In 2001, my mom died from breast cancer, a week before her 55th birthday. While cleaning out her home, where I grew up, I discovered a small crawl space above the stairs and when I opened the door to it, I found a dusty old cardboard box inside. I took the box out, brushed off the dust, and carefully opened it up, not really sure what I would find nor if I wanted to know! But when I looked inside, I saw many journals and sketch books. A month after losing my mom at 21, I found a portal into the history of the woman I never got to ask all the questions to - her journals from 1966 at age 20 through the year that I was born, in 1980. In them, she wrote about the daily details of life but she also constantly sketched faces - from on the subway, while standing in line, at a party, on the street, with friends, and wherever she found herself taken with a particular face. My mother’s journals are snapshots of the people around her in 1966, 1974, 1978, and all the years in between, on the streets of NYC, the beaches of Israel, and the parks and cafes in Paris.
To achieve this post-mortem collaboration between mother and daughter, I lay her drawings on the metal I will saw and then I trace her pen strokes with my saw strokes. I try to preserve the essence captured by her, decades ago. Some designs are exact traces and some have additions to amplify the piece like the enamel hair on ‘Billie’ or the earrings on ‘the twin’. This collection of work is not only an homage to my mother who died too soon, but a reminder that we are all connected; one day you may be sitting on a subway car in NYC in 1976, being drawn by the woman across from you, and then it’s 2021, and your face is on an earring made by her daughter and being worn by strangers.
Sunshine Superwoman is the post-mortem collaboration between mother, Sunny, and daughter, Elaan. Sunshine Superwoman is named after something found written on a page in Sunny’s 1976 journal.
