Boxes, coffins, death and dying

My mom took me to the Tohono Chul Park art exhibit the other day to see the show "Re-Visions: Art from Reclaimed Materials". It was awesome, me being a sucker for old stuff and all. But I was particularly fascinated by the several assemblage artists who stuck all their stuff in boxes. Found boxes, fabricated boxes, filled with ephemera and oddities. I loved them.

(I got a thing for putting stuff in boxes myself.)

After the art show we went and visited my mom's father in the hospital. He's very old and got really sick over the weekend. Lying there in the hospital bed mortality seemed to lay very heavy upon him. He's in his eighties. Everyone accepts that it is only a matter of time.

Which is the same for all of us.

At a recent family gathering I was struck by how much I could see the writing of years upon friends and family members. Knowing they could see the same on me.
We are all just little wind-up toys tick-tocking away, the slow process of wearing down, wearing out, unwinding till we stop and are put in a box then put in the ground ourselves. In our graves.

Which brings to mind the recent cemetery scandal of bodies being dug up and the plots resold for profit.

It also brings to mind the art of Kiki Smith.

These things are always on my mind.