This Is My Home
This is My Home made in 2010 was a phrase that my Grandmother would question during her final stages of Alzheimer’s. In the time that I spent with her while she was on 24 care at a home she lived in later on in life, I contemplated the term “unconditional.” It is an acceptance of another. There is trust in sadness, in laughter and in confusion. What I learned in communicating with my Grandmother is how important the present moment is. So the plan for this documentation was to interact with her without asking any questions about the past or future but to allow associations to arise. The stenciled blocks with associative phrases were a way to interact with my Grandmother and representative of a disintegrating brain. The four phrases used for this collaboration were “this is my home,” “unconditional,” “Pauline” her name, and “I love to dance.” Anytime something came up about dancing like music or Lawrence Welk, she would say, “I LOVE to dance…used to.”
