Women on my Shelf
I realized that I have been using this blog as a place to document my ideas, trial and error, and just keep track of visual associations that I make when playing on my Critique Wall.
I don’t want to forget to share the collection of Women on my Shelf: An assortment of female objects that I have collected over the years: sculptures, masks, action figures, trinkets, and oddities.
I have this modest mission style shelf inherited from my paternal great grandmother, Martha Kotsores of Astoria Queens, born in 1901 in Polykarpi near Kastoria, Greece to Anastasia Koumi and Papa Demetrios Koutlemanis. She arrived in New York in 1915, and worked as a nanny for cousins of the family. In 1920, she was married to Apostolos Kotsores, raised my grandmother, aunt and uncle, and passed three years after the death of her husband on April 17, 1957.
The shelf has become a cabinet of curios, filled with small paintings, photo strips, and collections of knickknacks of sentimental value.
Speaking of collections…
Throwing anything away feels like throwing away my memories, my family history, so I keep everything or take photographs of important things. My Dad used to document our family activities with his slide camera, and every now and again, he would go upstairs into the attic and bring down the slide projector, movie screen, and a box of circular reels filled with events from childhood. We would make popcorn and relive our family stories.