Jodit Editor

Text in painting reads:
When I was visiting my friend, Babette, I mentioned that I needed a cosmetics case.
She said,Oh I have one I can give you. It was my mother's." I waited for her to go and get it
but the conversation drifted and I didn't want to press. Her mother was expiring in a home for the aged.

When we caught up the following year she told me that her mother's boyfriend, Ernie, had passed away.
Ernie had been estranged from his children so Babette had had to take care of the cremation. She was given the ashes.
Babette offered to find a nice container and bring them to her mother's room at the nursing home. Her mother didn't want them.
She said it was too depressing. Babette called his children again but they said they didn't care what she did with him. So she kept them.
Then one day a friend of Babette's called to see if they could meet. She was flying to New York for one day
to fulfill her Uncle's final request that his remains be scattered in the Hudson River.
Babette said, "Oh, can I come too! I've had some ashes in my mother's cosmetics case in the attic for over a year."

When John's friend, Mark was dying Bill promised to scatter his ashes in London, Mark's favorite city.

Years later John asked Bill how the scattering had gone. Bill said he hadn't done it yet. Why not?”
John asked. "You go to London several times a year." "I know," Bill said. "I just keep forgetting to pack him.

2011
Oil on linen over panel
5 panels: 24 x 18, 26 x 20, 32 x 18, 26 x 20, 24 x 18"

Rise My Soul
2011
oil on linen over canvas
52 x 28

Text reads:
After the memorial service, they sat under the carport and talked about
who had a good death and who had a hard death.
"Now, Drew Threet, he had a good death." They all agreed.
He found out he was terminal but he didn't have much pain and he could drive.
He visited his family, said his goodbyes and then he died.
Yes," they said, "he was able to get up and go right up until he went."

Not yet titled (Van Loon)
2012
oil on linen over panel
45 x 40" approx.

Text reads:
Grietje Van Loon was aware that her eccentric, deceased father, Lawrence VanLoon, had
forged Dutch-American colonial documents. He'd done it for scholarly glory and profit,
and to give himself a noble Knickerbocker lineage. He'd even filled the family
graveyard in Glenville, New York, with tombstones for ancestors actually buried in the
The Netherlands. But Glenville was also where he'd buried the ashes of Grietje's mother
after her body was flown from Hawaii to New York.

Grietje's brother, Jacob, inherited his father's mental illness, a few possessions,
and the family car. He drove the car to New Mexico, parked in Grietje's driveway,
and lived in the car until his death. Sorting through his belongings, a grieving
Grietje discovered that her mother's ashes were not in Glennville after all.

Like a Hurricane Blake Ferris Memorial
Oil on canvas over panel
28 x 20 1/4"

Urine Mourning
oil on linen over panel
48 x 36"

Text reads:
When Joe found out his Ex had AIDS
Joe brought him home to live with him.

With few effective therapies
available in the eighties
the Ex tried homeopathy.

Attempting to cleanse the body,
he was drinking his own urine.

The Ex committed suicide.
His parents took his body back.
They held a private funeral.

Grieving, Joe called us together
for a memorial service
We met in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

Holding hands we said the Lord's Prayer
and stood in a circle around
the remaining jar of urine
found in the refrigerator.

The Dreamy Crematorium
2012
oil on linen over panel
approx 45 x 30"