The Backwards and Forwards of Time
Emmanuel Gallery, 2020
Image credit Wes Magyar
The Backwards and Forwards of Time
A poem by Julie Puma
2018
In some places time stands still.
Yet with lightning speed races forwards
How I grapple with this backwards and forwards of time.
Trying to remember backwards……………….afraid of falling forwards
It was just yesterday my belly was swollen
Breathing life into my bones
Oh my aching bones…………….and her aching bones, growing , thrusting her forwards into my aching backwards
Suddenly I am sorting through memories on dark English roads.
How I grapple with the backwards and forwards of time.
How can it be that time overlaps as we ride through a small world, backwards and forwards.
Let’s drown out time I cry!
If I make noise, inject the serum………………….surely time will stop.
And it does quietly as she passes to death in the night.
I’m forwards and afraid
What is this duplicity of aging body with childlike soul?
Keep up I scream to fatiguing time
Don’t move too fast I cry
I missed you crawling
I missed you walking
I missed you……………….time
How I grapple with the backwards and forwards of time
Letters to Stanley
Singer Gallery, 2005
Letters to stanley is an installation that is made up of letters and old family photographs that were sent to my Dad when my Mom died from breast cancer in 1972. She was thirty two and I was six. The installation is also made up of letters sent to my brother in law when my sister also died from breast cancer in 2000.
She was 39 and left two young children and a husband behind. The copies of letters and cards are sewn together in a 20 foot by twenty foot journal like mural. On top of the mural is oil paint and wax. In front of the installation on the floor are rocks with transferred old photos and portions of the letters. These rocks signify the jewish tradition of leaving pebbles on a gravestone when people die.
Early Onset
Rude Gallery, 2010
Early Onset explores themes of death and facing mortality. Soft sculpture turns the ugliness of breast cancer into something soft and beautiful. coupled with photographs this installation examines the judgment and prejudice of illness in today’s society.
Hyperlink Art Collective group exhibition, Curated by Lauren Hartog
Daily Specials, Junk Drawer - Dirty little Secrets
The Power At Hand
With the increased awareness of gun violence and the debate over conceal and carry laws, I
was inspired to think more deeply about this topic and create dialogue around this issue.
So often the arguments we hear on the news become background noise as we listen to both
sides of the debate about our constitutional rights to bear arms.
As the day to day news reports continue to highlight the frequency of school shootings, we
overlook the deeper issues of what it means to own, carry and use a gun as a us citizen and this
constitutional right. Behind the power of the object itself, and no matter our demographic
from age, race or sex; behind that power and the violence of killing, are sub themes, including
desperation, impulse control, mental illness, a need to belong, self-protection, and democracy.
These themes all effect what is happening in our society today.
These silicone sculptures are made from a mold of a toy gun with varying degrees of skin tones.
The purpose in changing the tone of the skin was to communicate that no matter our identity,
we are powerful based on the objects we possess. Whether we are dark skinned, a child or an
adult we have the power to take a life with the object at hand.
Degenerate Masks
