AFTER IMAGE

PHOTO BY BRIAN ADAMS

The first impulse is to bundle and hide my children.

Mother Thought of Everything is a project by Anchorage artist Amy Meissner, in collaboration with photographer Brian Adams, using Tyvek, abandoned quilts, vintage labels, and used household protective equipment. This project creates personal shelter from meager supplies and inadequate skills, seeking an alternative space of care and tending through the merging of the domestic and vast; of inner and outer realms; of mundane and ridiculous. Isolation, gearing oneself for moon, sea, storm, and safekeeping all formed the conceptual scaffolding for this work, but the physicality of constructing such protection followed by the wearers’ sweltering complaints intensified all the unseen labor involved in loving someone fiercely—let alone saving them—during an era of environmental, political, and body failure. Learn more at amymeissner.com.

421 West First Avenue, Suite 200 Anchorage, AK 99501 (907) 272-5341 www.akhf.org

FORUM

THE MAGAZINE OF THE ALASKA HUMANITIES FORUM FALL 2020