Honors Thesis Paper

THE MANY DIMENSIONS OF MEMORIAL ART

INTRODUCTION
September 11, 2001, has been called the christening date for the 21st century for a new zeitgeist, different from the 20th century, rushed into our civilization’s consciousness. Commentators at the time suggested that the crashing of hijacked airliners into the two towers of the New York World Trade Center, a section of the Pentagon in the Washington, D.C. area, and a western Pennsylvania field ushered in a new era. The Weltanschauung (worldview) within much of the U.S. population had a seismic shift towards a pervading sense of vulnerability from the unseen, the unexpected.

Accompanying the heroic rescue efforts and the relief materials came spontaneous outpourings of memorial art on found objects such as bed sheets, cardboard, vinyl and banners. The materials were decorated with personal, handwritten messages, poetry, photographs, slogans and the organizational designation of the senders. These memorial art pieces were later displayed on the railings of the New York City Trinity Church adjacent to the Ground Zero site. That board-bounded area itself took on aspects of a holy shrine visited by millions over the subsequent months. In Virginia, on the small rise close to the Pentagon, assemblages of flowers, trinkets, photos, drawings, mementos were scattered, propped against or hung on trees like Hindu street shrines in Katmandu or Mongolian rock oovoos holding sticks decorated with colorful scarves. Within a year, proposals for permanent memorials in the form of sculpture, gardens and architectural plans for rebuilding the Manhattan site were being reviewed.

While this supporting paper will argue that memorial art emerges as a spiritual response to loss and death, the scope of this Honors Program Memorial Art Exhibit is personal and individual, not organizational, institutional or political. The Memorial Art Exhibit, Lost Gifts: Memorials to Those Loved, is being held on May 1-8, 2003, at the Towson Commons Gallery, Pennsylvania and York Roads, Towson. Computer art is represented with thirty images. Twenty-nine are 11”x 14” prints mounted on 16”x 20” black foam board. The only diptych is 11”x 28” mounted on 16”x 34” black foam board. Four of the nine oil, acrylic, acrylic/mixed media measure 24” x 35 1/2”, while the remaining five are 30”x 40”. Their names, size and media are listed in Appendix A

9/11 has served to heighten awareness that trauma and death occur bringing destruction on many dimensions, that recovery also comes on many levels: physical, emotional, behavioral, spiritual, symbolic, concrete, individual, group and national. Classically memorials have been reserved for rulers, military conquerors, major political and cultural heroes. Computer art offers the option of broadening the audience and potential participants in memorial art, bridging the span between spontaneous street art and grand monuments. While not as permanent as outdoor statues, less costly digital prints can capture memories of significant people and events, bringing pleasure and peace to the patrons.

PAINTINGS AND COMPUTER DIGITAL PRINTS
My interest in memorial art emerged gradually during my initial computer art course some time before 9/11 when I created a digital photographic collage of my parents as a segment of a class project. Another of my deceased husband followed as a memorial image of a significant portion of his life. Friends, hearing that I wanted to create similar images for parents whose children had died, volunteered to be my patrons for further class projects. With their help, I created a process of interviews, image creation, client review and critique of initial choices; revision based on these comments; then final printing and delivery.

I began with an author living in my neighborhood that I had met through Compassionate Friends and our neighborhood association. In translating into visible symbols the story of her son’s death in a train accident, I began to illustrate a sequence of events. In T.C. Turns the Corner, photographs depict an adolescent going away to his chosen art college.

Here I also began using recent downloaded photographs of outer space, the universe including black holes taken by the Chandra, NASA’s orbiting x-ray observatory (1). The background of the image above is the center of the Milky Way galaxy, just as T.C. was the center of his mother’s universe. As my painting developed in Painting III and IV, I chose to use the same theme of loss and descriptive material gathered from patrons. One spoke of her visit to Chicago mid-winter and its symbolism for her feelings of grief. Her description of her icebound, dark, empty, cold grief served as the basis for my painting below entitled Black Hole of Loss.

Here also began my use of mixed media as I pasted in small silver beads moving up into and around the black hole to indicate the personal, psychic shattering of the bereaved. The red center is not only accurate astronomically but also symbolizes the anger associated with the hurt of bereavement. This image is my first painting that introduced me to new medium, oil on canvas, to deal with the same themes of memorial art. A further extension later has been to use acrylic on canvas, often with mixed media.

However, the computer remains my primary tool for integrating these images, manipulating their size, scale, repetition, opacity and color. Speed of composition, rapidity of experimentation with options, capacity to revise quickly are other advantages offered in computer art. With this new tool, art has entered the electronic age whose economic hallmark is increased productivity with a concomitant higher monetary return on time invested. Computer art lends itself to cost effective limited editions of prints. Memorial art can now extend to a larger market of potential patrons, bridging the gap between spontaneous found art and monumental sculpture. Art, a classic form of expression, becomes another accessible option for a wider audience to channel constructively intense emotions of bereavement. A grandmother, whose fifteen-year-old granddaughter suddenly and unexpectedly died while working at a computer, happily showed me a watercolor especially painted in the granddaughter’s remembrance. That beautiful image provided daily comfort for her as she passed it in her hallway. With computer art, digital panels customized to each person’s experience, are now a viable option aesthetically, emotionally and spiritually.

For the creative process, the computer program PhotoShop offers many specific tools, which provide new creative opportunities. For example, the motion blur filter is applied in the image, Apple Indian, to indicate identity issues of a Gros Ventre American Indian adopted at the age of four by a WASP academic family. My parameters for loss expanded during this project to include loss of health and loss of family by the young as with this adopted child. Here, the pen tool allows a clean-cut extraction of a segment of an old photograph, the initial picture sent by the Montana State Welfare Department to the prospective adoptive family. The background, indicating an adult return to home territory, is a segment of another photograph taken recently in a southern Oregon valley surrounded by mountains and forests. Barely visible, circling the head hangs his personally created ceremonial Indian shield. The apple is painted with the paintbrush tool providing the derogatory ethnic symbol of group desertion. Reservation Indians label “Apple Indians” those they consider “red on the outside, white on the inside.” The push and pull artistically of the image indicates an Indian child clothed in acceptable “white” garb, a coat and tie, clutching a modern war helicopter, imbedded in an adult identity symbolized by a hand-made Indian choker, long hair, informal clothing in a western, rural setting.

Working with a young athlete who was diagnosed with breast cancer in her mid-twenties led to the image, Journey, which summarized her ten years from college graduation to her current state of being cancer free for three years. Again this demonstrates how the photographic collage can give a sense of personal history, a narrative over time. This links my memorial art to elements of illustration. Technically, the fresco filter over the full-face image in the top center of the picture intensifies darks and lights, giving a visual reference to Renaissance Italian paintings of the Madonna, indicating a spiritual dimension of growth. The repetition of the baldhead, shorn by chemotherapy, suggests pain and suffering. The magic wand tool which deletes certain colored pixels in the upper right segment provides a sense of being ravaged, “blown away”, by the loss of health, the immanence of death. Changes in the opacity level allow the many segments to be displayed with a sense of depth and distance. Finally the larger scale of the contemplative photo in the lower left segment suggests growth, maturity and successful completion of a hazardous journey.

Dreams became a significant segment of my conversation with one bereaved parent. Dream analysis has been a major professional interest of mine as a psychologist since my doctoral studies in the late 1970s. Acrylic with collage in Dream #2: Flying Lessons below was inspired by a dream in which her deceased son was teaching her how to fly. An inverse computer image of her son is used to indicate his death, as are repetitive computer images to indicate the mother’s sense of flight and upward movement, his encircling, supportive presence as she moves slowly upward toward a circle of celestial energy. Text introduces another design element that reiterates the theme of expansion and learning.

While some observers have responded to the participant process of creating memorial art somewhat skeptically by labeling it therapy, that has never been the object or primary intention of my memorial art. Family members of the deceased have met me on a bridge of shared concern wishing to help me complete my task. For their part, humans have always wanted to mark physically and symbolically significant people and events in their lives. My project participants have been willing to review critical events in their lives to create art that reflected their personal experiences. They helped me form a photographic collage, an “X” that marked their significant spot; a visible object based on memories and photographs of a special period or someone they loved and lost to early death.

MEMORIAL ART AS PERSONAL NARRATIVE
Art has traditionally pushed boundaries, not only of the materials for creation, but also the substantive content, confronting societal taboos. My work in memorial art thematically explores the taboo of death as a topic of daily intercourse and as such is aligned with conceptual art. However, the method employed is a personal narrative format, more closely aligned to illustration.

Our dominant materialist culture ignores and denies the reality that all life includes death as well as birth. In most social situations it has been taboo to discuss death as an ongoing process of life. Breaking the taboo usually brings the punishment of shunning, turning away to deflect or stop the conversation. This allows most people to continue to deny the other’s experience, to behave as if the event had never happened, that the person never existed. Social role demands provide boundaries of restraint to impede casual discussion of the impact of death on subsequent behavior. Only in the past forty years has the mainstream popular U.S. culture openly acknowledged the grief and pain that revolve around separation and endings. So my memorial art embraces the dark side of life with its intense suffering, its chronic pain of unresolved grief, as it depicts personal experiences in a family’s life.

The process of creating the images is profoundly feminine. The investigation has its genesis within an intimate, personal context where the material is gathered through a taped conversation and loan of old photographs. The work involves participation, cooperation with the bereaved because it involves listening and sharing in their memories of critical events in their lives. Their stories inspire the images that emerge from the audiotaped descriptions, the context and aftermath. That artist-bereaved communication is verbal, interactive, immediate, personal and repetitive over time terminating with the delivery of an image capturing treasured moments for the bereaved with the deceased. The model that emerged has aspects similar to Suzi Gablik’s vision of a new connected, relational, healing paradigm for art described in her book, The Reenchantment of Art (2). Criteria defining this model and inclusion in the Honors Program were developed early and are specified in Appendix A.

In the standardized taped initial interview (Appendix B), I always ask what people feel they have lost and gained from their experience, what they had learned that they had not known before. A father’s response and photographs of his five years with a daughter who died of renal cancer provided the content for Melissa’s Painting. The collage tells the story of their extended two-year battle with the disease, interspersed with periods of remission and apparent normalcy. Again, it deals with events over time, a narrative.

The visual images emerge from memory of external events, subsequent changes and dreams. The action is based in community over time. It deals with the creation and nurturance of human life, and its loss. Cognitive perception, emotional response, subsequent behavior, much of which is invisible, provides the substance of the work. The task is to make the invisible become visible for the person involved. The purpose is to distill and illustrate the experience of that life now no longer physically present into a tangible, visual image that can be viewed outside oneself. Emotionally, it provides the opportunity for distance, a changed perspective and possibly greater objectivity of a life-changing period. The artist needs to create images that capture events for the bereaved within a vocabulary that is sufficiently relevant and familiar to allow comprehension, to provide focus, and to generate additional levels of meaning. This can take many forms including symbolic, metaphorical, allegoric, narrative and literary.

In creating memorial images from taped interviews with the bereaved narrating the events surrounding their loss, my auditory memory often becomes linked to visualization. Hence the importance of using text in the digital image or with an extended title/haiku to reflect back to the bereaved the words used in his/her narration. Text provides another visual communication channel to illustrate the action. Participants report that they find the text deeply satisfying and affirming of their emotional reality. Reading, our major cultural form of cognitive communication, is now used in the collage and/or title to become a repetitive conceptual design feature.

MEMORIAL ART AS PERFORMANCE: THE DANCE OF MEMORY
Performance art has developed over the past three decades in various forms: street theater, individual performances, environmental constructions, and repetitive ritual, above all, movement of materials and forms. Characteristically they are temporary, may appear spontaneous, often with audience participation. It creates some action over a limited time span, without any necessary, “permanent” record of the event. A recent example related to memorial art was the November 7-11, 2002, performance honoring the 20th anniversary of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial designed by Maya Ying Lin on the Washington Mall. For five days, finishing on Veteran’s Day, all of the more than 58000 names on the Vietnam Veteran’s memorial were spoken aloud, providing the centerpiece of the Veteran’s Day ceremony (3).

The process developed to create this exhibit of memorial art could be viewed as another example of performance art. It occurs over a minimum of seven months, involving active participation by the bereaved through their gathering photographic material that serves as the visual data for the artist. The initial hour-long interview provides the story, the narrative underlying the images. The bereaved’s critique of the image options generates the outcome. An 11” x 14” digital print of their choice is then delivered to them formatted on 80# paper. Finally, the follow up interview six months later queries how the art memorial sequence impacted their remembrance and current response to their loss.

Thus the creation of art memorials using this process involves a dance of memory over time. Implicit is the possibility of movement for the participants on many levels. The role of photography is important in evoking memories of the entire life span of the selected person, not just the particulars of the death. Gathering a stack of snapshots for possible scanning allows the bereaved to review their life together with their loved one. In addition, the interview questions focus and contain the historical and emotional information within a structured protocol. These tools provide a method to revisit a difficult period for a specific purpose to obtain a concrete product. The process is grounded in a short-term task, involving no more than three hours of the participant’s time over a seven months period. Less than ten personal contacts are made, including the initial negotiation, setting appointment times and the interviews themselves. In the community survey arena of social psychology where the concerns are civic problems, this process is viewed as a change process called action research. Talking to a person about an issue in itself changes the person’s attitude towards the issue.

One father, whose son committed suicide after a long medical history of alcohol and substance abuse, struggled to understand what had happened despite the shelter, support and nurturance he had provided his first son throughout his young adulthood. The drawing overlay in the upper left of this image is a magic wand segment of the son’s self portrait created at age fifteen. It suggests a beginning awareness of biochemical imbalance. Seeing the image, Spiral, gave the father the ability to discuss his son’s paranoia and mental illness.

For the artist, listening to others’ voices leads to a form of non-fictional art, and the image content originates outside her own life experience in a communal creative space. The efficacy of this memory review for the bereaved is the possibility of inner movement; a possible byproduct can be some cognitive restructuring of a significant segment of their lives. This can provide energy to move psychically to a different place by releasing any negative energy still lingering. The contacts are brief, spaced over a significant span of time, providing a benign, light touch on a difficult topic. In my experience, since participation is voluntary, the bereaved welcomes the opportunity to tell their story, to discuss their responses, the aftermath and the impact on their lives.

Dance involves movement, so too the dance of memory can spur psychic movement and catharsis. Memorial Art as Performance Art is personal, individual, unmediated, a ritual of remembrance where the concrete object or image serves as a permanent marker. Trauma shatters the psyche into fragmented pieces. Memorial art brings kaleidoscopic movement in which various pieces turn when viewed from another point in time. They shift into a different perspective, falling into a new pattern of perception. Beauty may now be seen in the existing shape. The grandmother whose brilliant, talented, “best of the brood”, 17-year-old grandson shot himself, looked at the image Rainy Day and commented, “ Look, Ben is waving goodbye to me!”

MEMORIAL ART AS GRIEF, TRAUMA REVISITED
A shift in the attitude toward death began with Dr. Herman Feifel’s 1959 groundbreaking work, TheMeaning of Death (4). Later in the mid-1960s, Kubler-Ross’s (5) popular work with dying cancer patients produced a delineation of the several phases of grief (numbness, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, eventually resolution and joy) faced by the dying. Before these seminal publications, the cultural mainstream dominated by Protestant, patriarchal, Northern-European values either denied death and/or followed the stoic commandment not to look back. People wished to avoid the experience of Lot’s wife, who became a statue of salt when during the tribal flight from disaster she, against divine instructions, turned around to view her ruined home and city. All bereavement carries depression and the danger of drowning in salt tears.

Grief becomes complex when compounded by the unexpected, the sudden, and the unusual. Emotional and physical trauma can result. This is often the case when the young die, the selected group for this memorial art exhibit. In September 2002, the National Center for Health Statistics reported in its final 2000 mortality statistics that three out of four deaths of young people aged 15-24 are injury-related, either from unintentional injuries, suicide or homicide. Juxtapose this information with the facts that the age-adjusted death rate reached an all time low while the life expectancy reached a record high of 76.9 years at birth (6). The majority of Americans now expect a long life, so sudden youthful death often brings trauma to accompany the normal grief cycle.

Trauma first has to be survived physically, emotionally, cognitively. Jacqueline Kennedy was quoted in a 1980’s magazine article that emerging with her sanity from the events surrounding her husband’s assignation was a major achievement for her. The next challenge is to keep moving on with activities, eventually reaching a place where the event seems behind one. “You never get over the sudden death of a child,” one bereaved mother once noted. “You only in time move beyond it.” (7)

Everly (8) argues that there is compelling evidence in the science of psychotraumatology that interpretation of the event can increase or lessen the subsequent symptoms. The greatest adverse impact comes when the Weltanschauung (worldview) of the survivor is contradicted, especially in regards to safety and security. Everly’s (9) treatment strategy (TEACH model) includes telling the trauma story, educating the patient, arousal reduction, assessing the contradictions to their worldview and helping to mend the worldview. The questions asked in the Memorial Art Initial Interview are similar to several in Everly’s Traumatic Critical Incident Analysis Form (Appendix C.). Inevitably there is an overlap between the process of creating memorial art images with patrons and psychotherapeutic treatment with patients suffering post-traumatic stress. However, the purpose of the inquiry and the expected outcomes are radically different. Psychotherapy deals with personal health. Art produces a concrete, physical image. The contracts and interpersonal transactions and boundaries differ in each enterprise. Post-traumatic stress psychotherapy offers physical symptom reduction. Memorial art produces a printed image on paper, a material object. The former is a health care contract while the latter is a customized art commission, which nonetheless may affect emotional healing.

Memorial art makes the invisible memories visible by initiating a specific, time-limited, task oriented intervention that is highly structured, known and controlled. It is a series of events with defined action steps focused on regaining memory slivers of the lost and transforming visual data into a composite visible image. The interview and review processes provide a crucible in which memories are rekindled and reorganized. It provides a place to review and restructure painful and difficult events.

The digital panel itself gives distance and form to the remembered event(s) that allows space to form a new, updated perspective. In discussing the details, insights develop since the event and its immediate aftermath can lead to reassembling the scatter shards of painful times into a reworked worldview. These are linked to a concrete form, the digital panel, that patrons participate in developing through providing visual and interview material. In the process they can also reframe the event cognitively, restructuring it at a time well past the event where they possess more energy, resilience, experience to handle the recurrence of memories around the emotional trauma.

Recovery from trauma has several phases.(10) The initial task after physical survival and recovery is to pick up the pieces of one’s life and move on. Later with the passage of time and experiential distance from the event, energy or circumstance brings a spiraling back where the memories are reviewed. This offers an opportunity to have a different perspective because the participant is now at a different time and place and can view the event from a different vantage point. It offers an opportunity to rework, reframe, reassemble the pieces and integrate the memories and meaning of the event more fully. One’s worldview can mend to become more complex, realistic and positive.

Memorial art is the intervention, the action vehicle where expression, experience-re-experience and expansion can occur. The participant can move developmentally to become an expanded, deeper, more energetic, healthier human being. The process is expression (art piece), experience (view memory from different perspective in time, space) and expansion (restructure, rework memory material for greater integration, i.e., cognitive restructuring). The image below, Richard’s Past, summarized the dynamics of a second marriage. The poetry fragment at the top right “Behind my mask, a blackened void encased in pain,” keys the observer that repressed grief underlay the narrative depicting a war-time marriage, followed by an early death, leaving a young child, followed by a second marriage. The repetition of the daughter as flower girl in the wedding picture suggests her emotional power gained from this loss.

People often never recover completely from the loss of a wife or child. It is a deep internal wound that shatters their previous worldview. The extreme stress and trauma change structure physiologically in the limbic system. A major shift in perception of their world and their emotional reality inevitably occurs. There is a need to channel the negative energy produced by the destruction; to transform the negative into positive energy as people construct a changed life path from the one expected. Transcendence comes with restructuring a worldview. Understanding, acceptance and finally peace can be achieved with the attainment of new focus for dislocated energy.

Memorial art, Beauty in a Pool of Pain, provides the opportunity to reassess with created images in which the critical events appear from a different perspective. A new integration, putting together the pieces, reframing the content of this life segment is possible. The opposite is also true. Patrons can simply tell their story, view the visual options, select an image and complete the process without reworking their worldview. Each patron chooses and controls the depth of her/his own involvement. Art provides a normal channel for expression. Whatever the individual’s choice of response, his or her experiences provide inspiration and content for the image. Anything else is a byproduct of the memorial art process.

From the limited number of six-month follow-up interviews conducted to date, I find that participants want to pick up their own pieces, put their lives back together their own way, and reconstruct their worldview themselves. They take pride in having helped me with my project and enjoy exchanging information about recovering from loss. All had moved on with their lives in a variety of ways, asserting control and personal power in restoring their lives as productive, effective adults. They continue to work with the traumatic material themselves, cherishing their independence and competence.

MEMORIAL ART IN THE HISTORY OF ART AND RELIGIOUS ART
Religion and art have been intertwined for tens of thousands of years since the cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux and the Venus of Willendorf sculpture. The great pyramids were monuments of death. The ancient Egyptians covered their Pharaohs’ coffins with gold and jewel encrusted sculptures. Later, in Roman times, paintings of the deceased were attached to the wrapped, mummified body. Grave markers were sculptured stelae, and after the time of Hadrian sarcophagi were decorated with scenes from classical mythology. Throughout history sculpture has dominated as the primary art form used in memorials whether for individuals, leaders, major wars or national disasters. Since World War II the Holocaust and other major population losses have provided a subject for memorials throughout the world. More recently, the Oklahoma City National Memorial to commemorate the dead of the Oklahoma City bombing was completed and dedicated in 2000. Sculpture provides relative permanence in its customary materials of stone and steel. Scale, site and multi-dimensionality are other factors making sculpture the art form of choice for memorials in the West. But for private memorials, photographs, paintings, stained glass, gravestones and fiber art are among the materials used to create a remembrance of a life loved.

Religious art, in the past fifty years that has been community based on a global scale, has been the large sculptured memorials. These are embedded permanently in the landscape whether it be in Canberra honoring those lost in WW II; Baghdad commemorating the eight year war with Iran; the Holocaust memorials in Berlin and elsewhere; Buenos Aires commemorating the imprisonment of political activists; the St. Petersburg site marking the Leningrad siege; the Oklahoma City National Memorial; or the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. The list goes on, demonstrating the many tributes to human courage, suffering, and the connectedness of the global human community.

Religious art functions by providing central symbols for identity and contemplation. For millennia, in the Christian tradition, the crucifixion has provided the central symbol portraying the physical and emotional reality of suffering, loss, injustice, abandonment, charting a path to transcendence in the Western tradition. However, the Christian story and symbols no longer dominate the secular, global culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Modernism has dominated the creative artists for more than a century with its push for innovation, autonomy, new forms and materials, alienation from and confrontation with mainstream societal values. A brief scanning of the popular media demonstrate the irrelevance of traditional Christian symbols in mass communication. Little in our modern, popular, commercial, materialistic mass media replaces the traditional Christian focus and validation of suffering and death with hope of spiritual survival and transcendence. Yet, for some, the Christian story and symbols, such as the cross, still carry meaning. The background of the image below,Transformation, is an astronomical energy formation entitled Cross of Gold,I used this symbol for the father who told me of an intense spiritual experience during a difficult emotional period to portray his sustaining love of his son.

Suzi Gablik (11) argues that postmodern pluralism of the past two decades in which anything goes provides the ground for a new paradigm in the age of the global village. She suggests that a new moral order in this postmodern period is necessary because the utopian thrust of modern art to transform the social order has sunk into nihilism and ineffective protest. Gablik searches for soul, spirituality, service and social responsibility in art after more than a century of protest and the destruction of European patriarchal hegemony, colonialism, industrialization, ecological exploitation, capitalism and the birthing of a new global world order. She finds only a few artists moving toward this new paradigm. However, there is now the emergence of temporary street memorial art that spontaneously emerged as response to traumatic events. Recent examples of this are the memorials that grew up to mark the British Princess Diana’s tragic death and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In a way, my collaborative process, which results in small, quiet, personal memorials addresses Gablik’s concerns too.

MEMORIAL ART IN A SECULAR, SCIENCE BASED GLOBAL ECONOMY
Science is essential to my art, its process, substance and perspective. I use the tools created by science, i.e., the computer, the camera, the Internet. More important, conceptually, we live in a great age of scientific exploration, an Apollonian period of rationality, external focus, measurement and illustration of observable facts. In addition, science has provided our culture with a profoundly different view of life, its components and structure. The 20th century has seen time, space and energy redefined. In its beginning decade, Einstein’s theory of relativity provided the theoretical base while in the 20th century’s last decade the Hubbell telescope transmitted photographic evidence that we live in an expanding universe billions of years old. The social sciences conceptually frame the cultural context in which we live, providing understanding of the cognitive tools we have to understand our life events. Religion and spirituality have scrambled to regroup theologically, to incorporate the perceived intellectual challenges from science. For most of the past century science and social science have provided the conceptual tools and physical evidence that have become valued as explanations of the world we inhabit, creating a secular, materialistic culture. Backgrounds from outer space, photographs of energy clusters in our expanding universe are used in my art to indicate this change of perception about energy and the often-invisible forces which shape our lives.

Many of the celestial backgrounds in my images have been downloaded from Internet photographs of outer space. The use of astronomy emerged from my reading of Robert Persig's epilogue in his second edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (12). In it, he employed the negative energy of a black hole as a metaphor to describe his response to the murder of his twenty-two year-old son, Chris. As an adolescent, Chris was the only loving human supporting Persig throughout a difficult life. Persig describes the years after his son’s death with the analogy of primitive cultures’ belief in the presence of ancestors’ spirits in tribal life. Persig feels that Chris’s spirit eventually circled back into his life, only now in a different form, that of his wife’s unexpected, late pregnancy (13).

One of my patrons is a scientific writer. The image that had the most meaning for her is Black, Black Holes. which illustrated one of her dreams (14). Only later did I discover that she personally knew the astronomer who took the space images upon which this work and others in the series are based.

Persig’s moving piece of literature speaks to the condition of many who have sustained a profound emotional loss. Emotional expressions, exploration for personal meaning are the purview of the humanities and the arts. These are currently devalued disciplines in relation to economic and political domains. Apollonian as opposed to Dionyesian is a contrast used by cultural anthropologists to describe the scientific, rational preferences of modern, materialistic, secular, capitalist, global culture. This deficit becomes painfully apparent at the time of major personal loss and trauma. However, the language and images of science help build a bridge of communication to the experiential reality of shattering emotional events by providing a modern idiom for suffering, death and the recycling of energy. Hence their use in conceptual/memorial art.

Despite life’s darkness and moments of despair, I affirm life and believe that each of us has been given gifts in our capacity to learn, to grow, to choose how to respond to life, whether to deny or integrate all its aspects. We all can consciously confront death and the limits of life, struggle to decide whether “’tis better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all.” Coming to terms with life’s multi-faceted dimensions including the suffering and injustice provides challenge and struggle. Dealing with the nightmare of trauma, moving on without the comforting illusion of a “future,” living fully in the present with its sun and shadows are components of growth which are possible byproducts of creating memorial art with clients who have suffered grievous loss .

1. Michael Klesius, “Super X-Ray Vision,: in National Geographic (Washington, D.C.; December, 2002) 42-53.
2. Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art (New York, N.Y.: Thames & Hudson, 2002), 176.
3. The Baltimore Sun, (Baltimore, Maryland)
4. “APF recognized psychologists for life achievement.” Available: http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug01/lifechieve.html.
5. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York, N.Y: Macmillan, 1969) 1-269.
6. “Final m2000 Mortality Statistics Now Available.” Available: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases/02/facts/final2000.html
7. Personal conversation, A & P checkout line, Carbondale, Illinois, spring, 1965.
8. George S. Everly, Jr., “Short-Term Psychotherapy of Acute Adult Onset Posttraumatic Stress: The Role of Weltanschauung” in Stress Medicine, 11, 191-196, 1994.
9. George S. Everly, Jr., “The Neurocognitive Therapy of Post-Traumatic Stress: A Metatherapeutic Approach,” in George S. Everly, Jr. and Jeffrey M. Lating, Psychotraumatology: Key Papers and Core Concepts in Post-Traumatic Stress (New York, N.Y.: Plenum, 1995) 159-168.
10. “Understanding Your Response to Trauma.” Available: http://www.anxietyandstress.com/sys-tmpl/postraumaticresponses/
11. Suzi Gablik, Has Modernism Failed (New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1984), 127.
12. Robert Persig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York, N.Y.: Bantam, 1984), 388.
13. Robert Persig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York, N.Y.: Bantam, 1984), 389
14. “Black Hole” Available: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/blackhole.html.

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Sister Mary Corita Kent. [Online] Two pages. Available: http://nmia.com/~paulos/corita.html.

Tashjian, Dickran. Memorial for children of change: the art of early New England stone carving
Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1974.

Taylor, Mark C. & Lammerts, Dietrich Christian. Grave Matters. London: Reaction Books,
2002.

Waldman, Diane. Jenny Holzer. New York: The Guggenheim Foundation, 1989.

Young, James Henry. At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art
and Architecture. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2000.

Digital Techniques

Cost, Frank. Pocket Guide to Digital Printing. Albany, N.Y: Delmar, 1997.

Crumpler, Wendy. PhotoShop Painter & Illustrator Side-By-Side. San Francisco: Sybex, 2001.

Fractal Design. Painter. User Guide for Macintosh and Windows. Santa Clara, CA: Citation
Press, 1997.

McClelland, Deke. PhotoShop 5 Bible, Gold Edition. . Foster City: IDG Books Worldwide,
CA., 1999.

Romano, Frank. Pocket Guide to Digital Prepress. Albany, N.Y: Delmar, 1996.

Weinmann, Elaine & Lourekas, Peter. Illustrator for Windows & Macintosh. Berkeley, CA:
Peachprint Press, 1999.

Weinmann, Elaine & Lourekas, Peter. PhotoShop for Windows & Macintosh. Berkeley, CA,
Peachprint Press, 1998.

Williams, Robin. The Little Mac Book, Sixth Edition. Berkeley, CA: Peachprint Press, 1999.

PSYCHOLOGY: Bereavement and Grief

Davidson, Glen. Understanding Mourning. Minneapolis, MI: Augsburg Publishing, 1984.

Feifel, Herman, Ed. The Meaning of Death. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

Feifel, Herman. New Meanings of Death. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 1977

Finkbeiner, Ann. After the Death of a Child. Living with Loss through the Years. New York:
Free Press, 1996.

Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth. Death. The Final Stage of Growth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall, 1975.

McCracken, Anne & Semel, Mary. A Broken Heart Still Beats after Your Child Dies.
Center City, MI: Hazelton, 1998.

O’Connor, Nancy. Letting Go with Love: The Grieving Process. . Apache
Junction, AZ: La Mariposa Press, 1984.

Osterweis, Marian, Solomon, Fredric & Green, Morris, Eds. Bereavement. Reactions,
Consequences, and Care. Committee for the Study of Health Consequences of the Stress
of Bereavement, Institute of Medicine. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press, 1984.

Persig, Robert. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. New York: Bantam, 1984.

Staudacher, Carol. Beyond Grief. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1987.

Stearns, Ann Kaiser. Living Through Personal Crisis. Chicago, IL: Thomas More Press, 1984
.
Tatelbaum, Judy. The Courage to Grieve. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.

Westberg, Granger. Good Grief. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1971.

Worden, J. William. Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy. A Handbook for the Mental Health
Practitioner, Second Edition. . New York: Springer, 1991.

Post-traumatic Stress. Disaster & Crisis

Everly, George, Jr. A Clinical Guide to the Treatment of the Human Stress Response. New
York Plenum Press, 1989.

Everly, George, Jr. “Psychotraumatology: A Two-Factor Formulation of Posttraumatic Stress.”
Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science. July-September, 1993, Vol. 28, No.3,
270-78.

Everly, George, Jr. “Short-Term Psychotherapy of Acute Adult Onset Posttraumatic Stress: The Role of Weltanschauung.” Stress Medicine, Vol. 10, 191-196 (1994).

Everly, George, Jr. & Lating, Jeffrey, Eds. Psychotraumatology. Key Papers and Core Concepts in Post-Traumatic Stress. New York: Plenum Press, 1995.

Malchiodi, Cathy. The Soul’s Paletter: Drawing on Art’s Transformative Powers for Health and Well-Being. . Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2002.

Mitchell, Jeffrey & Resnik, H.L.P. Emergency Response to Crisis. A Crisis Intervention
Guidebook for Emergency Service Personnel. Ellicott City, MD: Critical Incident
Debriefing Foundation, 1986.

Schiraldi, Glenn. The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook. A Guide to Healing
Recovery and Growth. Los Angeles, CA Lowell House, 2000.

Wolfenstein, Martha. Disaster. A Psychological Essay. Glencoe, IL:Free Press, 1957.

APPENDIX A: MEMORIAL EXHIBIT IMAGES

DIGITAL IMAGES:

1. Memorial to a Great Partnership
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
Sculpture by Jill Lion
Stamp design by Sister Mary Carita Kent
November, 2000

2. Richard’s Past
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
Drawing by Grace Kelly
September, 2002

3. Maine Vacation #1
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
Watercolor by Grace Kelly
September, 2002

4. Maine Vacation #2
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
Watercolor by Grace Kelly
September, 2002

5. El Paso Blues
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
Watercolor by Grace Kelly
September, 2002

6. He Shines by his own Light
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
September, 2001

7. T.C. Turns the Corner
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
September, 2001

8. Black, Black Holes
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
September, 2001

9. T.C. Present Shining Light
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
October, 2001

10. A Happy Child
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
November, 2001

11. Melissa’s Sick
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
November, 2001

12. A Loving Daughter
Digital print
1680 x 2100
November, 2001

13. Melissa’s Painting
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
November, 2001

14. Nancy & Bob's Memories
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
September, 2002

15. Rainy Day
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
September, 2002

16. Murdock’s Universe
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
September, 2002

17. Childhood Celebration
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
October, 2002

18. All Hallows Eve-diptych
Digital prints
2100 x 1680 pixels x 2
October, 2002

19. Kathy’s Celebration
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
October, 2002

20. Apple Indian
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
October, 2002

21. Brothers
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
November, 2002

22. Return
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
October, 2002

23. Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
Sculpture by Jill Lion
February, 2003

24. Sustaining Support
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
February, 2003

25. Treatments Over Celebration
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
February, 2003

26. Journey
Digital print
1689 x 2100 pixels
February 2003

27. Good Times
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
March, 2003

28. Spiral
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
March, 2003

29. Succor
Digital print
2100 x 1680 pixels
March, 2003

30. Transformation
Digital print
1680 x 2100 pixels
March, 2003

PAINTINGS:

1. Black Hole of Loss
Oil on canvas
24.5 x 36”
February, 2002

2. Bonding
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 40”
October, 2002

3. Poet’s Life
Oil on canvas, mixed media
24.5 x 36”
January, 2002

4. Dream #1-Communication
Oil on canvas
24.5 x 36”
March, 2002

5. Dream #2-Flying Lessons
Oil on canvas,mixed media
24.5 x 36”
March, 2002

6. Vacation
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 30”
November, 2002

7. Early Childhood Revisited
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 30”
November, 2002

8. Beatification
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 40”
March, 2003

9. Bipolar Order
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 30”
March, 2003

APPENDIX B CRITERIA FOR THE DIGITAL PANELS

Materials:

1. Photographs of past events.

2. Photograph of interviewee taken at time of initial interview.

3. My drawings, paintings from reference materials related to theme.

4. My photographs of relevant subjects.

5. Photographs or Internet downloads of universe.

6. Poetry and/or quotations from various sources.

7. Bereaved and central loss must be close kin, associate of the bereaved.

8. Central person must have died by age 30.

9. Circumstances of death can vary.

Themes:

10. Significant events for bereaved and central subject of memorial.

11. Collage of central subject’s life experience.

12. Themes emerging from interview with bereaved.

13. Synthesis or illustration of the bereaved’s experiential reality.

Techniques:

14. Use limited color palette with repetition to unify.

15. Emphasize shape and line in composition.

16. Add limited text to communicate theme on another dimension.

17. Experiment with a variety of styles, e.g., painterly, minimalist, abstract, etc.
.
Presentation:

18. Panel size 11x14 either horizontal or vertical.

19. 20-30 completed panels total revising previous work and creating new material.

20. Flush mounted with metal frame on black foam board.

21. Fiery color prints.

APPENDIX C: INITIAL INTERVIEW AND CONSENT FORM

Introduction
:
The first requirement for participation in this project is signed informed consent that permits me to work with you and use the materials you provide. The purpose of this memorial art project is to create a computer generated collage of photographs, drawings and other objects to convey your memories of your deceased son. I will conduct and tape at least four interviews with you: 1) the initial interview, 2) two follow-up interviews to review and revise various proposed images and 3) a six month follow-up interview to review and evaluate the entire project and its outcomes.

The consent form gives me permission to use these materials while insuring confidentiality of your name and any obviously identifying circumstances in use of this taped material. This would include such circumstances such as the image review and revision by Computer Art II faculty and students, future promotions, presentations, collateral research documentation and publications. Any visual images however, may contain elements that are recognized by persons known to you and your family in future exhibits, promotions, presentations and publications, and therefore cannot be covered by the promise of confidentiality. It also allows me to use the visual images created in the situations identified above and to photograph areas, objects that emerge as important material if none are available. Any photographs, drawings, objects provided by you as relevant material for inclusion in the image will be returned with the final image.
In return for your participation you will receive a copy of each proposed image at the two stages of review and a color, 11x17, print of the final image (unframed). You also have the option of receiving a computer file (compressed digital format) of the final image for your personal use, while the ownership of the materials remains with me.
(Give attached consent form to sign before proceeding)

INTERVIEW SCHEDULE
(not necessarily in this sequence, for process will be free flowing)

Tell me a little about yourself.

I know that your brother/sister died some time ago. Tell me a little about him/her so I have a better sense of who he/she was.

What did he/she particularly enjoy doing? Did he/she have special hobbies?

What special times with your brother/sister do you remember?

At this first meeting together it’s important for me to understand your experience of this loss.
Tell me what happened?

Prompts: How long ago was this?
What memories do you still have now?
What events still remain crystal clear today?

How do these affect you now?

What did you feel that you lost that never could be replaced or retrieved?

What did that life give you that wouldn’t have been without the experience?

Do you have photos of significant events shared with _____ that I could use to develop a computer collage?

Are there any symbols, objects, artifacts (e.g., clothing, toys, and playthings) that are particularly reminiscent of ______?

What particular colors do you associate with ______? Other suggestions?

What do you think would be important to include in the collage so it would have special meaning for you?

Thank you, I will be in touch within the next couple of weeks after I have generated some options for your review.

CONSENT FORM

I, ____________________________________, agree to participate in the Memorial Art Honors Program of Paula Anne Franklin, for the completion of the degree requirements at Towson University, Maryland. The purpose of this Memorial Art Honors Program is to create a computer generated collages using photographs, drawings and other objects to capture my memories and feelings for my deceased sibling. This project includes the conducting and taping of three interviews: 1) the initial interview, 2) a follow-up interview to review and revise various proposed images and 3) a six month follow-up interview to review and evaluate the entire project and its outcomes.

I give permission for the use these materials providing their confidentiality is insured by the anonymity of my name and any obviously identifying circumstances. I consent to the use of this taped material in circumstances such as art exhibits, future promotions, presentations, collateral research documentation and publications. Any visual images, however, may contain elements that are recognized by persons known to me and my family in future exhibits promotions, presentations and publications and therefore cannot be included in the promise of confidentiality. I will allow Paula Anne Franklin to photograph areas, objects that emerge as important material if none are available. I understand any photographs, drawings, objects provided by me as relevant material for inclusion in the image will be returned with the final image.

I understand that in return for participation, I will receive a copy of each proposed image at the review stage and a color, 11x17, print of the final image (unframed). I also have the option of receiving a computer file (compressed digital format) of the final mage .for my personal use, while the ownership of the materials remains with Paula Anne Franklin.

Signed: __________________________________________ Date: _______________

APPENDIX D: TRAUMATIC CRITICAL INCIDENT ANALYSIS FORM
by George S. Everly, Jr., Ph. D.

Name or ID Number:____________________ Date:___________________

DIRECTIONS: A traumatic critical incident is any situation or event which is outside the typical range of human experience and which has such a distressing or negative impact that it may change one’s life for a period of time after the event has ended. The questions listed below are designed to help you better identify and understand the role of a traumatic critical incident in your life. Please answer each question as honestly as you can. There are no right or wrong answers.

1. Briefly describe a traumatic critical incident which you believe has significantly affected your life.

2. When and where did this event take place?

3. Describe any dreams or flashbacks related to this event.

4. How did this event change how you think about yourself?

5. How did this event change how you view others?

6. How did this event change how you view the world, in general?

7. How did this event change the way you behave?

8. How did this event change the way you view God?

9. Did you change in any other way? If so, How?

10. What is the “lesson to be learned” or “conclusion about life” to be reached as a result of this trauma?
________________________________________________________________________
1994. George S. Everly, Jr., Ph.D. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this form is prohibited without written approval.