I have been troubled by the reopening of care homes today and the fact that the residents and carers have not been able to touch each other, hug, or been close in over a year. As a member of the Living well with Dementia Facebook page I have decided to create a work to commemorate this period. I have reached out to the members for photos from their visits and they have started to send me their photos. It’s so touching to have them trust me to work with their photos and their memories. My proposal is to have a number of hands cast in either resin or plaster to reach upwards to their photos. I can make the photos as large as A3 and coat them in PVA and bind them then hang the photos from the ceiling. Ideally the gap between the hands and the photos would be around 1 metre to symbolise the separation.
Or I can try the organza which will hang differently. But if I use the paper it’s a medium I can work with- I know it. And the glossy images are similar to looking through glass. What am I saying if I use the material. Flimsy and floaty. The glass is more about the harsh reality- a separation hard and brittle.
If I bind them in white satin then together they will look like a multi–paned window. And it doesn’t have to be huge.
Hanging with plastic filament or fishing line would be more secure than thread. Or I can put them into a frame to be more figuratively about the window visits.
