Dear Mother (click image for detail)
read artist statement for installation
Screenprint, Silk, Glass, Paper, Copper, Digital Video Projection, Book | by Louise Kames
Copyright © 2003 Louise Kames | All Rights Reserved
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Artist Statement for "Dear Mother"

Louise Kames BVM created the installation work, Dear Mother, to honor the twenty-two BVM Sisters with whom she lived or worked and who died in the last twenty years. Dear Mother consists of twenty black silk draped forms hanging from the ceiling suggesting the cape portion of the traditional BVM habit. They are arranged in pairs to evoke a ceremonial procession or recreational walk.

On the front of each cape form Kames screen printed a facsimile of the letter each sister wrote to the Mother General requesting entrance into the BVM Congregation. The back of the silk forms reveals photographic images of the pine walk, the walkway to the BVM cemetery at Mt. Carmel. (Additional prints of the entrance letters are hung on the inner wall to facilitate reading.)

On the floor beneath each suspended silk form is a plate glass replica of the grave markers in the Mt. Carmel cemetery, noting the birth, entrance and death dates of each sister. The blue tint of the glass panels suggests water, calling to mind a sacred ritual or the Mississippi River bordering Mt. Carmel. A copper vessel holds a video projection of a beating human heart immersed in water, symbolic of continued new life in the Congregation.

A Sacramentary, the Catholic book of prayers for celebration of the Eucharist, is displayed on the outer wall. This book was used for many years at Marian Hall, the BVM infirmary at Mt. Carmel. Images of the twenty-two women are printed on pages from the Sacramentary.