Improbable Spring.  2008; 2004-05. 
(43 painted panels and 62 "found" wallpaper  panels, 7 1/4 by 10 1/2 inches each, dimensions variable.) Gouache, archival ink jet prints, beeswax on mulberry paper; 
“found” wallpaper; wood, plastic, audio components. (Installed 2008; Westchester Arts Council, White Plains, NY.)        

This installation was drawn from the experience of my father's death, the images of robins inspired by a game we played each spring as to who might spot the first bird of the season. The robin, long associated with spring and rebirth, also relates - through juxtaposition and the handling of media - to temporality, loss, and memory. Installed in the windows of the mezzanine gallery, the brightly painted robins are superimposed upon digital images and layered to create a "landscape" of birds. The paper is coated with beeswax, making it translucent and allowing the digital images on the "underside" to bleed through-- nests, trees, bird watchers, houses, gymnasts, and people on stilts. The gymnasts, their images tightly cropped and arms outstretched, seem as if they're flying, while the bird watchers, looking up to the clouds, almost always seem to miss the birds. The people on stilts try to defy the weight of the very bodies whose forms allow them sentience.

On the gallery walls, panels of "found" floral wallpaper sheets carry associations to spring, home, and the family. The cut-out shapes mirror the images of the painted birds to reference notions of presence and absence. The surface of the wall is activated by the light moving through the cut-outs to form silhouettes of the birds upon the wall - present and, yet, intangible.