It is customary in the Jewish tradition to clear the house of a dead’s personal belongings quickly. When my father died, I was given his shirts to donate to the thrift store.

I was in no particular hurry to be rid of them, but felt too the weight of holding onto them indefinitely. I wanted to honor these deeply personal, quotidian symbols of his life.

Visually inspired by The Red Dress Project, in which artist Jaime Black has hung dresses in public spaces as a symbol of and aesthetic response to the hundreds of missing and murdered Aboriginal Women in Canada, I hung my father’s shirts in the magnolia tree that he and my husband had planted for my birthday years ago. I filmed them hanging from the autumn bare branches, swaying in the breeze as if reanimated with life.

It was a deeply personal act of mourning. And I remember feeling very anxious about it. As if this aesthetic impulse was somehow sacrilege. But I was compelled to do it.

Cloth and Memory, curated by Mary McFerran at The Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY, provided me with the opportunity to explore this territory beyond my own personal loss and within the context of my artistic walking and wandering. The installation created a place of quiet repose in which to consider the fleeting nature of all life, and all things.

In conjuction with the artists' panel discussion moderated by Suzy Sureck, I also presented a Walk with Me/Walking in Circles community performance in which we walked in circles, spirals and figure 8s in contemplation and celebration of life for 18 minutes.