From October 2023 to September 2024 I presented monthly performances in the gallery, on the sidewalk in front of the gallery windows and once in a private garden on themes relating to Mother Tree, such as “Forgiveness Flows in Streams”,  “She Hears Our Calls”, “Pollen”, “Alleluia”.

The Genesis for “Mother Tree” arose when Choreographer Evangel King invited artist friends to make an altar honoring the dead and install it in a place of decay.  Shortly thereafter, during a voice lesson I sang the text from Jared Farmer’s NYT essay, “The Wisdom of Ancient Trees”.  Afterwards I walked outside to our tiny redwood grove carrying my altar; a handmade paper tray with feathers, gold thread, pine needles, and some of my mother’s ashes. Placing it beside a redwood, I began intoning my mother’s name, her mother’s name, my great grandmother’s name.

In my gallery window, I suspended two 8 foot high x 4 foot wide handmade paper “Ancestral Cloths” that are embossed with my Sicilian Grandmother’s tatting. I placed a tiny redwood branch in a glass jar filled with water along with my Catal Hoyuck Mother Goddess statue.