The Daughter's Dresses, 2019
Some years ago I had, what I can only describe as a vision, as I stepped off a bus into a honeyed summer afternoon. I had a vision of my young daughter. Despite the very physical truth that I had just had my last failed shot at fertility treatment, I still knew with conviction that this child was alive, perhaps not in this world with me here and now, but certainly somewhere, and as real as any of us. This dress story gifted me the space to explore my feelings around being childless and to tell the story of my real/not real daughter through the dresses she would have worn thanks to some flexible thinking about time and memory.
Although the project could have expanded to a lifetime of frocks, it ended up focused on 3 key garments corresponding with 3 key stages in my real/ not real daughter’s life. A baby-grow covered in embroidered girls names from my mother’s side of the family tells us of the power of naming a person. A little denim dress holds fast family sayings which seem peculiar to just my family, the red thread boldly declaring the wisdom of ancestors standing at my shoulders. And finally, the school pinafore dress with the embroidered alphabet letters to help our girl take her first days of learning.
A full essay is available:
2023 'Timeframes of Love: Perceptions of Memory and Nostalgia Explored through Creative Practice', Storying the Self - Performance and Communities, eds R. Adamson & J. Moriarty, pp7-17
Some years ago I had, what I can only describe as a vision, as I stepped off a bus into a honeyed summer afternoon. I had a vision of my young daughter. Despite the very physical truth that I had just had my last failed shot at fertility treatment, I still knew with conviction that this child was alive, perhaps not in this world with me here and now, but certainly somewhere, and as real as any of us. This dress story gifted me the space to explore my feelings around being childless and to tell the story of my real/not real daughter through the dresses she would have worn thanks to some flexible thinking about time and memory.
Although the project could have expanded to a lifetime of frocks, it ended up focused on 3 key garments corresponding with 3 key stages in my real/ not real daughter’s life. A baby-grow covered in embroidered girls names from my mother’s side of the family tells us of the power of naming a person. A little denim dress holds fast family sayings which seem peculiar to just my family, the red thread boldly declaring the wisdom of ancestors standing at my shoulders. And finally, the school pinafore dress with the embroidered alphabet letters to help our girl take her first days of learning.
A full essay is available:
2023 'Timeframes of Love: Perceptions of Memory and Nostalgia Explored through Creative Practice', Storying the Self - Performance and Communities, eds R. Adamson & J. Moriarty, pp7-17
