This was designed for the Kingdom of God show held at St Mark’s Episcopal Church the summer of 2024. I knew many of the entries would be of forests, mountains, the ocean and I wanted something specifically urban.
I remembered as a child seeing the mica in the sidewalk glittering near sunset and thought that the people were walking in a golden sparkly place. When I walked on those same sidewalks they didn’t seem as magical. This was the original idea and design.
The background photo is an open source photo of the subway stop near my home, our subway stop, 82nd Street, Jackson Heights, Queens, taken in the late 40s. The second insert photo of a woman walking along the same avenue was taken in 1972.
As I worked with the two photos the woman walking toward the sparkly place began to look like my mother. She has the same body type and the same free stride. The work triggered a memory.
When I was 5 (1948) we lived on 86th Street, I would walk to the corner closest (85th Street) to the subway stop without crossing the street. I would wait for my mother to come home. The sun was in my face and the sidewalks were all sparkly and my mother would come out of that magic sparkly place to me. She would take my hand and we would walk home together. My world was complete.
However, in the work, the corner of the street faces into the sun, to create the sparkly place. The woman is walking away from our house. This disturbed me until I realized that though the background is from when I was 5, the picture with the woman is from the year my mother died. She has made the turn away from our home, toward the sparkly place – toward the kingdom of god.