This is my latest project, hanging on the wall right above my computer monitor. Mary helped motivate me to finish it with her project titled False Advertising (see the previous post).
The background is a poster I bought for the very first apartment I had living on my own. I was 18 at the time, and trying to get out of a bad relationship. I had been living with very controlling boyfriend and his mother before that. He ended out moving in with me for about 6 months, until I finally got the nerve to pack his things and take him back to his mother. He told me I would never be anything without him. I was so afraid of being alone. That was 30 years ago to the day. I've been carrying around this poster and the frame he made for it ever since, though I had never hung it on a wall again, until now.
It seemed fitting to finally do something with it now after the breakup of my latest relationship. I guess living in an apartment alone again after all these years is what inspired me. I thought of the title before I had any idea of what I wanted to do with it. One day while I was thinking about the poster and my first apartment, I noticed I had put my hands together in the shape of an upside down heart, and thought, "I should paint my hands with the sun shining through, since I'm no longer afraid of living alone."
I didn't know what else to do, though, until I read Mary's False Advertising. I liked how the layers of tissue paper in her collage represented the layers we build up for protection emotionally. In mine the tissue paper is transparent, because my last relationship made a fool out of me, so I feel exposed.
Then there's fire coming out of the sky - the anger, and the water, which is symbolically spiritual to me, turns into puzzle pieces. The "cracks" I painted with a clear gloss varnish mixed with gold glitter, because that's my version of a cloud's silver lining, and they extend all the way into the frame that the first boyfriend made. In fact, the "cracks" go through everything except my hands - the fire, the puzzle pieces, the transparent layers, but not me.
"What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." - Frederich Nietzsche. I think that's why I like this song so much. It's called Break the Chain. It was written for an organization called One Billion Rising. Every year on Valentine's Day, people around the world organize a flash mob dance to this song to help raise awareness of the staggering statistics of violence against women (1 in 3 or one billion women world wide have been raped or beaten in their lifetime, and I'm one of them).
In my efforts to pick up the pieces of my life, I participated in the dance on the steps of city hall here in Houston to help the mayor spread awareness of the problem here in Houston. We're the #1 city for human trafficking, and the task force she's implemented is called Shine a Light on Human Trafficking. Here's the video of us doing the dance:
