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Fiber artist Ann Clarke, of Syracuse, stands in front of her latest piece, a knitted rug titled “Love and Loathe.” Like much of her work, the piece draws from Clarke’s experiences caring for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease.
A series of deeply personal works by a Syracuse fiber artist will be on display at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn beginning Oct. 15.
“Lessons of Empathy in Wonderland” will feature large rugs knitted by Ann Clarke and inspired by her experiences caring for her 100-year-old mother, Betty, who has Alzheimer’s disease.
The rugs consist of layered images and text that sometimes overlap, reflecting the complicated nature of Clarke’s mother’s disease.
“I have one piece called ‘Mother and Child’ where I am both the mother and the child, and she is both the mother and the child,” Clarke said in a news release. “For her, shifting shards of her life stick and unstick, fold and reform resulting in reconstructed narratives that both affirm and challenge my understandings.”
Clarke said she doesn’t mind if people who purchase her rugs hang them or use them on the floor.
The artist creates rugs because they functionally keep her grounded as she tries to care for her mother and respond to her dementia.
“In my caring for her, I had to let go of what I thought her insistence on what right was or my own insistence on what right was and to just go with it,” Clarke said. “So if she believes that her mother is still alive, insisting that her mother is not still alive is not a productive trajectory to take, because she would be upset.”
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