Friendly Plastic and Irene

Irene

This is a piece that evolved from a mistake I made on the project we made in Leslie Altman's Friendly Plastic class at Stamping Details in Poway.

Leslie had taught us how to stretch the plastic and as I stretched it trying to save it, I found it looking like a tag. I also found that you can embed almost anything in the plastic while it is soft and pliable including a photo and the Swarovski crystals.

Since I have done so much with my mom, Nadine and her photos. I thought I should do something for my natural mother, Irene. I had this photo that she had taken and given to her girls.

In Somerset Apprentice there was an article called Love Baby by Lisa Martin-Bowman where she dangled little tags off the bottom of her house/collage. There wasn't enough room to put "Irene" on the tags, so I decided to name who she was, "Mom." The wire wrapping was the most difficult for me. I have done so little of it and had to do some of them 2 and 3 times before I got something that was acceptable to me.

I hope that someway she will know that I do think of her often and feel that greatest un-selfish gift she gave to me was realizing she could not care for me at that time in her life and gave me up for adoption. I know it had to be very difficult decision for her. I found out that no one in her family knew what she had done in 1944 and until I found her in 1980. She then contacted all her sisters with the news that her daughter, Lana, had an older sister. From that, a wonderful network of aunts has open their doors to me and my family. I have "mom" to thank for all of that. God Bless her soul.