What Remains began as an exploration of what is left behind: fragments of flowers, memory, color, and beauty after the original moment has passed. The works were created on paper and translucent grasscloth, allowing the images to feel almost suspended, neither completely present nor completely gone. There was something fragile about them, but also something enduring.
I had imagined what it would feel like to see the work hanging at the Cummer, but I hadn't imagined what it would feel like to stand in the middle of it surrounded by so many people I love. Friends, family, collectors, people who have followed my work for years. The room was full, and pieces were selling right and left. I would turn around and another red dot was on the wall.
There is something wonderfully strange about making work alone and then suddenly watching it belong to other people. These pieces that had lived with me, that had been considered and fussed over, were leaving the museum with new lives ahead of them. For an exhibition about what remains, I found myself thinking just as much about what moves on.
I wore Ulla Johnson's collaboration with Helen Frankenthaler that night, which felt particularly meaningful. Frankenthaler's work was wrapped around me while my own work surrounded me. Color on fabric, color on paper, one female artist carrying another through a night I don't think I will ever forget.
I remember looking around that room and thinking: this is what remains, too.
Not only the artwork. The people who showed up. My family. My friends. The conversations. The feeling of seeing someone connect with something I made strongly enough to want to take it home.
After everything that went into making What Remains, the opening became part of the work for me. Maybe the most unexpected part.
Because in the end, what remains isn't necessarily the thing itself.
Sometimes it's the feeling.
