Handmade: My Mother’s Hands

Handmade: My Mother’s Hands Photolithography print and blockprint 9 in. x 9 in. and 9 in. x 12 in. 2021
“It’s hard to recognize what I feel until I write about it, until I lend words to untapped emotion. Once I find the images connected to the moment and the words and metaphors to recreate the images and show what they have to do with anything, I not only understand myself better, but others can experience the moment with me and perhaps recognize the feeling as their own. When I write about an empty house after family has left, I’m not just describing an empty house, but the emptiness that has taken over me in their absence. When I write about something funny that happened with one of my kids, I’m not just writing about what happened, but about how that moment was a small shining piece in the big mosaic called “life,” about how life wouldn’t be what it is without these moments--without them. I hope they share that sense when they read.” —Laura Johnson