My late father’s custom shirts reflect his great style and love of the design process. He was a builder, a developer and a restauranteur. With every project he obsessed on the details. With every shirt he had made he would source every fabric himself. He was always carrying around fabric samples from B&J or Mood and would break them out to show me. Stripes and paisleys. Polka dots and a fine herringbone. Endlessly interesting and beautiful combinations. He did what he wanted and it always looked great. Every shirt had french cuffs, his initials monogramed, pockets, epaulets on the shoulders. Every shirt had a complimenting fabric inside the collars and cuffs. He thoroughly enjoyed this process and left behind hundreds of shirts.

My father was the son of Sicilian immigrants. He grew up on the Lower East Side, not far from where I live and work. They had a very hard life. He grew up poor and scrappy. He was the first and only member of his family of origin to go to college. He possessed intense drive and worked very hard, always. He would say over and over, you have to better yourself, better yourself.. Striving for worldly success and having it was everything to him. He did get it. He knew how to make something from nothing. I inherited this from my father. 

My father’s shirts hold a lot. The name for this series came before the work. The first time ever for me. Father Figures. With these collages I am hardly starting from nothing. I am working with the elements of a relationship that nearly destroyed me. I am also working with the tremendous efforts and fruits of a life of a tortured soul who gave it all his all. That was my father. A massive contrast. A brilliant character and visionary whose pain was so great he could not contain it. This was not uncommon of his generation. There were no Oprahs or endless practitioners and modalities.
There was mostly a ton of pride, shame and despair. Asking for or seeking help was not on the menu for men like my father. With his death and time came safety, and from this, forgiveness and understanding. Compassion for him, compassion for me. Until now I could not have worked with this energy. 

Deconstruction and abstraction are my vehicles for alchemy. I slice my father’s shirts and rearrange the elements. I recreate and repurpose. I give his shirts a new life. Father Figures are female. They are the daughter born into misogyny who made it through to wholeness on the wings of fierce effort and Grace. Incidentally my paternal grandmother’s name was Grace. Triumph is a theme in much of my work because making art is a place where I know I will have it. I can make something from nothing. The gift from my father, and the Father. This confusion remained until life forced me to face this atrocious wound and tend to it. Abusers and protectors will appear in the same form until this has been unraveled, examined and loved on. Piece by piece the rebirthing occurs. What was shattered is reformed generations both backwards and forwards. 

The making of art in itself does not heal trauma. It documents the inner workings of the healing process. The works themselves become a container of transformation. They exalt the process of healing and hold its power. Retrieving, replenishing and cultivating true power is the work of those who refuse to be diminished by toxic masculinity in any form. It is a slippery slope working in this realm and absolutely necessary on both the micro and the macro realms. With Father Figures I am honoring my father’s achievements and his best efforts in all aspects of his life while alchemizing the undeniable darkness into a thing of beauty and goodness. I shine a Light into the depths and painstakingly rewire distorted dysfunctional circuitry one shape, one pattern, one moment at a time, in me and on the canvas.