Throughout my life I have been surrounded by the accumulated possessions of deceased relatives – remnants of the past were omnipresent. My Italian Immigrant family, who lived through the Great Depression, threw nothing away. I was aware that specific items "had belonged" to people I knew, through stories of family history: the deceased occupied a place in our home.
It was not until my own grandmother's death that I started to see these remnants of personal family history as possible material for my work. I began to collect items that once belonged to my grandmother. My close relationship with her intensified my desire to keep her possessions. Her nightgowns particularly fascinated me. The worn areas, marks of where her body had been emit an aura of her presence.
The nightgowns were my beginning.