The sharp edge of your whistle
flew through the golden haze of early evening
calling me home
Running....
downstairs and to gently glowing portals
pressing warm flushed cheeks
towards iridescent sparkles
falling from an open sky, exclaiming
this must have been your doing.
You are there
in the cathedral of gnarled wooden spires
searching...
among brown, dead leaves for the honeycombed shape of
coveted mushrooms
The steady rumble of the mower at magic hours and moment in between
Spilled birdseed across a cold white sheet and the sudden gale of wings
Drifting...
away from this world and looking across the warped, glittering landscape
to your reassuring wave
A storm…
pitch dark clouds trespassing across a resistant blue sky
the leg of a plastic chair scraping concrete was
your signal, calling me home:
“Let’s watch this monster come in, together”
--
Two years after leaving what I knew as home, my father was diagnosed with cancer. In that same year, I began to collect my feelings of nostalgia and homesickness into a series of photographs that would become Umbra. The impending absence of my father passed over the safety of my memories like a shadow, and my reality began to break apart. For a little over seven years I made photographs to find my way back home and cope with the anxiety of losing a parent, creating a fragile world that exists someplace between magic, sorrow, and memory.