Cut and Paste Mom on Mother's Day

Fig. 1: Nancy's mother and grandmother

In a recent article, psychologist Elizabeth Lombardo, author of the happiness guidebook, "A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness" tells us:

"...the proverbial 'hit the pillow to get aggression out against your spouse' has actually been shown to increase anger and resentment."

I remember stomping off to the Reichians for bioenergetic therapy after college, in the hopes that I could avenge a controlling childhood through "expressive exercises" like pillow-beating. I beat the pillow alright, but the more the counselor encouraged man-on-pillow violence, the more I couldn't stop my nervous laughter.

Basically, I discovered you can't blame an Obsessive Compulsive mother for being mentally ill any more than you can believe a pillow is a stand-in for your dysfunctional parent.

In the end, I found cutting and pasting (what today has become my digital photomontage work) much more therapeutic. Perhaps it's something about all the time us digital artists spend studying a face or a body, zooming in, carefully cutting out a figure rather than coloring inside the lines. And that's just the half of it. There's also the magic that occurs when you slide two combatants side by side, engaging them in imaginary conversation. Stare at the two of them long enough, and you'll swear they're getting along.

So cut and paste your mom on Mother's Day ... or leave it to the experts.


Nancy Gershman is a digital artist who offsets your losses and regrets by creating custom wishful reality from photos, memories and family stories. To order this meaningful photo gift in time for Mother's Day, contact Nancy at her studio Art For Your Sake or by emailing her at nancy@artforyoursake.com or 773-255-4677.

Merging the Paths of Grief and Life with Prescriptive Photomontage

Can a healing photo montage - not just metaphorically but literally - commingle our public and private selves?

Wrestling with the death of her grandchild, a professional grief counselor was completely thrown off balance by her own grief. She writes of:

•  searching her memory for home movies of WHO was lost
•  withdrawing from social interactions to remember WHEN all was lost 
•  trying to identify a specific moment or event that explains WHY it happened, and finally
•  making peace with WHAT happened, gradually, over time  

Yes, ever so gradually, this grandmother came to the realization that she was separating two paths - grief and life - when she spoke to strangers. Not until she could explain to people outside her inner circle that she was a different person now as a result of her granddaughter's death was she able to find her equilibrium again. What begins as a feeling of "embarrassment at the collision of private and public selves," (Meghan O'Rourke, Why We Write About Grief, The New York Times, February 27, 2011) eventually matures into gravitas. (Wikipedia defines gravitas variously as "weight, seriousness, dignity, or importance, and connotes a certain substance or depth of personality.") 

This makes sense in my work as a prescriptive artist. The photomontages I create from repurposed photos of the loved one and the bereaved are designed to celebrate a life while never shying away from the WHO-WHEN-WHY and WHAT of the death. The imagery is meant to convey this new and richer inner life of the bereaved as they dream about their loved one. Like in a healing dream, it's a scene made splendid with humor, irony and symbolism ...  their kind of humor, irony and symbolism. And by envisioning a future colored by their spirit, these "healing dreamscapes" produce courage during one of the shakiest periods of our lives.  In the words of the writer Joyce Carol Oates:

"... surely those who have been magnanimous in life can be imagined as magnanimous in death. We want to believe that the deceased whom we loved would love us enough to wish us well, in what remains of our lives." (Why We Write About Grief, The New York Times, February 27, 2011).

If I've hit the right notes, the finished product puts the bereaved on the right path again. Where the fork in the road merges again.