lace detail

 “Lace”, is a work that honors my maternal grandmother Anna’s life and lace work. Emerging from a prosthetic of a crack in the wall, is a water clear cast sculpture of gushing water that morphs into the lacework, which spills onto the floor.  

The imagery is specific to events in my grandmother’s life. Anna was 15 at the start of the 1915 Armenian genocide and witnessed her father being shot by a Turkish soldier. She, her mother, younger brother and younger sister were then sent on the Death March into the desert toward Syria. Eventually, as was the fate of many Armenians, her sister was overcome by hunger, and in her desperation she took her own life, plunging herself into the Euphrates River. Despondent, her mother wandered off into the mountains, and disappeared. Eventually her brother succumbed to typhoid and was taken away by Turkish soldiers and burned alive as was the common practice toward all Armenians with a contagious illness. 

Anna experienced continued indignations and atrocities in Turkey but through both her wit and the kindness of some Turkish civilians she survived for 5 more years,  eventually immigrating to the US through Ellis Island. Forced into a strange and new diasporic identity, Anna maintained her ability to love and see the beauty in humanity. She raised a family in the Bronx and was able to see good in the people she encountered, which were many, as she opened her home to a flux of boarders during the depression era in NY. The delicacy and stunning continuity of her lacework ( a significant Armenian cultural art form) is a visual metaphor of the defiant tenacity, inexorable strength, life affirming determination and unwavering grace that women in all cultures are able to, and indeed must harness to move toward a brighter future.