2003, August - Dear Mother, an installation by Louise Kames in Quigley Gallery, Clarke University

From the Card:

Dear Mother

Louise Kames BVM created the installation work, Dear Mother, to honor the twenty-two BVM Sisters with whom she lived or worked and who died in the last twenty years. Dear Mother consists of black silk draped forms hanging from the ceiling suggesting the cape portion of the traditional BVM habit. They are arranged in pairs to evoke a ceremonial procession or recreational walk.

On the front of each cape form Kames screen printed a facsimile of the letter each Sister wrote to the Mother General requesting entrance into the BVM Congregation. On the floor beneath the suspended silk form is a plate glass replica of the grave markers in the Mt. Carmel cemetery. A copper vessel holds a video projection of a beating human heart immersed in water. A Sacramentary, the Catholic book of prayers for celebration of the Eucharist, is displayed on the outer wall.

Louise Kames, BVM, Dear Mother, installed at Quigley Gallery

Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa

August 2003