Approximately 20"x24" lumen prints on fiber gelatin silver paper created with food from family recipes, coated in encaustic wax, sewn with red thread onto paper
I have a complicated relationship with food. Most women do, I suppose. Food evokes memories. For me, so many of the memories attached to food include sounds of women's voices laughing and telling stories among the clatter of pots and pans. It is in the kitchen that history is told, but, her-story instead of his-story. I should also say that it was in the kitchen that I first heard the whisperings of the "angel of the house," as Virginia Woolf would call her. We didn't just cook and clean in that room, it was a place where I was schooled. I learned what was expected of a woman, how I should behave, and how to properly serve, as I sat absorbing those stories in the kitchen. The ghosts of those conversations still haunt me. My feeble attempt to kill the ghosts, to choke out the "angel of the house," might be, at least in part, my continued refusal to cook.