In January 2022, my mother and my estranged husband moved into my house so that I could provide the care they needed as they navigated life with different stages of Cognitive Impairment. Later that year, I took a 75 year old Singer Featherweight sewing machine, also not in mint condition, and created a series of work to describe what I was seeing around me.
I titled the series Ageing and Dementia.
Due to the limitations of the Featherweight, the work was executed as if they were pencil drawings. These were stitched with black polester thread, on off-white or beige linen scraps, the linen was given by an acquaintance out of Toronto. These pieces are approx 8" x 10"
The pieces marked with an * asterisk, were sewn on my Juki sewing machine, and these are considered to be Fabric collage.
In the early days people would insist that my husband wasn't ill. I said nothing.
Their conversations eventually becomes strange. No one to talk to anymore.
It is sometimes hard to reconcile the newer version of the person with who they have become.
When they moved in, I had been living alone. I now had 2 people following me whereever I went.
Often my husband, would stand and stare. This is an image of the back of his head, as I watched him.
Unrecognizable from the person you used to know, and they stop recognizing you. One day my mother called me "Nice Lady"
One of the universal symptoms of dementia is the person has someplace to go other than where they are.
The person often blends in with the environment and their walking isn't a cause for concern.
12" x 15"
It isn't unusual to find former community stalwarts, Culture Giants, with Dementia.
The Walker is exposed, others realize this isn't normal
As their language skills diminish, they might resort to silence, shrieks, hummmms or get completely inventive. See Asemic Speaking. My mother behaved as if nothing had changed. She kept talking even when she recognized that it was garbled. Her syntax and phrasing stayed true to her style, but it was just sounds most of the time. Done in a style called AsemicWriting, the piece looks like words, but they are just shapes laid out like words.
You literally watch the person disappear right in fornt of you.
This diptych is a portrayal of the person taking up less space, getting smaller in stature, quieter in speech. Sometimes they will sit alone in a quiet place.
The shadow cast is larger than the form. What we remember, is more than what we see of the person.
Sometimes in the middle of an interaction, you feel their disappearance.
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