The Ones We Lost / Are Still Here
A mixed-media diptych on grief, lineage, and the quiet ways our people stay with us
(Created February 2023)
Grief has a strange way of reshaping time. Years can pass quietly, and then suddenly—one assignment, one prompt, one unexpected spark—everything you’ve been holding inside asks to be seen.
I hadn’t made much art since my brother passed away in 2018. Grief had hollowed out the part of me that used to create instinctively. When I returned to school at ASU in 2023, I found myself in an art education class surrounded by painters—talented, experienced, expressive. I was doing the assignments exactly the way the rubric asked, but my professor insisted my work “lacked emotion.”
So I said to myself: Fine. You want emotion? I’ll give you emotion.
The next project was a diptych inspired by an occult-focused artist. And for the first time in a long time, I let myself make something deeply personal—something raw, symbolic, and rooted in the people I’ve lost and the ways they continue to show up in my life.
That’s how these two pieces were born.
Part I: The Ones We Lost
Acrylic, gold leaf, glitter, vinyl, and movable plastic sheet
This piece started with a photograph of my grandparents on their wedding day. I never met my grandfather, but he’s been described only with kindness. My grandmother, who passed in 2016, was someone I was close to and someone whose presence I still feel.
Next came my brother Eric—captured in vinyl from a photo of him fishing. Some of my earliest memories are of fishing with him. He passed in 2018, losing him changed my life a lot.
Then there is Ari. He passed when he was five. He was special in that way children sometimes are, radiant, singular. He was the first child I knew to die, and that changes something in you.
Jeff comes next. At the time, he was my boyfriend’s brother. My ex’s mother and I bonded through shared grief; her son Jeff and my brother Eric were so similar, even in how and when they left this world.
And finally, my Aunt Lin. She had passed not long before I made this piece. She was my first aunt to die, and she carried such a gentle, loving presence.
These six figures—Grammy (Phyllis), Grampy (Earl), Eric, Ari, Jeff, and Aunt Lin—became the silhouettes inhabiting this imagined heaven.
The landscape is inspired by Hilma af Klint, using color and symbolism rather than realism. A golden sun represents “the light” people say they see when passing on. A rainbow arches behind it, becoming “the tunnel” between realms. The sky shimmers with chunky glitter that reminds me of snow—soft, reflective, full of depth.
Upon this painted heaven sits a sheet of translucent plastic. On it, blue vinyl cutouts of the figures hover like outlines—ghosts whose presence shifts as the plastic moves. One moment they’re there. Next, they slip away. Just like memory. Just like grief.
Part II — Are Still Here
Inkjet photograph, embroidery thread
If the first piece is heaven, the second is earth.
This portrait-oriented work begins with a photograph I took at Beaver Lake, Ohio—a place woven into my family’s history. It’s where my dad grew up, and one of the first father–daughter trips we ever took was to this spot. We flew out for a family wedding, but the day before, he walked me through his hometown. We carried our cameras the whole time. He told me how his own father had taken him to Beaver Lake. It became a moment of lineage: a memory passed down, one generation to the next.
The photograph captures sunlight breaking through the trees—light fracturing darkness, piercing the shadows. On top of it, I embroidered small orbs representing the people from the first piece.
Each color is intentional:
Red — Eric: protector
White — Grammy: guardian angel
Blue — Ari: peace
Green — Jeff: healing
Gold — Grampy: joy
Pink — Lin: hope & love
These orb colors came partly from family stories, my mother seeing white and red orbs after Grammy and Eric passed, and partly from researching what those colors mean in the occult. The embroidery gives them a tactile presence: puncturing the surface, tethering heaven back to earth, showing that the people we love don’t disappear; they simply change form.
Together, They Tell One Story
Side by side, the two pieces form a visual cycle:
One shows where our people go when they leave this plane.
The other shows the ways they still appear, subtle, symbolic, threaded into everyday life.
They are a reminder that loss doesn’t sever connection. It transforms it.
What I Hope You Feel
If anything, I want these works to offer comfort.
To remind someone—anyone—that the people we have lost are still here, just in quieter ways.
In light.
In color.
In memory.
In the small signs we choose to notice.
These pieces were created out of grief, but also out of love.
They are for my family, for the people who shaped me, and for the moments that continue to echo long after someone is gone.
They are a reminder:
The ones we lost are still here.
Somewhere.
