For my Dad’s eightieth birthday he told me he didn’t want any gifts yet I felt it was important to celebrate this birthday as an accomplishment. My mom had died eight month earlier and had been looking forward to turning eighty. I went to Costco and bought a case of Budweiser beer bottles as Bud was always his choice. I brought the bottles to the studio and gessoed them white. Then I centered them on my wheel and painted them with some of my handmade brushes. It was a truly fun project to have twenty-four bottles that I had nothing invested in but to make them a little bit special. I wanted Dad to feel extravagant and celebrated, but not to feel like he had to keep the objects.
Of course he loved them and kept them. After his cleaning lady threw a few of them out he began to make two-sided digital flower images which he glued to cardboard with metal stems so he could place them into the bottles. The flowers morphed into portraits. Every time we came home there was a new bouquet of his flower children in the bottles. Somehow the one bottle I have saved is a simple striped one.
Right now, darkness takes a deep breath in. Hold tight. We’re riding the backs of the swans. There’s no flying without land, no emptiness without an edge. What world are we living in? And yet:
Here you are.
Here you are, the winter tells us.
An offer and a fact.
— Nina MacLaughlin, the ending to Inhale the Darkness in The Paris Review , November 30, 2020