There was a mountain near me when I was growing up. I could see it way across a long valley toward the Appalachian Mountains. It sloped slowly up to a point and then curved inward like a “C” and then sloped down at a faster rate. I have seen the same mountain multiple times to varying degrees of height as I got older working on my artworks. I saw it in Hungary while I was standing in a Jewish cemetery in Miskolc, and I saw it once from a second floor window in Villa de Leyva, Colombia.

Always a kind of surprise and memory at the same time, a clashing, strange feeling. Happiness. Humor. And loss. For what is being lost in the present and what was lost a long time ago looking at the mountain.

I hear stories about memory in every place I’ve gone with my artwork, Cocoon. Memory isn’t all sad stories but it’s often about loss. And sometimes awful gaping loss.