Grace

It took several years for me to identify a form that would convey the many meanings of the word “Grace". Where was the one object that could suggest a movement, a prayer, a name, a state of being? When I was given a 1950s-era chiffon hostess apron purchased from a church bazaar sale, I knew I had found what I'd been looking for.

What could be more fitting for a GRACE project than an object with long graceful ribbon-like ties, with a connection to the meals over which grace may be said, which may even have been worn by a gracious lady named Grace? What actually clinched the use of the apron as my form, though, was the fact that this prototype, this apron I'd been given, had been lightly scorched when it had been ironed....its perfection was slightly flawed....it was itself a candidate for grace, that state of unconditional love and forgiveness.

The GRACE installation welcomes the viewer into a hushed and darkened environment where the soft shadows of 52 hanging aprons (one for each week in a year of housework) dance across the walls. The aprons take on many characteristics....at once becoming birds, ghosts of mom in the kitchen, angels, “flying nuns" or beautiful laundry waving in the breeze. The mystical experience is heightened by a sound track wafting overhead that contains the sound bites of everything from whispered amens to Elvis singing “Amazing Grace" to George Burns saying goodnight to Gracie.

GRACE was originally installed at the Castellani Art Museum on the campus of Niagara University, but has been shown in several venues since, including the Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester, New York's First Rochester Biennial Exhibition, an invitational show of six Upstate New York artists, and most recently at the Greenhill Gallery in Greensboro, NC.