My mother used to take me to private art lessons, once a week, after school starting in middle school. She would drive me the other side of town, a thirty minute drive. While I went to my art lesson she would sit in the car, in the teacher’s driveway. I estimated that over the years she spent approximately 208 hours in the car waiting for me.
Art Class Car was a contemplative and durational performance, an act of empathy and prayer for and toward my Mother. Excavating through my own thoughts and memories, buried nearly 25 years ago, I approach this piece as a woman drawing near to middle age; taking on a new perspective previously unreachable to me as a child.
From March 19 to March 23, 2018, I drove to wherever my Mother happened to be that day (most of the time this was church). I sat in the car for two hours each day for five days. During this time I attempted to look at her with an empathetic eye and step into, as much as I could, her experience as a single mother in a foreign country.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
