The Carissima Mara Series
After years of working exclusively in collage, using mostly found paper and textile remnants I have become attracted to the idea of making images that are more personal using paint and photographs. I found an unusual source of inspiration while cleaning out my mother’s house following her passing in 2016. Among her personal effects I discovered more than 800 letters written by my father to her before they were married. The letters span World War II, 1941 to 1945, all from him to her. The letters from her to him are lost. Mourning the loss of my mother and thinking it would be an invasion of their privacy in some way, I didn’t read them immediately. A year or so passed before I felt like I could.
I changed my mind partly because immigration has become a dominant topic in the headlines. I found myself thinking more and more about my own immigrant parents and how life must have been for them in a new country. My mother came to the United States as a teenager, my father as a young man in the 1930's. They met through their parents who were acquaintances in Italy. My father graduated from NYU in 1941 and enlisted in the army a month later. He had narrowly escaped Fascism in Italy only to have that conflict find him here.
Like most kids, I never knew the details of my parents’ courtship; the first time they expressed love for each other, the worry they must have had for what the separation and the uncertainties of war would do to their hopes and dreams. My father never talked about his war experiences and I didn’t think to ask before he died in 1975.
Consequently I relied on his letters to create a window into that world, that part of their lives before they married and I was born. My goal was to do several pieces, at least one for each year of the war.
I have come to realize the work is a tribute to their enduring love for each other and for their adopted country.
