The Stuff of Life

Letting Go and Making Way 

Why do we hold on to the years-old stuff of our lives?  And what do we do with it?

For me, this has been an ongoing source of wonder.  It’s about honoring my past.  What do I do with all my video tapes of old TV shows I produced when I lived and worked in New York?  What do I do with multiple 16mm film prints of movies that have long since past their theatrical screenings?  And what about my favorite platform shoes from 1974?  How do I let that stuff go?  Of course I’ll recycle those video tapes and I’ll even manage to give away those fabulous shoes, but I’ve been determined to find a way to honor my past in the process of discarding the artifacts of it.

 

The Artifacts of Life

Over the last couple of years I’ve been working on a series of autobiographical video essays and installations based around the Catholic Church’s Seven Holy Sacraments.  Last spring I’d just begun to focus on Communion when I began to wonder, could I take the artifacts of my past and form them into a kind of offering?  An offering that honors my past and offers others a space to reflect and a way to engage in honoring their own memories.  The idea to create a labyrinth made of personal artifacts, designed as an installation to be walked, came to me while driving Highway 101 from Olympia to Osyterville. 

While the material of the labyrinth issues from my life, my hope is that those who walk this labyrinth will spiral through their own lives, that each person considers the artifacts of his or her own past no matter how seemingly mundane with a kind of sacred intention to embrace the past, to let it go, and to make way, less encumbered, for new meaning and fresh experiences.   – Marilyn