What Haunts Timeline Reverse Chronology

Conant Gallery, Lawrence Academy, Groton, MA,
September 6 - November 4 2005 with opening reception on Friday, October 7, 6-8pm
Invited as artist-in-residence to install the project and create work in response to the project with students in the English Department.

Space, Portland, ME
June 3 - 17, 2005
www.space538.org
Early in the run of the installation, the Director, Nat May, emailed to say, "We've got the Jehova's Witnesses in town looking curiously at the window." My reply: I hope they go inside to write their secrets.

North Carolina Arts Incubator, Siler City, NC
February - June 2005
My hometown.

Meredith College, Raleigh, NC
January - February 2005
The project was installed in the Rotunda at Meredith, my alma mater, along with new works on paper and a few older works.
I was a visiting artist to junior and senior seminar students during the run of the exhibition. Working with the students was especially enjoyable and I appreciate their assistance in installing my work. Senior art major, Rebecca Gorman was especially helpful and I'm looking forward to following her work.

Lillian Immig Gallery, Emmanuel College, Boston, MA; October - November 2004
The project was installed as part of the group show, "Participation Required" curated by Kathleen Bitetti. Other artists included in the show: Robert Goss, Aimee LaPorte, Meg Rotzel, and Diane Willow.

Dimock Community Health Center's Women's Health Forum, Roxbury, MA
May 2004
The project was installed outdoors as part of this one-day health fair for women. Roxbury is a diverse community with people from many different ethnic backgrounds. A woman that I met that day, told me the long-kept secret in her family: that her grandmother was white. This had remained a secret because of shame passed down from generation to generation. The woman's own children had wondered at the babies born to them with blue eyes and when she had tried to tell them the truth of their ancestry, they would not believe it. This woman's own blue eyes revealed the truth, which her children could not accept.

Essex Art Center, Main Gallery, Lawrence, MA
April 2005
Project installed as part of the Faculty Show. The Essex Art Center is a non-profit community art center, offering art classes to both children and adults. The project was installed along with documentary images of the secrets released the previous November at Caldera in Sisters, OR. Many children deposited their secrets during the installation's run.

New Haven Free Public Library, New Haven, CT
April - June 2004
William Armstrong, the Reference Librarian, invited me to install the project in the Fine Art section of the library. Many, many secrets were collected at this venue. A lot of people hang out in the library and the booth was installed near the seating area where homeless people frequently spend their day.

Artspace, New Haven, CT
January 2004
Denise Markonish, the curator at Artspace, invited me to install the project in the lounge area. I gave a talk to the Teen Docents about my work during the run of the installation. The closing reception coincided with the opening, across the street, for "Treasure Maps", a show curated by Janine Antoni. Chitra Ganesh, who had work in that show, suggested that I install my project at branches of the Registry of Motor Vehicles, since people are often waiting in line there and could spend that time reading the secrets.

Caldera, Sisters, OR
November - December 2004
While in residency at Caldera, high up in the Cascade Mountain Range, I performed the first secrets "release". Compelled by the incredible beauty of that place, I made prayer flag-like constructions of the secrets and hung them up in the tall pine trees, to be taken by the wind as a metaphor for the "letting go" which many project participants have found to be so powerful. I returned the next day, after a snowstorm (it snowed almost without stopping for nearly two weeks), to find the secrets scattered about on the forest floor, half buried in snow and ice, some clinging to trees. I photographed them. Also while in residency, I gave a talk about my work to Sisters' residents at the Community Action Coalition. Kit Stafford was instrumental in making that talk happen. Thank you, Kit.

Artists Foundation, Boston, MA
November 2003
Project installed in the Artists Foundation gallery as part of the South Boston Open Studios weekend at the invitation of Kathleen Bitetti.

McQuade Library Gallery, Merrimack College, North Andover, MA Lore
October - November 2003
Merrimack College is a "modern Catholic center of higher learning in the Northeast". The project was installed in a solo show, "Lore", which also included new fairytale-inspired installations. The gallery director mentioned that he had never seen as many students visit the gallery, and do so repeatedly and for extended periods of time to read the secrets on the wall. I participated on a panel discussion, "Sexism", during the run of the exhibition. Additionally, I worked with international students in the American Language Academy, who helped to gather secrets from students on campus and from their family members back home (mostly in Korea and Vietnam).

North Canal Art Walk, Lawrence, MA Marker
June 2003
A selection of twelve secrets were engraved onto memorial plaques and installed on the fence along the North Canal in Lawrence as part of this outdoor art exhibition organized by Terry Bastian. The intention being that as a passerby encountered the secret out of context of the project, he/she would wonder about its meaning and origin, inevitably creating his/her own explanation. A few of the secrets: "My heart is broken and I am terrified"; "As a child, I was not allowed to tell anyone that my father was a Holocaust survivor"; "I do not vote"; "I have never had a real conversation with my father. I don't think he likes me very much". There was an existing memorial plaque on the fence, marking a spot where a woman was killed in an automobile accident. I also viewed my "marker" plaques as memorials, in a sense, to the sadness and loss expressed in many of the secrets that have been contributed to the project.

Atty. May's Beachcomber Lounge, Plum Island, MA
June - September 2003
I was invited by May Chickliss to install the project in her bar/restaurant in this small island town. The bar is frequented in the daytime by local fishermen. When I stopped in each week to unlock the secrets and post them on the bar walls, I was met at the door by several regulars who were anxious to read the new contributions. We talked at length about certain secrets, wondering about the outcome of conflicts and resolutions. A patron at the bar on one of those days asked me if I was a therapist. "No, an artist." One day, a patron told me his secret: that he awoke one night as a child, while staying with his grandmother, to find her topless at the kitchen table, painting her nails. At the time that he told me his secret, his grandmother was very ill and, so, he was compelled to "memorialize" her through this revelation. The nighttime patrons were often a bit intoxicated which brought a lot of color to their "confessions". One of the most intense and painful secrets that has been contributed to the project was gathered at this venue. I made an agreement with May, the bar owner, not to hang the secrets gathered there at the venue, but to include them in future installations.

St. James Episcopal Church, Amesbury, MA
April - May 2003
Father Mike Shirley invited me to install the project during Lent. St. James does not have a confessional booth, so he, being the "hip" Father that he is, thought it would be interesting to have a temporary "confessional". A small handful of secrets were contributed at this venue. One of the most compelling: "Since 911, I cry every day. I want war." Maybe, a secret to this person's family and friends, given the nature of the venue, I found this one filled with the internal conflict that the looming war was creating for many people at that time.

Artrages, Mobius, Boston, MA
October 2002
This is Mobius gallery's one-night event of performance, installation, and live music. I worked with my good friend, Kai Vlahos, to build the booth component in order to provide a "private" space in which participants would feel comfortable revealing their secrets. It worked. When I arrived at the event, to my amazement, there was a line of people waiting outside of the booth to write their secrets. Several hundred were contributed that evening. A few weeks later, I was told by a man that he and his wife had revealed to each other later that night the contents of their secrets and that, although it was difficult for each of them to hear the other's revelation, the process brought them closer to each other.

Artists Foundation, Boston, MA
August 2002
Kathleen Bitetti, Director of Artist Foundation (and curator/activist/artist advocate extraordinaire), invited me to create an installation for a solo exhibition in the gallery. I had been thinking a lot at the time about my own long-kept family's secrets. While reading Susan Stewart's book of poetry, "The Forest", in a small boat, anchored in the mouth of the Rowley River in Massachusetts, I was inspired by the following lines: What haunts are not the dead but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.

Initially, I mailed out about three hundred letters asking for secrets to be sent to me, anonymously. I wasn't certain what to expect, and, so was surprised to find the replies pouring in - sometimes, five or more each day. For the installation at Artists Foundation, I pinned the secrets on a wall and installed sculptural elements of plaster-cast baby footed jumpers, raku-fired sculptural elements, hair, and a floor piece constructed of player piano scrolls buried under layers of wax, red earth from North Carolina, ink, and amber shellac. I was told that a woman at the opening reception discovered a secret on the wall that she believed was written by her lover, and that she became angered and upset by its contents which made reference to him still being in love with a former girlfriend. She wrote a secret in response
to his.