life but also that of the barn. They are intertwined, and without him, there is no farm.
The second part of this series represents my mother’s struggle to cope with the disease and how she has turned to the items in her life that bring her joy. For her, that has always been setting the table for formal dining. The lace table cloth is fragile and beautiful. It's used to disguise the tumors in a veil of materiality that only changes the invisible form's exterior.
This series is an ongoing evolution as I continue to process concepts around memory, mortality, and my father's life.
