ILLUSTRATIONS FILES/MOTHERHOOD FILES, The Redemption of Negative Space No. 1

This story is about a mother who loves her daughter so fiercely she stuffs the pockets of her robe with drawings her daughter crumples up to throw away, her daughter's name torn in half.

Likewise an artist, the mother understands her daughter's desire for perfection, a source of her own frustrations and false starts--in art and motherhood alike.

"I don't want to tell you now," the daughter says when asked by her mother about who is in the one drawing she has yet to crumple up.

"I want to tell you tomorrow," she says. 

How, in time, the mother learns hers isn't the hand her daughter has drawn herself holding--in the other, a balloon. 

How she isn't in the picture, and then there's a picture's worth in words.

But let's say it can also be a story about the redemptive nature of negative space. The profiles around the vase: mother/daughter.

Their proximity, regardless, the organ they used to share.

When their hearts were
in the same body

HER FIRST CONSTELLATION