Inspired by my own family secrets, what haunts... is an interactive art installation that explores secrets and their universality. Viewers respond and participate by reading and adding, in anonymity, their own - often-intimate - secrets to the installation. The varied secrets evoke sadness, horror, shock, humor, and reassurance. They "are riveting to read, telling stories of abortion, adoption, and affairs mixed with more universal confessions, like, 'my heart is broken and I am terrified.'" (1)

The installation consists of a wall papered with secrets and a booth where participants add secrets to the project. Written in pencil on hand-cut 4"x5" newsprint rectangles, the secrets have the visual tone of a whisper, on an intimate scale. The newsprint yellows over time, evoking remnants of the past, old family letters, and nostalgia. The first 150 of the more than 2000 secrets in the project were collected by mail and exhibited in a 2002 exhibition at Artists Foundation Gallery in South Boston. The booth component was created in 2002. The spare wooden structure (6'9"x3'x3') and muslin curtain create a private and meditative space - a confessional. Participants write and then deposit their secrets into a locked box. During the time in which the project is installed, I periodically unlock the secrets and add them to an adjoining wall. Thus, participants experience the power of having written their secret and then seeing it posted alongside those of previous participants. "Viewers often spend hours reading all of the secrets posted on the walls and often come back multiple times to view the project... what haunts... demonstrates how much people have in common and how common their secrets are. It is a snap shot of what makes us human and of the human condition." (2) Participants are invited to note where they are from in an accompanying project notebook and their origins include: Liberia, West Africa; Philadelphia; Brooklyn, NY; Venezuela; El Paso, TX; Chillan, Chile; Guatemala City; Libertyville, IL; Hermosillo, Mexico; Equador; among many others.

what haunts... has been installed in seventeen venues to date (in MA, OR, CT, and NC), including a lounge, a church, two college campuses, and a public library. A selection of the secrets has been engraved into memorial plaques for installation in various settings. In Summer 2003, these plaques were installed on the fence bordering the North Canal in Lawrence, Massachusetts and, later, were installed around the campus of Merrimack College in North Andover, MA. In these apparently random settings, the content of the secrets raises questions for the viewer about their meaning, allowing the viewer to create their own "story".

One goal is to travel the project internationally, expanding the participation in and viewing of what haunts... across ethnicity, class, education, race, and income levels. An artists' book related to the project was recently completed, with an award from Caldera residency, Oregon (2003) and a grant from the Berkshire Taconic Foundation's Artist Resource Trust.

1.Cate McQuaid, "Some edgy artists play with space," The Boston Globe, August 23, 2002. 2.Kathleen Bitetti, "Participation Required" exhibition statement, Lillian Immig Gallery @ Emmanuel College, October 2004.