Two Portraits of My Mother 

I created this collage at a time when my mother was rapidly regressing due to dementia. Some of the odd things she would say stayed with me. At the time, I was experimenting with a process using magazines and fading the inks, as well as a couple of other photo transfer processes. The medium allowed me to show snippets of my mother’s life, as well as some images representing periods in her life. These images are faded, or subdued, and the color has been removed, except in the areas within her portrait from her 20s. This allows the images to appear as if almost forgotten, as well as timeworn.

A few people have suggested that I frame this and hang it in my house, but to me, this isn’t that kind of artwork. It’s difficult to watch someone this close to you forget who you are, and to watch the woman who taught you to cook begin to struggle to use a spoon. I created the piece to try to wrap my head around what she was going through.

JEFFREY BERTONCIN is an art teacher at Truman High School in Independence, Missouri.