Dear Mother and Daddy- The beginning of my process

Here is a photo of my first official provenance research project performed in 1986, but what I found more interesting was the note with it.

Now here is the start of my process. I take an image and study it, rearrange the objects, and compose again. There is no set time for this. If I choose this image again, it may look much the same or entirely different. Yet, before I arrive at that decision, there is the handwriting, the old Apple font behind it, and repetition of the squares; who is this note to and why the words are significant? There is an entire story behind these papers. A record of my history, the date of the note, and the sentiment all communicate simultaneously. Because I want to have these multiple meanings and layers for viewers to experience, I want to give all the separate pieces of the objects space. In a few weeks, I will post another version of this image, which I have not pre-visualized. So, here I admit, I do not know what it will look like.

About the image: In 1986, I wrote a research paper on a piece of historic art, which belonged to my mother. I was 12 years old. The actual paper, written on an old Apple computer having limited fonts, sets the background with the handwritten note by my mother. My grandparents were art dealers and provenance research was a daily ritual, which I was fortunate to experience. For my first twenty six years, I regularly visited my grandparents in Center City, Philadelphia, until my mother passed away in 1996. And then, the date, October 20th: she wrote this ten years to the day she passed away.